unironedman

It does occur to me that the title of this blog, whilst it trips off the tongue for me like the Lord’s Prayer or the first twenty elements of the periodic table, may not resonate with everyone in the same fashion. But then, not everyone grew up in a household where their Mum spent every possible minute of Wimbledon fortnight in front of the telly, whilst her two children were left like a pair of feral orphans to scavenge for food in the wild. Look, my Mum does actually read my blog, which is rather sweet, so I admit I may have exaggerated the opening paragraph here for dramatic effect.

For my UK readers, it probably doesn’t need explaining that it rains in England, and that the bulk of Wimbledon’s lawn tennis courts are still outdoors, where you would expect to find them. So when the heavens open, the umpire will suspend play and the ground staff burst into action and cover the courts. For my US readers, I don’t need to explain the original meaning of ‘rain check’.

As preambles go, this is one of the more obtuse.

On Tuesday morning, I fell off the roof of my house. As with most daft accidents, it was totally avoidable. I had noticed a leaky gutter, and as I was doing lots of add jobs around my Mam’s house, I had all the tools I needed to make the repair. So up I popped to have a look. I whipped off the end cap to clean it up and fetched the silicon gun. As I reached the top of the ladder, my tiny brain was distracted by the griminess of the solar panel, so I fetched an old towel to wipe it down. Then I noticed the Velux windows were a bit shabby too, so I hopped onto the roof and before you know it, I was plummeting to the ground.

(Alternative blog post headings, for the record, included such gems as ‘fall from grace’, ‘what goes up must come down’ and ‘Humpty Dumpty had a great fall’, amongst other absolute crackers.)

For a little bit of context, our house is technically a cottage, even though we have an upstairs. If I had the inclination, I would shuffle off to find a measuring tape and given you the exact height from the gutter to the gravel path below, but it’s about 3 metres. I regret several things in life, and one of the reasonably minor ones on the list is making the back of the house as high as I did. In hindsight, I could have taken 2 courses of blockwork off and still had room for doors. And that extra height also meant that I ended up with a 22° pitch to the rear (as opposed to the more standard 45° at the front). Subsequently, assisted by the recycled plastic slates, I am able to move about on the rear roof without any problems.

Normally…

Tuesday morning was, I think, the perfect blend of three things: a low Winter sun that had dried off the top half of the roof but not the bottom section, where I strayed (plus we had had a frost the night before), a poor choice of footwear (my old runners with grip that had long worn away), and, stupidity. Of the three, that last one played the largest part in my downfall.

I wouldn’t mind, but I was given a warning. Moments before I fell, I had slipped. And then I had a very clear image of me falling off the roof and not being able to do my final exams. That was my opportunity to retreat and fight another day. But I failed to heed the warning.

And so I slid down the roof backwards on all fours, knowing that there was nothing to grip on to, and aware that I was in trouble. As bad luck would have it, my feet caught in the gutter and rather than an unplanned and ungainly leap backwards, which would have been bad enough, I was rotated further backwards.

The upshot of this brief moment in time and undeniable physics is that I landed on my back, and to add insult to that injury, smacked my head squarely on the low stone rockery wall that demarcates the gravel path from the wilds of the garden.

I definitely made some horrible noises because Saoirse came out to see what was going on outside, as I’m sure it sounded like a murder was in progress. I was the dictionary-definition of ‘in a heap’. I had crawled a few feet before admitting defeat, and I couldn’t get up. She rang our neighbour, John, who I worked with in the fire service for many years, and who is now a trained EMT and spinologist. He held the fort until the ambulance arrived and I was loaded up onto a spinal board and vacuum mattress.

Saoirse came with me to the hospital and I was able to try the famous green whistle en route; just one of the meds I have been studying for my exams. It was rather odd to be on the trolley this time, instead of pushing it. And we went straight into the resus/exam room too – a place I would have been in on occasion with a cardiac arrest patient.

I was examined by a young (Polish, I believe) doctor who was excellent. I was sent off to get x-rays which confirmed a broken scaphoid (the classic wrist fracture) and a fracture of the L1 vertebra. The latter diagnosis put both Saoirse and I into rather gloomy form. A while later, I was sent for a CT scan.

The same young doctor reappeared and put a backslab cast on my wrist which will need to replaced with a full cast in a week or two. A couple of folk from orthopaedics arrived at the bedside and did a good job of reassuring us that the spinal fracture was not too serious and would heal with rest, and a back brace.

I was told I would be moved to a ward upstairs but as the evening wore on into the night, it seemed like I was on a long list of things that would probably not happen. Around midnight, a gent appeared to say he was moving me, but it was a false dawn; I was wheeled to another cubicle, this time into the corner of the ED, as they needed the space I was in for another patient.

I was in some pain, and was under strict orders not to get out of bed, or even sit up beyond what you might call semi-recumbent. Once I had been told they would be keeping me in overnight, Saoirse had quite rightly gone home. I think the rest of the time in ED was only made possible with my experience of ultra-running. Which is to say: sometimes you will find yourself in these situations and all you can do is grin and bear it, get the head down, and convince yourself you will come out the other side in one piece.

It is remarkable how much we take for granted about our own body, until it’s chipped away. The most mundane of tasks suddenly becomes quite the ordeal; plugging in a mobile phone charger when the socket is behind you on a wall, and you’re welded to a trolley. Being smug when you get not one but two pee bottles but then the horror of shifting in your temporary bed and knocking your spare bottle onto the ground, shortly after filling the first one. Hearing a faint clatter and realising it was your alert button abseiling to the floor below…

If you’ve spent time in an emergency room, you know it’s thinly-disguised organised chaos. Doctors and nurses mill about, patients cry out for help, paramedics deliver new stock… it’s not quite Dante-esque, but it’s not far off. And the backdrop to all these exhortations is the soporific beep-beep of the blood pressure machines which stand sentinel at each bedside. Oddly enough, all these machines are slowly drifting in and out of sync, in much the same as car indicators when you are stopped at a junction (or is that just me? It can’t be…). And so, in my somewhat pained and drug-addled state, I envisioned a brave new world where all these forlorn machines called to each other in a futile mating cry, never to be united, forever seeking a partner that would beep back in perfect unison.

Like I say, probably a bit stoned, to be honest…

The food was awful. I was hungry, as I had decided to toss myself off the roof before lunchtime, but landed at the hospital after official dinner hour (though in truth, as I was still being assessed and sent for various scans, they wouldn’t have fed me anyway). So it was tea and sandwiches for ‘dinner’, and truly tasteless they were. I tried the egg sandwiches for tea, and they were just as bad.

The night passed very slowly. To ensure you get no rest whatsoever, they put a large fluorescent light over your trolley and leave it on all night. Around two o’clock I asked for yet another bottle, to remove me from the drip, and get some more pain relief. The kind nurse managed the first two, but never returned with the drugs. I relented some hours later and hit the button once more. This time I was rewarded with a full saline drip and a bottle of paracetamol into the IV line for company.

The drugs emptied into my system, but time dripped away as slowly the saline from the bag…

Due to the cramped nature of the setting, you are an unwilling audience to your neighbours’ travails, regardless of whether you want to hear them or not. Ovarian cysts, non-stop vomiting, tonic-clonic seizures, cardiac complaints; I had a ringside seat to many poor folk in their darker hours. And of course, at times I was attempting diagnoses in my head as these medical dramas played out. All for nought, of course. But at least having some medical training was useful; for instance, when the first young orthopaedic doctor arrived with a student in tow, and he asked me how I was going, I gave him a brief but thorough overview of my condition and mechanism of injury.

He stopped briefly and looked at his student and said, ‘now that’s how you give someone your medical history!’

In a novel, ‘fitful’ is only ever used to describe sleep. Or, more accurately, poor sleep. And I have to admit, it’s about right. I am not going to search around for other alternatives because fitful sleep is exactly what I had. My new corner location had a window, so each time I admitted defeat and roused myself, the level of light outside was my crude barometer. Look, I had a mobile phone, so getting the time wasn’t an issue. I had just tried to avoid the constant checking which becomes ever-more tedious. And not helpful if you are trying to doze.

The morning came. And sometime around 11am, two physios arrived with a back brace and fitted me up. This required me to sit up on the end of the bed. It was quite the thing. I cannot be sure, but I don’t believe in all my 56 odd years on the planet that I had ever remained horizontal for that length of time. But all seemed well. In fact, it seemed something of a relief, both physically – but more crucially, psychologically – to be upright.

I was taken out onto the corridor for a test run. All seemed in order. And so, without much fuss, I was allowed to leave. Saoirse had taken all my old work clothes away the day before, including my old, natty runners (which she threw in the bin), and I was without shoes. But I was a free man, and didn’t care. I rang for a lift and shuffled off up to the main entrance in my socks to wait. My good friend and neighbour John was there again, with Saoirse, and soon I was home once more.

It’s now Thursday evening, and the first of February. That’s St. Brigid’s Day for Irish folk, and Imbolc, for those with an eye on the Celtic calendar. Imbolc celebrates the start of lambing season, and probably a whole lot more. And also, the start of Spring in the Irish mindset.

So I will take some positives from that.

The truth is, I was lucky this week. I could have come off this a lot, lot worse. When I have described my accident to a few people, they have all said how lucky I am. And I reply that luck, surely, is NOT falling off a roof. But I have to concede that they are right.

And so I have been given a warning, and also plenty of time to consider those events and take them on board. The first day of this month was supposed to see me setting off on a hundred mile challenge to raise money for a Dublin hospital. That will not happen now, and I do feel some guilt about that, not least as I had started to receive some donations.

The other thing I had to do today was defer my Connemara ultra marathon ’til next year. But most importantly, I have had to email the exam board and see if I can be placed on the next set of OSCE examinations, which will probably take place in May. So fingers crossed there will be some silver lining this week.

Everybody has been wonderful. Saoirse, of course, and the kids. And my Mam. And John. And all my friends. Not forgetting the wonderful folk at Connolly Hospital, and the paramedics that got me there in one piece. But now I owe it to them all to ensure I make a full recovery. And use this time wisely.