The New Adventures of Finger Man and Nebulous Boy

In the sprawling metropolis that is Powhatan, Virginia, there are new Super-Heroes ready to do it all...fight crime, fix bad attitudes, and even prevent tooth decay with their miraculous powers. No, it's not the Upright Citizens Brigade.... it's Finger Man and Nebulous Boyyyyy!!!

What powers you ask? Well, Finger Man has the power to break the tendons in his own hands while doing average, ordinary tasks around the home. And Nebulous Boy? He has the power to repeatedly get croup and end up with a month-long regimen of nebulizer breathing treatments.

Yep, we're all messed up at the Crews house this month. I have this nice and shiny finger splint on the middle finger of my right hand where I pulled/tore a tendon, and Colin is getting daily breathing treatments to, once and for all, beat a case of croup that doesn't seem to want to go away.

I mentioned my finger trouble in my last posting. You wouldn't believe the attention this stupid thing has gotten me. All kinds of people have asked me about it. Today I took Colin to the Richmond Children's Museum. (If you have small children and you have never gone...YOU NEED TO GO! I will blog more about this amazing place sometime.) Anyway, they have this new thing where they have what used to be a real ambulance that has been set up for children to climb around in, with working lights and all kinds of toy equipment for them to play with. Some little girl thought my splint was part of the medical toys and got really upset when I wouldn't take it off and share it with her. I repeatedly told her it was for real but she didn't believe me and I was just a "bad man". Then everywhere else I go I get asked about it... work, Food Lion, church, etc.. If you really crave attention or feel like nobody wants to talk to you...you gotta get one of these finger splints!

Since I have been getting asked so many times about what happened, I have made up all sorts of fun stories as what really happened is just plain boring. I have told some people it happened at practice at my Ultimate Fighting gym (shoulda seen what I did to the other guy). Then I told some people it happened while scratching myself (I had this unbelievable itch). My favorite is the one I have told about walking in the drug store, saw it, and just had to have it. (It's going to be the "IT" fashion accessory of 2009.)

Here's what really happened. I was out hunting this particular morning and my hands were pretty much freezing the whole time. Then when I got home I was taking off my long johns and the elastic around my ankle didn't want to go over my heel. So I reached down and fought a little to pull it over my foot and suddenly I felt something funny on my hand. It didn't hurt, but when I lifted up my hand, I noticed the finger tip of my right middle finger was hanging down and wouldn't go straight. It didn't hurt. It didn't even really look creepy or anything. It just looked weird.

So I did what any real man would do. I splinted it with Scotch Tape and a piece of one of Daleen's emery boards. I later got my new shiny splint and finally made it to see the doctor. He liked my shiny splint and said it was the right one to be using. Then he gave me the bad news. Gotta wear this sucker for 6 weeks to see if the tendon will heal. If not, I'll have to get minor surgery on my hand to repair the tendon. He even gave me a referral to what he said was, the "Best Hand Surgeon" in Richmond and his name is (I am not making this up) J.E.B. Stuart. At that point I was looking for the Candid Camera crew. I then asked if he was aware that J.E.B. Stuart was a Confederate Civil War General who died in the 1860's. Come to find out, this modern day Mr. Stuart is a descendant of the General and apparently his folks decided on a family name. That's fine. If he can fix my hand, I don't care what his name is. By the way, my dad is a HUGE Civil War nut and I can just see his face when I tell him J.E.B. Stuart might be operating on my hand. He's probably going to faint.

And then it's on to Nebulous Boy. Remember when I mentioned Colin had come down with croup when he was in South Africa? Well, even with the meds and breathing treatments he got over there, he never really shook it completely. After returning home, he continued to have a bad cough at night. Finally it got worse and we took him to see his doctor. The diagnosis was that he still had croup and we are now the proud owners of our own nebulizer and a couple of boxes of meds to put in it. He is in the middle of a month-long series of breathing treatments designed to get rid of the problem completely. Luckily, the doctor gave us this really cool fish-looking mask that Colin actually doesn't seem to mind wearing. He even asks about his fishy mask when we tell him it's time to get ready for his treatment. It's odd though. I felt weird about buying a nebulizer for him. I never had one when I was a kid. Nobody I knew as a kid ever had one. However, now I have been asking around and now it seems like we have been the only parents who didn't have one. Are kids developing more breathing problems these days? Or are we getting better at treating them? I don't know. To be honest, I don't remember any of my friends getting croup when I was a kid either, so I'm wondering if breathing problems are just becoming more common. I hope not.

So, we're still all messed up around here this month, but eventually we'll be fine. It's just going to take time. And I was only kidding about the crime fighting thing. Perhaps I could temporarily blind perpetrators by the shinyness of my finger splint. And maybe Colin can scare them away with his Darth Vader'ish sounding breathing when he is getting his treatments. If you find you are in need of people with those kinds of superpowers, then just give us a call. We're one heck of a super-duo.