The end of the season: The Accident

Gentle reader (and there appear to be a few of you, which always comes as a surprise for some reason), you may be starting to wonder at the slight disparity between the title of this blog and the content. Far from derby appearing to do me any kind of good, it appears to have brought a lot of accidents and trips to the physio. Before I recount the accident that has ended my season and, possibly, my entire skating career, I'd like to take a moment to list all the ways derby has Done Me Good.

1. I'm fit as a relatively fit thing (though having just got back from watching acrobats who can balance on a stick they're holding between their goddamn teeth I am aware of my position on the curve)
2. I've made some incredibly strong, positive relationships with people I'm proud to call friends
3. It's challenged and rewarded me physically, mentally, and emotionally
4. I sincerely feel like a better person for having derby in my life
5. I rock the hotpants with PRIDE

Now that I've got that out the way, let's get to The Accident. I'm sure that most of you who weren't there when it happened have heard the basics on facebook (and if you don't fall in either of those two categories, HI!). It happened last Wednesday at scrimmage. I was jamming for the third or fourth time that night and had actually been doing pretty well. I'd got over my missing-the-cut hump and was just plain enjoying myself out there. When the jam started I was in the box (cut major, an attempt to take a whip on the inside line not quite working out for me) with about fifteen seconds to go. I get released, I whippet out of there, and thankfully the pack is taken up with the other jammer. I sneak round the outside, make it past one, two, three blockers before Grenade, a good friend, excellent blocker and fellow Mascara Massacre player on the other team hits me with a brilliant check out of nowhere. 

99.99% of blocks exactly like that would end in me getting knocked off the track, maybe hitting the deck, get up, get back in, advantage lost but no harm done. 

Not this time. 

From what the doctors and I were able to piece together, my left ankle bent outwards at an obscene angle. It dislocated, and in the process snapped off the bottom of my fibula. Even writing that now made my stomach flip just a little. 

The pain was instantaneous and brutal. I'm not a massive pain freak but I can take a fair bit of physical pain, but I can say with some certainty that this was the worst pain I have ever felt in my entire life. It ripped a line of screaming fire around my ankle and I actually screamed. Not in a high-pitched "aiie" kind of way, but some horrific, guttural roar that came from somewhere beyond my hindbrain. I hit the deck and skidded, desperately clawing at my ankle and making that awful, horrible roaring noise, not thinking beyond the pain and trying to make it stop somehow. 

Within minutes, the other skaters were on me. Dista!n and Tricksy Tantrum held my foot in place and applied icepacks. Grenade acted as a support behind me, keeping me in a sitting position. I remember other people taking pads off, talking to me, holding my hand, asking me questions. One of the NSOs was on the phone to the ambulance. Jackets and jumpers were sought, covering me to stop me going into shock and supporting the leg being held up. 

I'd like to say that I gritted teeth and kept quiet until the ambulance arrived, but I didn't. I swore, I yelled, I gritted my teeth and banged my fists on the ground and screamed and did everything I could, anything to make the pain go away. I didn't cry though, make of that what you will. I remember when they applied an icepack to part of my ankle and it was agonising. The possibility of a compound fracture was discussed (something that I am genuinely horrified by), but there was no way of telling until the ambulance crew got there. 

Eventually, they did arrive, and I remember watching them cross the rink like they were the second coming. They got me onto Entonox very quickly and I have to say from then it all goes very sideways. 

Entonox, for those of you who've never had the pleasure, acts to deaden the pain incredibly quickly. It also turns you into a nutcase. I went from being trapped inside this cocoon of jesusfuckmakeitstoppleasepleasepleasemakeitstop to a lairy, noisy, pillock. There are pictures of me (that hit facebook before I'd even left the rink) pretending to be a jammer ref on the stretcher, throwing the horns, all kinds of stupid shit. I remember cracking some jokes about being a failure as a Glaswegian, as we're supposed to all be junkies and my veins are impossible to find, and telling my housemate she could eat the curry I'd made that evening, but the rest of it? Very little. 

When we hit the hospital it was off the Entonox and onto morphine. And more morphine. Biff Curtains (who'd done something very similar right at the start of the season) stayed with me until my x-rays had been taken and the hour was getting very late. Things go fuzzy here. I remember feeling very alone, very woozy. They pulled me into a hospital room and a friendly nurse showed me my X-rays and explained what was going to happen next. I was going to be sedated, the ankle reset, and then I was to be transferred to another hospital closer to where I lived. I didn't ask about the resetting, I didn't want to know. I was reassured that the sedation would mean that I'd remember nothing of the ordeal, that it would be fast and I'd be OK. Thankfully, the doctor then walked in and told me in some detail what was going to happen next. 

"We're going to lift the foot back to 90 degrees, then squeeze your ankle at the sides (makes a horrible pinching motion) to bring the bones back into alignment."

Like I said, I didn't want detail. They filled me with Fentanyl (the stuff they give cancer patients, 100 times more potent than morphine) and I was away again. I came to in another ambulance, making the long drive to Middlemore. It was now about 2am, I was exhausted, doped up, and felt so, so alone. 

It was 4am by the time I was admitted to ward 10. I remember being kinda happy that I had a bed by a window, and upset that I was still in my derby gear and my sports bra was really cutting into me and hurting. I was to stay there until Tuesday morning.

Oh for pity's sake, what now?

Sunday I blogged about my numerous successes with derby and running, and Sunday evening I went to training on the bike. So far so normal, until I was blocked out whilst jamming during a drill. The blocker got me off the track, then went down. Her leg kicked out and swept me off my feet, and unfortunately my head took the hit. Hard. The crack as helmet hit floor at speed echoed round the rink and felt like the kickdrum from hell had been beaten inside my skull.

Everything went blurry. For a while.I lay there, doing that bizarre hissing breathing that seems to be the noise I make when in pain (happens enough these days that I know this), trying to get my eyes to point the right way and hoping to all things that I hadn't cracked my skull the way it felt I had.

The pain eventually settled down to a background pain with help of an ice pack and some aroha from the other downed skaters around the rink. I felt well enough to ride home, and well enough to ride to work.

Then it all went sideways.

I couldn't focus, the lights hurt my eyes. My contact lenses dug like nails into my corneas. I was slurring, and my train of thought was not so much a train as a broken boxcar. I went to the nurse's office and was swiftly dispatched to the nearest accident and medical, and then by ambulance to the hospital. I was kept in for observation for six hours, which I spent mostly sleeping, having blood taken for some reason, telling the same story to about ten different doctors, nurses, students and (probably) the bedside table. I was diagnosed with delayed concussion, a result of the fall and probably the car accident, and whiplash. They were concerned that I might have cracked a vertebrae in my neck at one point, but thankfully ruled it out before we got to the X-ray and hard brace stage.

I'm still bloody sore (painkillers, and a soft brace to wear when the pain gets REALLY sore to take the weight off for short periods) and today at work was spent in a bit of a daze. No derby for three weeks as another head injury could be very bad, and as yet I don't know how long I have to wait until I can get back running again. Hopefully SOON (no exercise is making me twitchy. At least, I hope it's no exercise that's causing that)

What's causing me to kick the furniture (gently) is the disappointment of yet another setback. I take up running, I get on travel team, and now I'm laid up with yet another injury. It's like trying to save money and every time a gain is made, a bill or an unexpected expense comes along and the savings get a little bit smaller. I'm in the best shape of my life, but I'd be in better shape if I wasn't so injury-prone. Since my shoulder/groin double-whammy I'd been to a whole TWO trainings before Sunday's slamfest, and I can't help but feel a little frustrated.

However, it could be a lot worse and I know that. It's only three weeks of no derby, I should be back running in a few days (hopefully), I'm not in a cast or on fire or flat broke, but still. It'd be brilliant if I could get a slight lead and maintain if for longer than half an hour...

An exciting week....

...and a good one, mostly. Wednesday was scrimmage night and I was finally told whether I'd made it into the travel team. On the rubric we use to score skater's competency, I scored a respectable 61.5 out of 105, which means that I'm in the training squad. Where in that squad I don't know at this stage, but I'm happy to have made it. 

Just happy I (don't really) hear you ask? Well, due to lots of different reasons the decision was delayed to the point that finding out how I did seemed almost anti-climactic. Don't get me wrong, I'm very pleased to be considered good enough to represent the league, but the jumping-up-and-down-oh-my-god-yay feeling just isn't there this time. Still, it's great as it means more bouts and more challenges to come. Knowing that the derby adventure isn't over for me yet is very heartening and has given me renewed energy to throw into it. 

I continue to run, hitting the pavement three times and the treadmill once this week. Tonight (I know, I went running on a Saturday night. Life? I have none) I made a personal best of 4.6km in 32 minutes. Again, it might not sound like much to you but to me that's a real achievement and I still feel I could have gone further if I hadn't turned up at my house when I did (going past it and then going back is still uncharted territory). I'm also keeping an eye on my food intake using mapmyfitness's nutrition tracker (No. Life.) so that I don't accidentally starve myself or carboload into oblivion (both have potential to happen, I know what I'm like). Looking at the plan I'm using, I'm well on track to kick some ass at the Quarter marathon, and I'm looking to find a 5km to run in as a warm-up that doesn't clash with a bout (harder than you think). There's one the day after our bout against Richter City (Wellington) but as I don't know if I'll be playing, I'll hold off on registering just yet. I'm absolutely LOVING running, finding it to be almost meditative. There's been a lot written and said about running, more I think than any other physical endeavour, and I'm starting to understand why. Seeing a tangible improvement in my times and distances helps too of course!

Sadly, no good week can happen without the occasional bit of bad news. A car did a u-turn into mine last night as I was giving some friends a lift and trashed the front of my car. It could have been a lot worse of course, nobody was injured and the car is (just about) driveable, but it meant that I couldn't attend the NZRDT training today as I was busy running around after insurance companies. Still, that meant that I suddenly had a day with no commitments. Result? Washing done, motorbike re-registered (well, I need something to get about on!), good friend met for lunch, and some proper, no-guilt down time. And it feels awesome. I think I might spend the rest of the night reading a book and listening to something gentle...