The display for Bognor library we’d been working on as part of Home Ed Book Club had been put up ready for the launch of the Summer Reading Game. We wanted to visit to see it all up in all it’s glory anyway so when a plea went out for any of the children involved to go along on Tuesday at 1pm as the local paper were attending to take pictures and do a short article we decided to combine the two (always up for more media opportunities 😉 ).
So Davies, Scarlett and I headed over to Bognor, parked up at the park near the library and had a picnic lunch there. I had posted up that we would be doing so if anyone wanted to join us but no one arrived so D&S played in the wooded areas and I read my book in the sunshine – very nice :).
We walked through the park to the library and had a chat with the other three families who had come along, were positioned infront of the display in various poses by the photographer and I had a quick catch up chat with Jody, who used to work at Lancing and moved across to Bognor last year. Very impressed that he remembered the kids names 🙂 . We left there and headed back to Worthing for swimming lessons.
I can’t even remember now why I decided not to swim that afternoon, I think it might have been simply to save on leaving wet washing hanging around for 2 weeks but it proved to be a rather foolish decision 🙁 I sent Davies and Scarlett to their respective changing rooms and went to the spectators area. The swimming pool itself is at ground level but there are three flights of about 15 concrete steps up the front of the building with the top level of the car park, the reception and a gym area all upstairs with a tiered spectators seating area back down to pool level again. I have fallen on the steps / chairs before and made a fool of myself so I really should exercise more caution, but weak ankles, silly shoes, general carelessness and clumsiness along with a knack of never really learning by past mistakes meant I did it again, this time with even more spectacular results 🙁 The steps themselves are pretty steep, concrete ones and the area with chairs is more steps, twice the depth of the steps with wooden cinema style folding up chairs. I attempted to negotiate one of these double steps, got one of my shoes (flip flop style ones) snagged on a chair which tripped me up, the shoe broke and my full weight ended up on the foot / ankle I had put first, which crumpled beneath me, my bag of towels and the force of gravity coming down onto the concrete. It felt like the whole swimming pool stopped to look although I suspect it was merely the two women just infront of me who turned with gasps to ask if I was okay. I’d already identified some damage done but for someone so attention seeking I am notoriously bad at admitting I need help when in pain and just wanted everyone to stop looking at me so I could assess the damage privately. I assured them I was fine and just needed to catch my breath back before sitting for a couple of minutes on the floor breathing heavily and then hauling myself onto a chair.
My ankle / foot was already swelling up, my shoe was broken and I knew the chances of being able to get down the steps outside and drive home were pretty slim. I sat holding it all together until Davies appeared and I whispered to him what had happened. He was an utter star, admitting later he’d been really scared. He asked me what he should do, offered to go and get dressed again, go and get help / whatever. By that time I was starting to fret about where Scarlett had got to as her lesson was already about to start and she was off in the changing room alone. I sent Davies back to find her, he came back with her (still not sure just which shiny thing had caught her eye and distracted her) and I sent her to her lesson. Davies and I pondered what to do and I rang Ady. At the sound of his voice I dissolved into tears. He insisted I go and ask for a first aider and get some help, waving aside my ‘but I feel really stupid’ whinge with a tut and telling me to just go and get a bloody ice pack! I left Davies there as he was already changed into swimming trunks and hobbled out to reception.
I explained to the receptionist that I had fallen on the stairs and could she get me an ice pack, she paged a first aider, who took ages to come and then wanted to write his incident report and check the steps weren’t slippery or wet first (I rather asserted myself again at that point and asked for the ice pack first please!). I assured him it was my clumsiness rather than any liability on their part, filled in my details for his form and he bound it up for me with a bandage. Davies reappeared, now dressed again, looking very worried as I’d been gone about 10 minutes and he was fretting I’d gone off in an ambulance or something. He helped me back to the spectators area, got changed again and collected Tarly from her lesson and went to his. Tarly is the worst possible child to have around a sensitive body part as it is like a magnet to her treading on it but I managed to mostly contain her by yelping ‘mind my ankle!’ approximately every 30 seconds.
I rang Ady who said he was leaving work but wouldn’t be there before the kids lessons finished so I rang my Dad to ask him to meet us at the pool and take us home in my car and Ady would drop him off to collect his van later. I also knew I’d need help getting down the outside stairs. I took the bandage off as it was still swelling and by now was far too tight and then my Mum arrived, having been rung by my Dad and just a 10 minute walk away from the swimming pool at work. Davies finished his lesson and got dressed, then we all hung about at the top of the outside steps waiting for my Dad to arrive. By the time we’d negotiated those Ady was also there so now we had four adults, four cars, two children and one of those chicken, fox, grain puzzles. Added to this the ankle was still swelling and getting ever more painful rather than easing. If we’d not been due to drive to Scotland the following day I may well have left it and gone home for a soak in the bath, some painkillers and an ice pack but worried about being away from home with a possibly broken bone unattended to I was persuaded by my Mum to go to hospital instead.
So Ady took Davies and Scarlett home in his car, Dad took Mum and I to the hospital in my car before going back to our house for Ady to bring him back to the swimming pool to collect his van and once I was safely installed in the waiting room at A&E Mum walked back to the pool for her car ready to bring me home in. Poor Ady cooked the kids tea and then fretted about packing the car up ready for the holiday – a job we’d been supposed to be doing together as it’s not his strong point (he has many, many qualities but knowing what to pack, where to pack it and how to put it up once we arrive is not one of them).
A&E have a system of tiered waiting where you are bumped down the list by new arrivals if they are deemed more emergencyish than you. Children are bumped up the list. I was (rightly) considered a minor case and told it would be at least 2 hours. I had no shoes, was cold from the air con, starving hungry, in lots of pain and equally fretting about the holiday. Mum did a fine job of talking about all sorts of things to fill the silence – in fact it was one of her finest parenting moments really. It ended up being more like 3 hours with a rather frustrating wait in the middle – I’d assumed once diagnosed treatment would follow but you returned to the waiting list again and could be bumped back down by new arrivals.
The A&E experience was predictably depressing, old people there alone, bleeding and confused, a few rowdy probably self-inflicted injured as the evening wore on, a young, very pregnant girl who kept going outside for a smoke and not nearly enough staff to deal with us all. The doctors and nurses were all fantastic; friendly, professional and apologetic. NHS always seems to me to be in turn amazing and wonderful but dire and inefficient. Amusingly it was one of the world cup football matches that night and it was being shown on a TV in the waiting room, eyed by a large amount of the people waiting and every so often a collective groan or gasp or ‘oooh’ would echo round the room which seemed funny given the low level of such noises happening there anyway from injured people. 😆
Having hobbled about in immense pain (really should have accepted the offer of a wheelchair, will I ever learn?) I was prodded, X-rayed and eventually told I had cracked my ankle bone. This is better than an actual break I was told as it won’t need a cast and should knit back together perfectly, better than torn ligaments as they can’t really be treated and remain forever weak but nontheless very painful and likely to take a long time to heal. I was told the treatment is fourfold – elevation, pain relief, cold and exercise. The doctor I saw was lovely and said he had done almost the identical injury himself last year and as a result changed the advice he gave from ‘painful for about 2 weeks’ to ‘ very painful for 2 weeks, quite painful for 4-6 weeks, a bit painful for several months and eventually better after about a year’. He gave me prescription painkillers and crutches, told me it would be agony in the morning, really bad the day after that but should get incrementally better each day onwards, strapping it up was my choice if I felt it helped but was no longer something they did as a matter of course.
So after a (almost literal) crash course in using crutches I learnt very quickly that a) they are not as easy as they look and I had always imagined b) A&E is the very best place to have a first go on them as you appear to be in danger of a repeat injury to the other ankle as a result of the crutches unless you are very careful 😆
Back home Ady had done a fine job of starting the packing up of the car so I gobbled some painkillers, had a much needed glass of wine, instructed Davies and Scarlett to bring me various clothes and packed them, struggled to get in and out of the bath, ate a very late dinner and went to bed where the combined effects of my two types of painkiller, wine and tiredness cocktail meant I fell asleep and slept through til morning.