How bad is it? Fin strike-did I almost lose my arm?
It wasn’t a big day, but it was low tide and the wave was kind of slabbing a bit on the reef. I’m trying to learn how to make late takeoffs, so I’m putting myself in the takeoff zone. I was paddling for a wave and it started to crumble and stack up underneath me. A moment’s hesitation and I decided to let the wave go last second, so I slid off my board into the wave and I do this sort of front summersault in the wave’s lip as it breaks, basically getting sucked over the falls, but in a controlled manner so my feet end up forward and I’m not going head-first into the reef.
Any who, somehow my board flipped and we came together, with the primary force being a fin strike to my armpit. I’m sure if I didn’t have a wetsuit on, I would have a large gash, at the bottom of this bruise, sort of horizontal in the picture, just above my hairy pit.
My question, for any anatomy nerds out there is: how close did I come to cutting a very important vein or artery in my left arm? The bruising has spread all the way down my tricep now, as you can see.
My left arm was nearly useless after this happened. I couldn’t paddle very well without major pain. I caught two more waves and paddled in.
Am I lucky to be alive?