the anatomical snuff box

FoxSports 1 from 6:55am till 9:01. (Yes, that’s what the online guide says.) Arsenal 3 Chelsea 1. The it’s pump class at 10.

So no ride this morning. Life conspires to do this sometimes. Today’s ride is 55kms at an average of 27.1kph around the Shelbourne loop in 26 degrees of afternoon sunshine. There’s no climb on the Shelbourne loop and I made no detour to One Tree Hill and all those squats and lunges at pump class turn the legs to jelly.

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I should explain the broken scaphoid alluded to in my first post.

I didn’t break it falling off the Red Rocket the day before. I did it a year ago diving into the surf on a Queensland beach. The sea floor was closer than I thought. A year later the bloody thing still hurts.

The scaphoid is one of eight carpal bones that make up that most complex joint—the wrist. They are trapezium, trapezoid, capitate and hamate—the four distal carpals, being further from the bones of the forearm—and the lunate, triquetral, pisiform and the scaphoid—the proximals.

The scaphoid is about the size and shape of a cashew but 60 per cent of carpal fractures are to the scaphoid. It’s notoriously slow to heal because a fracture can disrupt what is already a tenuous blood supply. Rapid treatment is important. Like most people, I had no treatment, assuming I’d just bruised the base on my thumb.

The scaphoid sits behind a natural groove in the wrist, the anatomical snuff box, created by hyper-extending the thumb.

Sometimes a broken scaphoid just doesn’t heal even in a cast. Surgery is needed and a Herbert screw is inserted.

I read that Hubert Opperman had incredibly strong thumbs. Did he develop them through cycling? My thumb doesn’t hurt today but my legs are having a fit of the henries and could do with some Herberts. Or Huberts. Or both.