Thanks to Dr. Guy for reminding me of this one.
Several years ago my girlfriend, who bowled on a league, and I went bowling with some friends. It had been planned for a week or so and as I hadn't been bowling since I was a kid I didn't own a ball or shoes or any of the usual stuff. During the week I had purchased a ball and had it drilled, some shoes, and a bag.
The night came and we started bowling. My turn came and I followed my girlfriend's instructions, approached the line, took my steps, and let loose the ball. That's when I discovered that a serious mistake had been made when the ball was drilled. As I released the 16lbs ball it hung on my middle finger for a moment before rolling uselessly down the lane. I felt a tremendous pain in my finger and hand at that point.
I was a tad embarrassed at that point, shook it off, and pretended that I wasn't in excruciating pain. I picked up my ball for my second roll, went through all the motions, but when when it came time all I could do was drop the ball directly in front of me. The pain was incredible.
Now my middle finger was swelling and turning purple. Oh great! I just see going into the office (I was still working as an engineer then) and explaining to the guys how I screwed up my hand bowling of all things.
This happened on a Friday night. I nursed the hand all weekend by packing it in ice and trying everything I could to get the pain and swelling down without any real effect. On Monday I decided to go see my doctor about it. Being as my girlfriend worked at the hospital and had connections within the medical community it was no problem to get seen on short notice.
After an exam and some x-rays the doc came back in to see me. I ask him straight off "It's broken, isn't it?". His reply? "You should be so lucky." That didn't sound good. It turns out that I had snapped the tendon that runs from the outer finger joint down into the center of the palm. Great. Surgery would be needed to restore use of that finger.
He scheduled the surgery for the following day and operated on my hand. I have a lovely zig zag scar running down the length of the middle finger of my right hand and spent several weeks with that finger in a splint giving everyone a perpetual "finger".
I decided to stick to darts after that. The splint had forced me to start throwing darts left handed in the tournaments for a while. Amazingly enough I actually did quite well throwing left handed. Some of my tournament friends even commented that I almost threw as well with the left as the right. Neccessity, and all that I guess. Oh yeah, and lots of goldschlager helped.