So this happened on Sunday. I broke my pinkie toe and it’s not very awesome.
My pinkie toe moved and the steel leg of the coffee table didn’t and now I have to deal with it.
The good (and somewhat hard to believe) news is that the doctor told me I’d still be able to run the SF Marathon at the end of July with no issues. She said I should be able to run in less than two weeks and It’s only a little over a month away so I’m not sure if I’m so confident in my superhuman powers of healing, but I guess we’ll see.
Going through this process I figured out some answers to questions that ran through my head initially after accidentally kicking the leg of a coffee table and I thought it might be helpful to lay them out for any of you who might happen to find yourself is the same situation. If you have any other questions you need answered, let me know in the comments — I’m more than happy to help.
How do you know if you broke your pinkie toe?
Oh, don’t worry — you’ll know this answer within 5 minutes of hitting it on something. I’ve hit my toe into things many, many times but this one was different for a few different reasons.
- It started throbbing and felt numb when I touched it.
- It physically looked broken as my pinkie toe was separated much more from the second toe than it should be.
- It just kept hurting and within 10-15 minutes the swelling was starting to show up and the pain was only getting worse. It actually didn’t hurt that much after the initial pain when I was just sitting there with no pressure on it, but when I tried to walk on it there’s no way that was happening.
Do you need to go to the doctor for a broken pinkie toe?
Most people you talk to would that you don’t need to go to the doctor for a broken pinkie toe and they would mostly be right. But, I had read that some people needed to have their bones reset to get the back in place so I didn’t really want to risk it. All you can do once you’re bone is all lined up is to splint your toe with some tape and wait for it to heal. If you can see the doctor for cheap then I say go for it, but if not there’s a pretty good chance you can just splint it and your pinkie toe will heal up just fine. If you have any questions or feel like you broke it really bad, go to the doctor asap.
How do you splint a broken pinkie toe with tape?
Being shown how to tape up my pinkie toe is the best thing I got from going to the doctor. She used a thicker, stretchy, one-sided tape that I haven’t been able to find online anywhere that really worked great for splinting and has no problems staying on all day long. The splinting method is simple and it looks like the photo below. That was the splinting job that was done by the doctor during my visit to the hospital so it’s a good example of how to do it.
How long will it take to heal a broken pinkie toe?
I’m not sure about this answer (since it just happened two days ago), but the doctor told me that the bone should be healed enough in 10-14 days to be able to jog/run. She said within 5 weeks it will be really strong and pretty much back to where it was (although there might be some pain to deal with). I’m two days into my healing process and I am already to the point to where I’m not needing to limp anymore. It’s bruising up, but the swelling is really the only thing that’s slowing it down. I’m elevating it as much as I can and that’s really the key to making it heal faster. In other words all you should focus on is splinting it, staying off of it and keeping it elevated as much as possible.
I really hope all of this helps you out and if you need anything else let me know. It’s never fun going through these things, but they happen. All we can do it take care of the injury as much as we can and get healed up as soon as possible.