A bit of space.

Today I got a really nice message from someone who reads this saying that they missed my blog, and wishing me a good recovery. It was awesome to get some feedback and thank you so much for getting in touch. I suppose it's been a wee while and so an update is in order. VERY LITTLE OF THIS RELATES TO 8 WHEELS. Just letting you know, I won't be offended if you go watch Regionals. Totally cool with that.

My ankle continues to heal and I'm at the stage of putting a bit of weight on it and can lurch from one room to another without crutches. Unfortunately I totally destroyed my last cast due to my sheer amazingness and had to get a new one (this time in the colours of the Scottish rugby jersey, natch). Two more weeks, I'm out of plaster (saying "out of fibreglass" sounds wrong) and can start the road to recovery and getting rid of the extra kilo or two that has appeared on me. No biggie (unless I keep this up), losing weight isn't a scary prospect to me any more, but I'll be happier when I'm back to fighting fitness in more ways than one.

I'm currently on an epic road trip with my parents, who are over from the UK chasing Scotland chasing a place in the quarter-finals in the Rugby World Cup. I'm quite a fan of egg-chasing and have discovered a love and appreciation for sport in general since derby came into my life. So far we've been to three matches, had the crap scared out of us by Scotland's attempts to remember how to play rugby (we've won both games, but not easily), and watched a stripper confuse England even more so than usual against Argentina. Man, do Argentines know how to watch sport. Their Patriotic Bouncing Song in particular is pretty badass, and they have incredible taste in novelty hats.

Away from angry men in tight shorts, we've got out into south island's glorious scenery, met some penguins (realising a lifelong dream of mine to see some in the wild), ate far too much blue cheese and shouted at TVs a lot, both in public and from the comfort of various hotel room sofas. It's been brilliant so far, despite being slower than my parents unless I'm falling down or off something (two sets of stairs, a pavement and a shower stall at present count)

In addition to having the holiday of a lifetime with two wonderful people who I don't see nearly often enough (it's been two years since we were all together- a lot's happened), being away from Auckland, my job and roller derby has given me some well-deserved thinking time. So, after a week of sleeping incredibly soundly and just letting the gears shift down a notch or two, I'm now lying awake until dumb am as my mind reorganises itself like so much time-lapse Tetris.

What am I thinking so much about? The usual shit, mainly. Career, relationships (not just the romantic kind), future, all the wanky stuff that people have navel-gazed over since the dawn of bellybuttons. Happily, I have drawn a few conclusions, and I have this insane notion that by writing them down my brain might hit save game instead of going for the level up.

• I've figured out that this year has metaphorically punched me across the room and left me on the floor looking for teeth. Obvious that may sound, but my inability to acknowledge when I'm weak has meant this took me a while to process, let alone accept.
• Sometimes the only things that are going to heal the cracked bones is time and metal plates. The bruised feelings they don't make plates for, which leaves time. Just because it hurts now doesn't mean it will continue to do so, but right now you just have to grit teeth and breath through it. Occasional swearing is acceptable, but don't go on about it. (yes, I understand the irony of saying that whilst writing this. My blog etc. etc.)
• Without a plan or something to work towards I get a bit lost. Apparently I've inherited this from my mother, so blame genetics/nurture/being bloody difficult. I've lived longer in Auckland and been in the same job longer than I have anywhere since I left university. In 2003. Whilst this is a huge character flaw I can do something about it that isn't stay where I am.

A plan is coming together of sorts (based on many, many variables), but if I pull it off, then it could be all over between me and derby. She's not really the type to do a long distance relationship (though I know some people manage it). How do I feel about this? Well, I appreciate I write a blog about roller derby and not about, say, my job, or the works of Kyuss, the Black Keys and Clutch (for me, it's all about the beards in rock), derby isn't my life and never will be. It won't stop me from moving in a certain direction if that's going to be better for me in every other way. It would be hard to hang up my skates (and harder to say goodbye to my team, my league and my friends), it would be a decision I made based on what's best for me, at least based on all the knowledge available to me at the time.

I figure that in life, if you're smart, you don't make bad decisions. Just decisions based on the best data you have at the time. You might discover afterwards that you made the wrong call, but as least you made the best you could with what you had. this philosophy has kept the gremlins at bay for me on many an occasion. At the moment, I'm in research mode.

I'm rubbish at relaxing, I told you.

The end of the season: Adjustment

Nice addition to the tattoo, and getting stitches out hurts.

So, home. How's it been?


Hard, to tell you the truth. The first few days, as I adjusted to doing everything on my own, the toilet being (at first) a good five-ten minutes away by crutch, nearly falling down the stairs a few times, and eating most of my meals at the kitchen worktop because carrying my plate was impossible, were definitely the hardest. I slept a lot. I could manage about twenty minutes of activity before I became physically and mentally exhausted, and as I came off the last of the tramadol and morphine, I was on a bit of a downer to say the least. 


You really do get a sense of how much of a privilege it is to have full operation over all your limbs when that operation is taken away. When you can only carry one cup, one plate at a time (and then really slowly, because your gait is buggered and you spill), or when you stand and battle with a heavy door into a shop for several minutes because the shop assistant is a cheeky bastard who thinks it's funny and you can't operate the door, two crutches and a bag all at once, you get a realisation how how lucky you have it the 99.9999% of your life where you've not needed walking aids. Not that I'm pretending to understand AT ALL what it's like to be permanently disabled (this is bugger-all in the grand scheme of things) but yeah, a new appreciation has been granted. 

I had the best nurse ever, the woman had VISION

I was just getting used to this new routine (being off work's been weird too), when I got another smack in the chops. At 4am on Sunday morning, I was woken up by a phone call. It was the police, asking me if I knew where my motorcycle was? Of course, when the police ask you something like that you know that the correct answer what you thought it was, and so it proved. Someone had wheeled it down the drive, smashed the dash on it, cracked the ignition and taken it off round the block. My pride and joy, ruined for some drunken fun. 


Bugger. 


I like to think that I'm a pretty positive person. I make mistakes, poor judgements, bad decisions. Sometimes it feels like I take a bigger hit for those poor decisions that other people might, but I refuse to give in to cynicism and bitterness. Since I started this blog (maybe it's YOUR fault, blogger.com!) my life's been, well, tough. Physically, emotionally, socially, mentally (that's the four pillars of health according to my lesson plans), but I've always tried not to let it get to me. I haven't cried once this year (actually, that's a bit worrying), and on the whole I like to think I'm not too much of a whiny fucker to be around. 


Sunday morning, I lost my sense of humour. I lay in bed, having slept for about four hours (in two lots of two hours). I was in real pain from my leg. My hands hurt where the crutches had impacted into my wrists. My precious motorcycle was lost to a police lockup, with an unknown amount of damage wreaked on it. People had been less than 2 metres from where I sleep (in the converted garage downstairs remember, no front door between my bedroom and the elements, just some sliding glass doors and a blind), who had malicious intent on me and my stuff. (they must have scouted the place earlier, which made me want to throw up a little). I felt so sore, so alone, just....just fucking sad, really. Sad that this had happened. Sad that I couldn't seem to catch any kind of break. I was tempted to just lie in bed all day and flip the bird to the world. I felt like giving up. 


I didn't though. I got out of bed. I posted about my woes on the Urban75 message board (where I've been a member since 2004), and someone posted if they could be annoying and ask if I'd learned anything from the experience?


I thought my reply was worth putting here.


"I read this (your post) last night and gave it some thought over today. Today, I phoned the police and insurance companies, drove out to the lockup where the bike's been kept, took photos of the damage, went to the hospital, got my stitches out, got a new cast put on, went to work, picked up my exam marking and laptop so I could write reports, went to the bike garage, got a rough quote for the repairs to the bike, came home, lodged my insurance claim, and made my dinner. All on crutches and in a fair amount of pain.

I'm of the opinion that when all is said and done I am pretty fucking unstoppable. I'm pretty incapacitated, getting very little to no help, dealing with all this shit and managing not to have a breakdown. This year I've broken a bone in my hand, been knocked out, been in a car accident, split up with the man I thought I was going to have kids with, broken my ankle, been punched at work, wrestled with issues about my sexuality, and just GOT THE FUCK ON WITH IT. It's making me realise that, to be perfectly honest, I don't actually NEED anyone in my life. "Want"? Yeah, sure if they can keep up. But "need"? I think I can handle life on my own just fine, thanks "

For context, the original thread was all about relationships and dating, hence the bit at the end. It's true though, that's been the main thing I've learned from this. I am pretty damn resourceful when I need to be. I can and will thrive,l regardless of what happens to me. I'm not reliant on other people for support or validation. I can look back on a day like today and know that I managed to do it all and still crack jokes with the nurse at the clinic, and thank the guy at the petrol station for serving me. 

Right now, I'm sore and waiting for the painkillers to kick in. I'm still jumpy at noises outside, and sleep is not going to come easy. Tomorrow I have to wrestle again with insurance companies (the bike incident looks like it might cost me about a grand if I'm very unlucky), the police, ACC, the marking and the reports. But I'll get through it, because the alternative just sucks too hard to even contemplate. 

The doctor said I could go to the gym from tomorrow, as long as I was careful. I think I might just do that.Because I am fucking unstoppable.

The end of the season: Incarceration

You might be wondering why I'm writing this multi-entried account of breaking my ankle. Surely just a basic "I hurted myself and I'm not skating for a while" post would be enough? Probably, but I'm milking this for a couple of reasons:
1) This accident has been something of a game-changer for me, in more ways than one. It seems only right and proper to document it.
2) I've had a couple of people write me after the first installment and tell me that it's made them think about their own safety and practice on the rink. I guess if I can serve as a warning to others then that's pretty awesome.
3) It's not like I have much skating to write about for a while, is it?

I had a brief conversation with Dr. Chris WarnHer, a ref at PCR about the accident. He saw the whole thing and a couple of his comments gave me pause. One of them was that to him, I sounded pretty quiet and restrained after the break, so god help me if I REALLY let rip with some primal scream of pain. I'll probably burst my medulla. The other was that the block that resulted in the accident looked totally normal. He said he didn't see it coming at all, and that it had been a reminder to him that this kind of thing can happen to anyone on the rink. I'm going to cover that in a future post, but cheers Doc for the thoughts and feedback.

So anyway, in my last adventure I'd got as far as being doped to hell on a hospital bed at 4am in Middlemore. I managed to drift off to sleep for a couple of hours before being woken in one of the rudest ways you can imagine given the circumstances. A nurse appeared, woke me up, took my stats, and then said "Oh, we need to take some samples from you as you were at another hospital. Just in case you've been infected with MRSA". Fair enough, thinks addled-brain me, and proffers my IV line for a blood sample. Oh no, says the blue-clad Agent of Indignity. Any chance of you giving us a nasal, rectal and genital swab? Now? Thanks so much. I'll leave the swabs here and come get them in a few minutes.

Now, call it TMI, but this still stands out in what has been a fairly nasty few weeks as a nadir. I'm doped to all hell, on two hours of sleep, extremely uncomfortable (I'm still dressed for the rink), with my recently reset dislocated and broken ankle in a cast and propped up on what looks like a zombie skijump, and he wants me to take fucking swabs at six in the morning? Talk about bedside manner. He also seems extremely confused at my request for something comfortable to sleep in, and actually asks me why I don't have a bag packed. I'm fairly sure that despite the situation and my mental impairments, I manage to explain that, oddly, my plans for the evening hadn't included being in fucking hospital.

Thursday is a bit of a blur. I'm on a lot of morphine and nil by mouth in case a theatre slot appears (the decision's been made to operate). My skate gear gets swapped out for a backless gown that's four sizes too big. I get told to have a shower and nearly collapse waiting for the nurse to let me out. I get my first visitors (both skaters), who bring kind words and jelly snakes (these became a feature). I send a request to my ex to source some clothes and magazines, which arrive in the evening, as does a lukewarm lamb casserole-thing, which is the nurse's way of telling me no operation today. Lucky for me, D is able to explain what a vegetarian is and why thrusting said casserole in my face is not really the done thing. A sandwich that's had some tomato waved at it is brought instead, so at least I get to eat something. More skaters come. I don't really remember, there's too much pain and too many drugs.

Friday, and I'm back on NBM. Bogan, a former skater, materialises at the end of my hospital bed and talks pain meds at me. she brings me some pirate stickers which now adorn my crutches. I go in for surgery early afternoon, and the rest of the day is a blur of drugs and drifting consciousness. I don't hear much about what they've done to me, in fact I'm still not 100% sure. Doctors are hard to come by.

Saturday, and I'm starting to come out of the fog. we have a new nurse on ward, a young Asian dude who is friendly, enthusiastic, and genuinely gives a shit. I asked him about my operation, and he runs off, only to come back a few minutes later with X-rays. Yay! More visitors, who come with sushi and books and BK salad burgers. I'm told that I'd be let out today, but for needing to talk to occupational therapy and they don't work weekends so can I hang on till Monday?

Sunday, I'm up and dressed. More visitors, coffee and cake, and theeeen....things get not so good. I've been pumped full of tramadol, morphine and other pain meds for about four days now and it all starts to go a bit sideways. I get seasick. Like, SEASICK. The bed feels like a cross-channel tugboat in January. I'm dizzy, throwing up. I'm slurring, and even more confused than usual. A doctor comes, tells me a bad reaction to the tramadol, and off the good drugs I go. I'm buoyed by thoughts of going home, even when the meds wear off and I'm left to fend off the pain with paracetamol. Sunday night is long.

Fuck. Sake.

Monday comes and I am packed and ready to go. The seasickness has mostly passed, and whilst I'm sore and tired from a bad night I'm going home! Occupational health come, discuss my living arrangements and the assistance I'll be getting (not optimal and minimal). They suggest a shower stool so I can wash myself without balancing precariously on one foot, and a, oh jesus I can't believe I'm talking about this, commode chair, in case I'm not able to get up the stairs to the main house quickly and I need to go to the toilet. It's a chair, with a bucket under it. I'm 28, in shocking good health (my resting HR is in the high 40s FFS) and they're offering me a commode chair. I reluctantly accept. It's sitting in the corner of my room now, unused, a warning against the dangers of poor planning in my half-speed existence. OH leave, and I'm left kicking my heels and waiting to be discharged. My nice nurse from the weekend has gone, and the new one isn't given to talking much, if at all. I ask her when I'm being discharged, and get told that it's not happening today. No explanation, just a shrug and a "tomorrow". Fuck this! I think. I ask her why, get nowhere. I decide I'm not happy with this, and launch an escape attempt. I bound down the ward on crutches, looking for someone who might listen to me and explain what the fuck is going on. I get as far as the ward clerk before my silent, grumpy-eyed nemesis catches up and takes me back to my bed. Finally, a doctor arrives. They just wanted to make sure I was getting past the tramadol upset, that's all. I point out that it's not very nice to do that to people, and they could at least furnish an explanation, wouldn't take long. A shit they do not give.

Tuesday, and I am finally allowed to get the hell out of there. I get the all-clear about lunchtime, but when I call a nurse (the same one from yesterday!) to ask if I can get some help with my bags (I have a LOT of donated reading matter), she agrees.....once I give some more swabs. Some leaving present.

There's some faff with a taxi driver who has a disconcerting habit of turning full in his chair to talk to me on the way home, and constantly asking me how to get there (I dunno, you're the professional, why are you asking the drug-addled injured person?) but finally, blessedly, I'm home.

Next: Navigating real life on crutches, and what happens once the cast comes off.

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.

So, then it all went nips-up

FML. I try and be as positive as I can because negative stuff gets you nowhere, but I'm finding it really, really hard to be all smiles and cheer this week.

It was scrimmage on Monday night and we were playing in our teams for the grad bout on Saturday. It was interesting playing with new people and working to new tactics but I was really enjoying it. Everything was great, right up until the moment when, in the pack, a teammate tripped and accidentally took me down with her. I landed hard on my left arm, got back up and kept skating. It wasn't until after the jam that I was able to take stock and figure out that my wrist hurt. A LOT. I iced it, it hurt more. I played a few more jams (like an idiot), fell again, it hurt more. More ice, a trip to our president/nurse Sister Wreck'd Me (bitchin' name I've always thought) and she prescribed no more skating, strapping it up and going to the doc's for an X-ray.

I strapped it up and slept on it (not a good night, that), went to work the next day, then the local Medical centre. And got diagnosed with a fractured scaphoid bone. The scaphoid is one of the wee bones at the base of the hand, and it is a right bugger to heal. Apparently, failure to treat it properly can result in bone necrosis (nice) and major surgery. I asked about the chances of playing in the bout this Saturday and, well, did not get the response I'd hoped for. I've also sprained my left shoulder in the fall and that will require physio, though my doctor isn't sure how well that can work in conjunction with the fracture. I'm seeing a specialist next week, but could be in a cast for up to SIX GODDAMN WEEKS. So no bout, no training, and possibly missing the next bout too. Disappointed does not begin to cover it.

What's worse, school's break up next week for Easter and all my plans for the holidays just went up in smoke. Motorbike ride round northland? Gone. Surfing? Nuh-uh. Climbing? Nope. Going for long, leisurely gym sessions every day? Not bloody likely. I'm showering wearing a placcy bag so even going to the gym in the mornings has become a logistical nightmare. It's my birthday next week and I'd planned to go and shoot some pool with the peeps. I can't even play bloody pool now!

I've been so excited about these holidays. This term has been nothing short of nightmareish and I was looking forward to a break just for me, where I could do lots of fun stuff that I wanted to do. Now it's all gone.

I'll be honest, I've found it hard to keep on with wearing the Big Girl Panties on this one. I have cried out of sheer frustration (not to mention it's pretty bloody sore). I feel really low about it all, I really needed something to go my way for a change and now this.

Argh.