It is one thing to get your thumb caught in the car door.  It is another thing to do something about it.

Ouch!!!  It hurts!!  It really hurts to have your thumb caught in the car door.  I mean it really hurts.

I shake my hand up and down, hoping that the pain will go away.  But, no.  No chance.  It is throbbing, painfully throbbing from blood collecting under the thumbnail.  (I learned later that this is called subungual hematoma).

Egad, I say to myself.  how, Neil, could you have possibly let this happen?  In almost eight decades on this earth I have never had this happen before.  Why now?

First, I am writhing in pain.  Second, I am mad at myself for being so careless.  Third, I am trying to think about what I should do with my throbbing thumb.

There is no blood oozing out from underneath the thumbnail, but my thumbnail is turning pitch black quickly.

What to do?   I decide to call my doctor’s office to get some advice.  However, it is very early in the morning, long before the office is open.  Nevertheless, I figure that I will call anyway since I have paid for a concierge service — a service that presumably provides faster and more direct response to my medical needs.

I call and get an answering service.  she explains to me that there is a doctor on call.  she asks me if I would like to have the on-call doctor give me a call.  my answer was yes, indeed.

She said that the doctor would call within 30 minutes.  I never received a call!

Two+ hours later, at 8am I placed a call to my regular doctor’s office, knowing that they open at this hour.  The phone rings and rings and rings and rings and…    the phone number I called never stops ringing.  It never goes to voicemail so that I can leave a message.  Holy cow!

At 8:20, twenty minutes later, I call again.  This time a receptionist answers, and I ask her to transfer me to my doctor’s nursing station.  She does so.   No one answers.  I get a recording asking me to leave a message.   The message does not give me another number to call if they are not available.  No, it just says leave a message.  I do so, and ask for a call back.

8 hours later I got a return phone call.  8 hours!!

The nurse asks what is the issue.  I tell her and ask if she has any advice for me.  What, if anything, can I do to relieve the pain.   Are there a couple of steps that I should be taking when one gets their thumb jammed in a car door.   The nurse says that she cannot give medical advice.  She says she will talk to the doctor and get back to me.  An hour later I get a call.  the nurse reports that the doctor wants me to come into the office or go to an urgent care facility.

That is not going to happen. No way am I going into the doctor’s office or to an urgent care facility.

A week later a good friend told me that she had caught her thumb in the car door decades ago and she still does not have full feelings in the thumb.  She strongly advised going to urgent care so that they could relieve the swelling and release the blood surrounding and under the nail.

This got my attention and so I finally did have a doctor look at it in an urgent care facility.  He numbed the thumb, and then drained the blood out from around the nail.  The color of the nail immediately changed from dark, dark black to a faded black.

The nurse came in and dressed the wound, filled it with ointment of some type, and wrapped it with a white gauze bandage.  Then she told me not to shower for two days and not to swim for one week.

Bottom line, be careful when closing the car door.  Try not to get your thumb caught in the car door.

Second lesson, forget trying to reach your doctor for advice.  Just go to an urgent care facility.

Final lesson, it turns out that there are different levels of concierge medical service.  Obviously the level of concierge service I am paying for is not worth very much.