Jimmy Fallon was back on The Tonight Show this week after a two-week break. He wasn’t on vacation, but in the intensive care unit (ICU) of New York’s Bellevue Hospital recovering from a ring avulsion. (Fallon advised viewers against Googling it, and we concur.)
“Basically what it is, is my ring got caught on the countertop and got stuck there and pulled my finger off,” he said after returning to his show on July 13.
“Finger avulsion is a rare and grave injury,” according to the Indian Journal of Orthopaedics. “When the ring is pulled forcefully [it] can cause a wide spectrum of damage ranging from a simple contusion injury to a traumatic amputation.”
The full story: “I tripped and fell on a braided rug that my wife loved, and I can’t wait to burn it to the ground. I tripped and fell and I caught my fall. So I’m getting up and my finger’s sideways. So I go, ‘Oh, my God! Did I just break my finger? This is the lamest thing in the whole world.’ It completely looks fake, like in a cheap horror movie where you see a broken finger. It looks like that! That’s what it looks like. So I wrap my hand in a towel and I get in a cab and go to the emergency room. I go, ‘I broke my finger! I think I broke my finger!’ And they go, ‘Oh, you didn’t break your finger. It’s a thing called ring avulsion.’”
Fallon had to have a six-hour surgery that required transplanting a vein from his foot into his hand and then spent 10 days (!) in the ICU. His finger is now in a cast, and, he says, feeling should return in eight weeks.
“I should say the fall was funny,” he said. “I’m a comedian, so I have to fall funny.”
Fallon also put out a call for jewelers to contact him about a new wedding ring he’d been designing, presumably to prevent future instances of the injury.
“If you are in the ring business, I already have ideas, sketches,” he said. “I had 10 days in the ICU.”
Fallon had previously said something similar on Twitter, writing, “I think I’ve invented a new type of wedding ring. Let’s talk… Neil? Kay? Jared?”
I think I’ve invented a new type of wedding ring. Let’s talk… Neil? Kay? Jared? #IGotIdeas
— jimmy fallon (@jimmyfallon) July 3, 2015
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