Deal With the Pain of a Door Being Shut on Your Finger

Getting your hand or finger caught in a closing door can be an incredibly painful experience. Depending on the severity of the situation, you may have to seek professional medical attention to prevent long-term pain or injury. However, if you don't need to see a doctor, there are tricks you can use to help you deal with the pain on your own at home.

Steps

Dealing with the Pain

  1. Ice the injury.[1] For medical reasons explained in the next section, this is the first thing you should do after shutting a door on your hand. But, medical reasons aside, the cold from the ice will numb your hand if you keep it in place for long enough. Although the extreme cold will be uncomfortable or even painful at first, push through it and keep the ice in place. Eventually, you’ll feel less sensation — including pain — in the iced area.
  2. Stay calm. Your first impulse might be to panic, but try not to let yourself get overexcited. Excitement can lead to increased blood flow, which in turn might lead to harmful swelling. Furthermore, research has shown that anxiety leads to a heightened experience of pain, though this is more researched with chronic pain than with acute injury.[2] Regardless, staying calm will help you stay focused and manage your pain in the short term.
  3. Take over-the-counter (OTC) pain relievers. Although for severe injury, you should see a doctor who can both treat your hand and prescribe stronger pain relievers, for manageable situations, OTC medications will help you deal with pain. In general, OTC pain relievers are either acetaminophen (Tylenol, Panadol, etc.) or ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin, etc.).
    • Take all medications as directed. Acetaminophen should be taken every 4-6 hours, and ibuprofen every 6-8 hours.
    • If you have stomach problems, kidney problems, or are pregnant, don’t take ibuprofen without consulting a doctor.
    • People with liver disease should not take acetaminophen.[3]
  4. Focus on your breathing.[4] Deep controlled breathing will help you calm down and lower your heart rate. Focus on the sensation of the air at every stage in the breathing process — how it feels as it enters through your nose, how it feels when you hold it in your chest, how it feels as it rushes back out through your nose or over your tongue. Think about those feelings, and nothing else.
    • Inhale slowly and deeply so your belly, rather than your chest, rises first.
    • When you can’t take in any more air, hold your breath for several seconds.
    • Exhale slowly and methodically, controlling the release of air rather than letting it all rush out on its own.
    • When you’ve finished exhaling, pause for a few seconds before repeating the cycle with your next inhalation.
    • Repeat this process until you feel comfortable releasing your attention.
  5. Distract yourself. To take your mind off the unpleasant pains, try to let your mind wander to other stimuli that engage your senses. You might listen to your favorite album, watch an engaging TV show or movie, have a conversation with someone, or perform a light activity that doesn’t stress your hand, like going for a walk. Research show that engaging your five senses makes your experience of pain more manageable.[5][6]
  6. Visualize food. Research shows that guided imagery, in which a person or audio recording helps a person in pain focus on relaxing mental images, can help ease both chronic and acute pain.[7] However, a recent study suggests that simply visualizing your favorite foods on your own can achieve the same effect without the external aid or guide.[8] Just fantasize about tucking into your favorite foods — whether it’s chocolate or a cheeseburger — in intense detail, imagining how it smells, tastes, and feels. Let those pleasant thoughts take over your mind and the pain will fall away.

Addressing Medical Concerns

  1. Apply ice immediately.[9] The most important step in the aftermath of the injury is to ice your hand as soon as possible. The cold temperature slows down the blood flow to the area, reducing any swelling or inflammation that could make the injury worse. The extreme cold will also numb the area, reducing how much pain your experience, as mentioned above.
    • If you don’t have ice, any cold object will do. A bag of frozen vegetables from the freezer is just as good as an ice pack.
  2. Elevate your finger.[10] Point your finger up toward the sky. Just like with the application of cold, the goal is to decrease the blood flow to the injured area to reduce swelling. As you’re icing your injury, keep both your hand and finger up in the air.
  3. Check where the hand is injured.[11] If the most severe pain is in the palm, or if any of your joints are affected, you should seek expert medical attention as soon as possible. However, if you closed the door on the tip of the finger and didn’t injure your joints or our nail bed, the doctor may just advise that you rest your hand and wait it out.
  4. Make sure there’s no injury to the nail bed.[12] You can tell if the nail has become partially detached from the nail bed by looking for dark discoloration under the nail. This discoloration indicates that blood is pooling under the nail, and you need to contact a doctor for advice on how to proceed. If it’s just a small amount of blood, the injury might heal on its own. However, large amounts of blood can be painful, and might require action. The doctor may ask you to come in so he or she can release the pressure building up under the nail, or they may direct you to relieve the pressure yourself.
    • The doctor should drain the hematoma if the collection of blood is less than 24 hours old. If more than 48 hours have passed, the blood has clotted and there is no use for draining. Patients should have a neurovascular examination of the hand. Flexion and extension should be tested in all finger joints.
  5. Follow the doctor’s instructions on how to drain blood under the nail.[11] Do not attempt to relieve the pressure without first consulting a medical professional. However, if a professional gives you to go-ahead, you can drain the nail bed by following his or her directions. Make sure the wash your finger both before and after the procedure.
    • Heat the tip of a paper clip or thumbtack over fire until it’s red-hot to sterilize it. Hold it with a pair of pliers or protective gloves to protect your hands from the heat.
    • Touch the hot metal tip to the fingernail, where the blood is pooling. Even without applying too much pressure, the heat will sear a small hole into the nail. In most cases, this will be uncomfortable, but not painful.
    • Allow the blood to drain out through the hole and relieve your pain.
    • Your doctor may prescribe antibiotics.
  6. Seek medical attention if necessary. In many cases, depending on the severity of the injury, you can simply ice the hand and wait for it to heal on its own. However, you should consult a doctor if you observe any of the following:[10]
    • Inability to bend a finger
    • Injury to a joint or palm bones
    • Injury to the nail bed
    • A deep cut
    • A broken bone
    • Dirt at the site of the injury that needs to be cleared out to prevent infection
    • Any sign of infection (redness, swelling, warmth, pus, fever)[13]
    • Failure for the injury to heal or improve

Tips

  • If there is a cut, laceration, or fracture, you should attend to that first.
  • Put a bag of frozen peas on it. *If you think it's broken go immediately go the hospital or urgent care facility.

Warnings

  • If your finger continues to hurt, notify a doctor immediately as there may be a bigger problem rather than mere pain.

Related Articles

Sources and Citations

  1. ↑ http://www.webmd.com/pain-management/try-heat-or-ice
  2. ↑ http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/pain-anxiety-and-depression
  3. ↑ http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/InformationbyDrugClass/ucm165107.htm
  4. ↑ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3000182/
  5. ↑ Hoffman, H.G., Richards, T.L., Bills, A.R., Van Oostrom, T., Magula, J., Seibel, E.J., and Sharar, S.R. (2006). “Using FMRI to study the neural correlates of VR analgesia”, CNS Spectr., Jan, 11(1), 45-51.
  6. ↑ Cepeda, M.S., Carr, D.B., Lau, J., and Alvarez, H. (2006). “Music for pain relief”, Cochrane Database Syst Rev., Apr 19, (2), CD004843
  7. ↑ http://prc.coh.org/GuidImg.pdf
  8. ↑ http://abcnews.go.com/Health/PainManagement/story?id=5475061&page=1&singlePage=true
  9. ↑ http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/encyclopedia/content.aspx?ContentTypeID=1&ContentID=4483
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 http://www.md-health.com/Smashed-Finger.html
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000018.htm
  12. ↑ http://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/bleeding-under-nail?page=2
  13. ↑ http://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/symptoms-of-infection-after-a-skin-injury

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