Gangrene

2011-05-15T03:54:00.000-07:00

12 weeks ago I broke my wrist – well a bone in my wrist. It’s called the Scaffold Bone (alright, it isn’t but the real name isn’t as funny. Cathode bone? Scathoid bone? Whatever). I did this doing what my wife hilariously refers to as “sticks”. In fact, it’s the ancient Indonesian martial art of disembowelling people with ice-lolly sticks, called “Escreama”. I might have spelt that wrong too but comedy is all about the spelling. I wont bore you with details but suffice to say that an upside-down stick block isn’t a great technique to use against a pick-axe handle or so the guy who’s teaching me mentioned after I’d taken the force of the blow through my wrist and shoulder. By then ofcourse, I was already clutching my wrist like some limp-wristed dandy, straight out of a script from a Blackadder III episode. Incidentally, MrsE affectionately refers to my "sticks" teacher as - wait for it - "Mr Sticks" - which makes him sound waay less sinister than he really is. Or maybe more. I'm not sure.

Interestingly (and by that I mean “painfully”) the Scaffold bone break doesn’t show up immediately on an x-ray. So initially they gave me a bandage and packet of painkillers, which didn’t work. Or rather, they did work provided I wasn’t attempting to do anything important with my right hand. Like drive. Or beat my hi-score on Bulletstorm. Ten days later, when I was still in a lot of pain (and nowhere close to maxing skills shots on Bulletstorm) I went back and had it x-rayed again at which time the Dr said “well would you look at that… it IS broken after all.” Oh, how we all laughed. As you can probably imagine. So THEN they put me in plaster.

It was fairly traumatic, like a scene out of Sharpe or some other early 19th century war related drama where lead characters suffer horrendous injuries, which then require a long drawn out amputation scene. There we all were, me screaming out "I'll never play the Xbox again!!" while writhing on the gurney as three late middle aged nurses pinned me down. A nasty business. And all of my suffering, I hasten to add, I undertook without so much as sniff of rum for an anaesthetic but I might as well have been a watchmaker for all they cared. The nurse (lovely lady) added insult to injury with an immortal line I think I will carry with me for a very long time: “I’m sorry, but we’ve had a run on white – would you care for bright blue or purple instead?” How can you have a run on the one colour all plaster casts should be?? It’s like saying “I’m sorry deary but we’ve had a run on white milk, would you care for bile coloured at all?”

Anyway, I put up with the plaster (plus Xbox related adjustments) for 5 weeks. Even though in week 2 MrsE waited for me to fall asleep on the sofa and wrote in large letters along the plaster “He lies! He did this gardening not at martial arts”). During which time running was impossible.

After they took the plaster off, there was still a fair amount of pain, which “lovelly strokey strokey arm lady” (the name I gave to the physio to pay my wife back) promised to fix. She had me squeezing different colours of modelling clay for a couple of weeks that I may have portrade to my wife akin to the pottery scene out of Ghost/Naked Gun (delete as appropriate) but was in reality much like Pantsboy's (my son) attempts at making his sisters tea out of playdough. I took the view that if I couldn't sculpt a replica 3rd Century Han Dynasty vase out of the aforementioned modelling material, I certainly couldn't run.

I did ok at Physio but failed at the “regaining strength in my wrist” test. No smutty jokes, please. Simply put, it turns out you can’t carry a large saucepan filled with boiling water across the kitchen and not expect to run out of strength half way across. I managed to steam burn the skin off three of my fingers – have you ever tried to run with your fingers covered in burn gel, gauze and bandages? What happens, as it turns out, is that sweat gets trapped in the dressing and creates a smell akin to gangrene – at least it does if, like me, your medical training is formed from back episodes of Quincey. They’re both equally disgusting I grant you, but only one will lead to you not sleeping and walking four miles to A&E at 3 in the morning.

Now finally, I’m healed again (mostly). “Mr Sticks” even called me today to ask if I was going ‘sticks’ training tonight. I replied that I was, but I needed to be careful of the wrist, particularly impact and twisting. He replied with an easy laugh that he had planned for that: “Tonight” he told me with the same degree of relish a demented ‘Stars in Your Eyes’ contestant might use to annouce that they were going to perform the entirity of Jeff Wayne's Myths and Legends of King Arthur concept album “we’ll start you off with some knife work.”

Oh good.

Lost In The Wilderness

Gangrene