tchalikias
Super Freak
I couldn't find a thread dedicated to personal injuries and recovery. So here goes my story, in perhaps unneeded detail (I have to vent somewhere!).
About a month ago, I slipped and fell in the shower, as I was getting ready for work. I had cleaned the shower the night before, and hadn't washed away all the detergent properly. It was basically an accident waiting to happen.
The fall was hard and, in retrospect, kinda slap-sticky, in that I tried holding on to something and glided about for a while until I fell. My Star Trek shower curtain sadly proved no match for my weight. The pain immediately after was horrible. But at least I hadn't hit my head.
I knew something was wrong when I tried moving my right leg and the worst pain I'd felt shot up through me. I'd landed on my thigh, right on the lip of the shower. I live alone, so I knew I needed to get to a phone and call someone for help.
That took two hours. I tried standing up a couple of times, but I kept slipping, since my injured leg couldn't support weight. So after a while, I just sat in the shower, turned on the hot water and planned a strategy. At first I just thought my best bet was calling for help through the bathroom window, hoping another tenant would hear me. But that would take too long.
After making sure there was no soap or anything slippery in the shower, I managed to stand up. Getting out of the shower meant having to drag my non-functioning right leg over the shower lip (which is were I hit when I fell). I don't remember exactly how I did it, I was in a lot of pain, but once I managed to crawl out of the bathroom (still wet and with soap in my hair), I knew that getting to the living room, where my phone was, would require a lever of sorts.
Thankfully, the mop and bucket were outside the bathroom, from the cleaning the night before. So I used the mop stick as a lever to push myself along the floor, until I could grab something to pull against. I used a towel between me and the floor. At this point, I feared I would faint from the pain. I'd never been injured before, plus I'm squeamish about these sorts of things, so at first I thought I was just super scared and once I could sit on my couch I could pull it together and realize it was just a bad bruise or something.
An hour later, I'd managed to reach my phone by the sofa and call for help. I was freezing by then, so my couch comforter was a godsend. Turns out I'd managed to break my hip - specifically, it was an intertrochanteric fracture of the femur, up where it meets the hip bone.
Thankfully my parents have a spare set of keys to my apartment so I didn't have to crawl to the door to open up for the EMTs (which itself would have taken quite some time to force open if it was necessary).
By this time I was in constant pain, even without moving. I got to the hospital via ambulance, was x-rayed (worst part of the hospital stay, being asked to turn over so that the machine can take a clear shot of the injury) and prepped for surgery. I now have a gamma nail in my right femur, along with a couple of screws. I was discharged three excruciatingly long days later.
Basically it feels as if 3 or more months have passed since. I feel better every day, and I can walk around with crutches. But its the psychological aspect of the whole thing that is tough to deal with. Living at my parents' house again, needing assistance for everyday tasks, doing physio exercises, spending a lot of time doing nothing... The loss of autonomy, it sucks.
On the other hand, its a great opportunity for perusing forums, ebay auctions, even discovering collectibles you never knew existed... So there's that. The bone is healing nicely, the doctor says, so I hope that by new year's I'll be able to limp around without crutches.
The doctor was surprised with my injury - these types of fractures are common among the elderly, and I'm 33 years old. Apparently, during my fall, I twisted my thigh before it struck the ground, thus fracturing it.
So this was my first injury, hospital stay, surgery etc. Quite scary at first, and much more painful than I thought it'd be. Growing up on pop culture you think that a broken bone is something quite common and not especially debilitating, but it is.
What are your personal injury stories?
About a month ago, I slipped and fell in the shower, as I was getting ready for work. I had cleaned the shower the night before, and hadn't washed away all the detergent properly. It was basically an accident waiting to happen.
The fall was hard and, in retrospect, kinda slap-sticky, in that I tried holding on to something and glided about for a while until I fell. My Star Trek shower curtain sadly proved no match for my weight. The pain immediately after was horrible. But at least I hadn't hit my head.
I knew something was wrong when I tried moving my right leg and the worst pain I'd felt shot up through me. I'd landed on my thigh, right on the lip of the shower. I live alone, so I knew I needed to get to a phone and call someone for help.
That took two hours. I tried standing up a couple of times, but I kept slipping, since my injured leg couldn't support weight. So after a while, I just sat in the shower, turned on the hot water and planned a strategy. At first I just thought my best bet was calling for help through the bathroom window, hoping another tenant would hear me. But that would take too long.
After making sure there was no soap or anything slippery in the shower, I managed to stand up. Getting out of the shower meant having to drag my non-functioning right leg over the shower lip (which is were I hit when I fell). I don't remember exactly how I did it, I was in a lot of pain, but once I managed to crawl out of the bathroom (still wet and with soap in my hair), I knew that getting to the living room, where my phone was, would require a lever of sorts.
Thankfully, the mop and bucket were outside the bathroom, from the cleaning the night before. So I used the mop stick as a lever to push myself along the floor, until I could grab something to pull against. I used a towel between me and the floor. At this point, I feared I would faint from the pain. I'd never been injured before, plus I'm squeamish about these sorts of things, so at first I thought I was just super scared and once I could sit on my couch I could pull it together and realize it was just a bad bruise or something.
An hour later, I'd managed to reach my phone by the sofa and call for help. I was freezing by then, so my couch comforter was a godsend. Turns out I'd managed to break my hip - specifically, it was an intertrochanteric fracture of the femur, up where it meets the hip bone.
Thankfully my parents have a spare set of keys to my apartment so I didn't have to crawl to the door to open up for the EMTs (which itself would have taken quite some time to force open if it was necessary).
By this time I was in constant pain, even without moving. I got to the hospital via ambulance, was x-rayed (worst part of the hospital stay, being asked to turn over so that the machine can take a clear shot of the injury) and prepped for surgery. I now have a gamma nail in my right femur, along with a couple of screws. I was discharged three excruciatingly long days later.
Basically it feels as if 3 or more months have passed since. I feel better every day, and I can walk around with crutches. But its the psychological aspect of the whole thing that is tough to deal with. Living at my parents' house again, needing assistance for everyday tasks, doing physio exercises, spending a lot of time doing nothing... The loss of autonomy, it sucks.
On the other hand, its a great opportunity for perusing forums, ebay auctions, even discovering collectibles you never knew existed... So there's that. The bone is healing nicely, the doctor says, so I hope that by new year's I'll be able to limp around without crutches.
The doctor was surprised with my injury - these types of fractures are common among the elderly, and I'm 33 years old. Apparently, during my fall, I twisted my thigh before it struck the ground, thus fracturing it.
So this was my first injury, hospital stay, surgery etc. Quite scary at first, and much more painful than I thought it'd be. Growing up on pop culture you think that a broken bone is something quite common and not especially debilitating, but it is.
What are your personal injury stories?
Nothing broke, but it hurt. 
