So, yesterday morning I was off to the hospital to get my cast off and check the progress of my broken hand. They removed the cast and it was not a very pretty sight due to the scratches I had obtained in my original fall, but it was nice to have the thing off! The doctor checked me out and said that the cast had been a bit tight on my outer three fingers causing some rubbing blisters between the knuckles and some bruising (see the pics), but other than that I would have to take it easy for a week. The normal time is four weeks in a cast, so he made me promise to wait a week before I start working the hand to get strength back.
I spent the better part of an hour in a hot shower once I got home to loosen up the stiffness, remove some of the garbage from being in a cast and just because it was wonderful to have my hand back. After drying it off it was still pretty painful, from the blood starting to properly circulate through the fingers again. My knuckles swelled up a bit and I decided to wrap the hand up in a soft bandage for the day.
This morning I woke up and have kept the hand out of the bandage all morning. It is slowly getting better but you can see in the pictures that there is some serious swelling and bruising that needs to be a bit more healed before I start to work on mobility. But I am free!