I write this stuff as therapy. And it works for me. Somehow getting the thoughts out of my head and into written words reduces the frequency of unwanted flashbacks. I like to think, and from feedback I know that to some extent these accounts help people who have experienced similar. And for those who have not, I hope you never do, but encourage empathy maybe for many who suffer in silence. However, these experiences are what have made me the person I now am, for that I am strangely fond, even grateful for having been selected by fate to join this exclusive club.
… My first memory of consciousness after the surgery was of a physical tugging at the foot of the hospital bed. My foot and leg were being ‘pulled at’ by someone or something. Forcing my incredibly heavy eyelids open, I saw a dimly lit and out of focus scene with people standing at the foot of the bed. I recognised only one of the faces, that of my father, the others were nurses and/or doctors, and the tugging I had felt was the attaching of weights via wires and pulleys to a steel pin that had been driven through my ankle and was protruding perhaps a couple of inches each side. This I later discovered is called ‘bone traction‘, …
Thankfully asleep for the drilling/insertion – “a steel pin that had been driven through my ankle and was protruding perhaps a couple of inches each side”Skeletal Traction
Bed bound for Months like this necessitates ingenuity
… the weights, some 9 pounds on one side and 5 pounds on the other were intended to keep the broken ends of the bones apart so as to encourage repair across the gap and hopefully, healing. That first conscious memory was just that, I suspect less than a minute and at approximately six pm. I had been out cold for the surgery since 12:45pm.
‘a kind and caring nurse would appear, only to give me the bad news that the last morphine shot was perhaps only 2 hours ago!’
The following three or four days are just random flashes of semi conscious memories. I was positioned very close to the nurses station or desk. A busy and noisy place to be on the ward but necessary I later learnt for close observation. The next few days of consciousness / unconsciousness, were punctuated by a cycle of morphine injections to the bum cheek or thigh, changing of blood transfusion bags and changing of blood soaked bed sheets.
Everything revolved around excruciating pain! Pain would wake me from my blissful sleep, pain that would get stronger as the last shot of morphine wore off. Having been awakened by the pain some assessment of my situation was possible. The bed was at a very steep incline, head low, feet high. There was a ‘cage’ over my legs, a metal frame which thankfully kept the sheets & blankets away from the wounds. A triangle shaped ‘handle’ hung from another attachment above my head. This was to be grabbed by hand(s) in order to pull myself up from lying flat. From another frame hung 2 bags of blood, one dripping constantly into the pipe plumbed into my left arm, the other on standby for when the first was empty to ensure a swift changeover. The nurses would fuss around this often and around other bottles suspended under the bed on the right which were draining blood and fluids from the wounds in my leg.
Another ritual I remember because of its pain inflicting consequences was the changing of the sheet upon which I was lying. That severed artery despite being expertly stitched back together in the operating theatre was somewhat stubborn in its willingness to heal, consequently it leaked copious amounts of blood through the sixty stitches keeping the flesh together covering the broken bones, onto the bed sheets.
The nurses would visit every half hour or so and draw with a Biro pen around the blood stain, comparing it with the previous half hours pen mark. They’d then remove the sheet, painfully manoeuvring me and my shattered leg in the process and replace with a clean sheet. I believe they even weighed the blood soaked sheet in order to work out the blood loss! Whatever, it was not my favourite procedure.
So, awake with the morphine wearing off and the pain ramping up, any thoughts of sleep were just fantasy! I would try to be tough and put off the pressing of the buzzer to summon a nurse as long as possible, but inevitably I would give in and buzz. Not being aware of the time (or being in a state to even understand a clock) a kind and caring nurse would appear, only to give me the bad news that the last morphine shot was perhaps only 2 hours ago! They were permitted only every 4 hours! Gulp! Another 2 hours of steadily increasing pain and discomfort until any chance of temporary relief! And that was the 4 hourly cycle, 24 hours, night and day for the next few days. Awakened by pain, increasing in severity for another 2 hours, the morphine shot (painful in itself), 1/2 hour to take effect, blissful feeling of the pain receding then wonderful sleep, for perhaps 1-1/2 hours, then awakened by the pain again. On and on it went!
Once again this is one of those situations that only someone who’s experienced similar could relate to or understand. When in severe pain, five minutes feels like an hour. It was worse at night, less going on in the ward for distraction, all in all, a very lonely negative experience that you have to find a coping strategy for.
I was 18 years old and all previous routine normality in my life had gone, changed, in a split second.
‘make sure your underpants are clean in case you have an accident‘
Thinking now about those first 3 or 4 days, I have no recollection of visitors, although I know I did have visitors, family, my girlfriend, not sure anybody else would have been allowed at that stage. I guess it was the morphine that has rendered those first days just a dim memory of the 4 hour pain-relief-sleep-pain cycle.
I do however quite clearly remember a delicate operation to remove the only item of clothing not cut off in the A&E department. There is a great Billy Connolly sketch (Link tba) in his stand up routine where he berates his mother for that old saying ‘make sure your underpants are clean in case you have an accident*’ he rants in his inimitable way how insignificant a pair of dirty pants might be when your body is smashed by some accident.
It’s a great sketch and reminds me of my own under pants and their eventual removal sometime in those first few days. I’d worn a pair of horrendous bright yellow Y-fronts with white piping. Because of the (a) the camber of the road and (b) the steep incline of my hospital bed, these had become saturated with blood, and they had to come off!
Now the Brook hospital was a teaching hospital with many student nurses, I was 18 going on 19 and many of those nurses were not a lot older than myself and two young nurses whom I got to know quite well and became friends with in the following months, were sent (possibly as a test for them, which happened a lot I learnt) to remove the offending pants in a as dignified way as possible, given that I could hardly move and in order to navigate the traction wires, pulleys and paraphernalia, the pants needed to be cut off. Now, in the state I was I couldn’t care less about my dignity and remember telling them politely so through gritted teeth and to get on with it whichever way was easiest for them, so out came the scissors and the jokey comments from me to ‘be careful with those’ and in a very slick and discrete manoeuvre off they came and on went what can only be described as a cross between a large cotton handkerchief and and those sexy bikini bottoms that tie up at the sides! The nurses had passed their test with flying colours and ticked another process off of their ‘skills sheet’ something I understood fully due to my own apprenticeship of which I was in the fourth of five years. The nurses had knowingly informed and advised me to get someone to modify a few pairs of my old pants, cutting through the seem of the right leg and stitching Velcro for easy removal / refitting. This was duly done by either my mother or girlfriend, I can’t remember which but they served me well in the months to come lying stuck in that bed, leg permanently attached by wires and via pulleys to those wretched traction weights, and the dreaded ‘Braun Frame’ (more of which later).
… What would be even more impressive would be to use excess wind generated electricity to produce Hydrogen, a green, clean gas that can use existing infrastructure. Even domestic home heating boilers can be converted to run on Hydrogen.
“Last year was a record breaker for the UK’s wind power industry.“
The idea of using excess wind energy to make hydrogen has sparked great interest, not least because governments are looking to move towards greener energy systems within the next 30 years, under the terms of the Paris climate agreement.
Hydrogen is predicted to be an important component in these systems and may be used in vehicles or in power plants. But for that to happen, production of the gas, which produces zero greenhouse gas emissions when burned, will need to dramatically increase in the coming decades.
So, I had this old Google Blogger account and I started posting stuff on there in about 2013 as a way of expanding on Twitter posts.
“I wanted to somehow keep the old posts that going by the feedback seemed to help others”
Around about that time I was struggling with the long term effects of injuries sustained in a motorcycle accident in 1979. I was also acutely aware of how the UK’s coalition government (elected in 2010) were hacking away the support that many thousands of disabled people depended upon just to live a basic, meagre and frugal existence.
Having been officially declared ‘disabled’ in 1979, I felt great empathy for those much worse than me who the Tory/LibDem government were hounding, removing vital social security, and worst of all vilifying as a “Look at those scroungers” political distraction, aided by sensational headlines perpetrated by their friends in the right wing press.
Anyway, my twitter account (Also BaffledApe) became very political, and a place to rally support and highlight the outrageous attack on some of the most vulnerable people in society by the Cameron/Duncan-Smith government and their “Yellow Tory” LibDem enablers.
I found that with around 1,300 followers, some of my posts particularly the personal ones about Chronic Pain, PTSD and the long term mental health issues related to major injury, had quite a reach and the positive feedback more than justified my ‘baring all’ as a form of personal therapy.
However, the twitter account is no more. Deleted in 2020 in despair at what twitter had become! Google tell me they will be taking their ‘Blogger’ platform down at some point, so I have been resurfacing here. I wanted to somehow keep the old posts that going by the feedback seemed to help others, and that is why they are appearing here.
Update: February 2021 – I’ve dipped my toe back into Twitter, how long for, we shall have to see.
“In a time of bogus conspiracy theories, the only real conspiracy is the conspiracy of silence. No one should be able to deny that Britain is in an economic and political crisis brought on by Brexit. Yet the government won’t talk about it. The opposition dare not mention it. The rightwing press won’t cover it. And broadcasters fear they will be damned as biased if they admit it. Rather than face reality, we live in an imaginary Britain, a land of make-believe, where the political class act out parts as if they are on a film set.”
“The Sun and much of the rightwing press would rather tell us fairy stories with happy-ever-after endings than admit their mistake in selling Brexit to their cozened readers.”
“The government, too, must try to keep us trapped in a joyless version of Disney World. It cannot tell the truth to its voters or, I suspect, to itself. I met Truss before we left the EU. She carried the secret smile of the zealot convinced they are in possession of a truth the uninitiated could never grasp. The glow of the convinced fanatic shone from her face, as if it was emitting a harsh, fluorescent light. The oldest question in journalism is: are they lying or are they genuinely that stupid? I am sure I am being too kind but my impression was that Truss was genuinely stupid enough to believe her Brexit promises.”
How Covid-19 is choking the planet – An alarming but informative data visualisation from the Straits Times, on the environmental impact of all the disposable medical masks being used during the pandemic.
Experts now estimate that each month, 129 billion face masks and 65 billion gloves are used and disposed of globally. With a surgical mask weighing roughly 3.5g, that would equate to 451,500 tonnes of masks a month and, when placed next to one another, cover an area roughly three times the size of Singapore, Conservationists and non-governmental organisations are increasingly concerned that a lot of the plastic waste, especially pandemic-related waste, is ending up in landfills, waterways and oceans, adding to the millions of tonnes of plastic waste already dumped into the world’s oceans every year.
Disposable public face masks, disposable swabs & swab kits, disposable syringes, disposable vaccine vials, disposable lab testing kit, NHS staff aprons, essential ward, ICU and other kit, PPE, oxygen masks, tubing etc, etc etc … Before Covid there was uproar over single use plastics … What Now?
From universal public outrage about Plastic Pollution in 2019 to a new ‘Plastic Pandemic’ to launch the 2020’s …
The UK’s hills and mountains could soon be the high point of green energy innovation after engineers revealed plans to turn them into ‘batteries’ to store renewable electricity in. And the best bit? According to the brains behind the initiative, it can be done without spoiling the scenery.
The shift towards clean energy isn’t just inspiring far-out innovations, it’s also saving lives. A report released this week estimated that by 2040, net zero-compliant policies would prevent millions of deaths annually from air pollution, inactivity and poor diet. “The quality of life for millions more will be improved through better health,” added the authors.
Borrowing technology from traditional hydropower plants, the project would use excess green energy to pump water uphill via underground pipes. The water would then be released and flow downhill over generating turbines, when demand for electricity was higher.
“Politicians have been my bed and board, my food and drink, my way of life. In a way I have lived off them, but in general I’m not particularly fond of them as a species. Many of them are blatantly ambitious, self-seeking, arrogant individuals who see themselves (incorrectly) as leaders. They love the power it can bring them and the flock of fawning sycophants who see them as their bread and butter and who follow them, picking up scraps. How extraordinary that they feel they have the answers to so many things and seek to persuade others to follow their lead. Does it never strike them they could be wrong?”
“The Times foreign correspondent Louis Heren once said we should approach all politicians by asking ‘Why is this lying bastard lying to me?‘
“Many politicians will say ‘To be honest’, which means ‘I’m going to lie through my teeth’. Politicians have the astounding arrogance to think themselves superior beings who have a duty to tell other citizens what to do, where to go and how to behave. They are not quite as bad as religious bigots but they are getting close”
… I love Scarfe’s unique drawing style and agree completely with his comments above. And this from a man who has been around the world’s politicians for decades!
Anyway, ‘Long Drawn Out Trip‘ is a great read, he’s been around, he’s seen a lot and he tells it like it is.
I’m a 60 year old man but I’ve always liked this album. At only 11 or so when it was released, I was more into Roxy Music, T-Rex, Bowie and Alice Cooper, it was later, 1977 or so when I really became aware of it through my girlfriend’s older sister.
I’ve carried this around since 1979, never written it down, it often flashes back to me in the middle of the night, I don’t know why I’m writing it down now, but I am. Perhaps my recent acceptance of the resulting Chronic Pain condition has fed my compulsion to share or just exorcise old demons
… It was 10:30am, Monday 20th August 1979. A bright, warm sunny summer’s morning. The the first day of my two week holiday away from work and I had set out on my pride and joy, my Honda CX500 motorbike. I stopped to pick up my girlfriend, we were childhood sweethearts, having lived opposite sides of the road. We’d known each other for many years. At age 14 she started a saturday job at the grocery shop where my mother worked, I was 16 and we became boyfriend & girlfriend. At the time of this account, we had been together for over two years, she had just turned 16 we planned to tour and camp for the next few days as the weather forecast was good. So we set off from Erith in Kent where we both lived a short distance apart en route to Lewisham where we planned to do some shopping for our trip to Hampshire the following day. At the junction of Wickham Street and Bellegrove Road, I turned right, and straight into the path of a white Renault 16! The driver didn’t have a chance to brake. Bang! The most horrendously loud, sudden and incredible violence. The only way I can describe that moment. My right leg taking the full impact, the bike’s petrol tank, foot peg frame and the cylinder castings forming a strange shaped anvil into which my leg was hammered by the bonnet of the car. I can conjure up that instant any time since, and it has an annoying habit of flashing back to me daily, every time I make any similar right turn manoeuvre when driving on the roads even now.
“watching my right leg fold and bend in places it shouldn’t”
Disorientated, confused and totally stunned, I dragged myself from under the bike now lying on the tarmac, i remember the image of my right leg inside my jeans and my white training shoe tracing the shape of the bike as if the foot was not connected but just hanging and the jeans leg still covering my leg bending and flowing as if there were nothing inside the jeans. My instinct was to find my girlfriend and see if she was ok. Desperately I clambered to stand, and I did, for a moment, before collapsing to the ground, watching my right leg fold and bend in places it shouldn’t, seeing this and feeling nothing, then crumpling to the ground, seeing the red stain seeping through my jeans and the pulsating squirt of blood hitting my white trainer that was facing the wrong way, the toe end now tucked under my knee. I struggle to get my helmet off and I fell back, lying my head on the tarmac, dazed, shocked and seeing only the sky above. It is at this point, 30, 40, 50 seconds after the impact that the pain hits, and hits it does! I will not attempt to describe the pain. It is pointless. Many times in the years since people have asked about the pain. My answer depends upon what I know of that person and their own history and experience of pain. I have concluded that if I am talking to someone who has not experienced that level of fully conscious destruction & mutilation to a major limb or limbs, then only a smile and change of subject will do. On the other hand, when speaking to someone who has experienced the same or similar mutilation to their body, there is never conversation relating to pain, just an unsaid and understanding empathy. The whole pain issue has haunted me ever since, especially when trying to relate to someone who simply does not and cannot understand. It is a very isolating condition and probably what is now considered PTSD.
“I was in a very bad way in terms of shock, and THAT PAIN!”
So, back to that time 50 or so seconds after the collision, lying absolutely still in the middle of a (usually) very busy road, traffic beginning to back up, looking up and then one, two three then more people begin to stand around me looking down. This ever increasing forrest of people surround me. Fate had dealt me a fortunate coincidence in the form of an off duty nurse who lived adjacent to the junction(1). This very kind and professional lady took charge and was the only member of the ‘human forrest’ not standing, she knelt beside me and. I do not recall any conversation with her or anyone else for that matter, I was in a very bad way in terms of shock, and THAT PAIN! My only question to the forrest of people was asking after my girlfriend. The nurse lady knelt at my side somewhere down near my lower legs. Another ‘kneeling’ person joined her, a man in shirt & tie. At some point here I attempted to lift my head in order to see my leg, the kneeling man and others encouraged me to lie back, to look away, the phrase …
“Nothing to See” – A similar injury to my own
“there’s nothing to see, lie back, you’ve broken your leg, don’t look, there’s nothing to see”.
The forrest of people was joined by my girlfriend, who was pillion on the bike & fortunately unhurt having been thrown clear. The girlfriend I mention in this piece later becomes my wife & mother of my eldest three children. There will be more about our life together in another post sometime.
The “there’s nothing to see” chorus I seem to remember coincided with her coming into view, the look on her face as she burst into tears having looked directly at my mangled leg told me all I needed to know. At some point here, due to the camber of the road I became aware of the wet road on this sunny dry day, the wet was of course my own blood running down the camber of the road and past my head. I noticed the kneeling shirt & tie man helping the nurse, his hands, forearms and shirt covered in blood. The nurse aided by this man and possibly some others carried out the necessary but absolutely agonising procedure of straightening the leg, again, unless you have experienced similar there is no point me trying to explain.
“Remember this is 1979, ambulances are fairly basic, no paramedics or doctors on board, just a driver & assistant, first aiders basically”
I have absolutely no idea as I write this of how much time has elapsed since the collision and subsequent blocking of a busy road by my mangled and bleeding body. The collision was approximately 10:30am, it may now be 10:45, I’m aware of some activity behind my head. A large truck was being guided past, inching slowly, its huge wheels seemed way too close to my head as I recall, much shouting and delicate guiding of said huge truck past the accident scene. I guess I will never find out what important journey justified such a delicate & risky manoeuvre. I am now aware that some of the human forrest are wearing police uniforms, notepads in hands, asking questions. I remember thinking to myself ‘why am I conscious? This is unbearable, they pass out in the films’. Other uniforms appear, the ambulance people. Remember this is 1979, ambulances are fairly basic, no paramedics or doctors on board, just a driver & assistant, first aiders basically. They proceed to take over from the lovely nurse(1), I think I thanked her profusely and the shirt & tie man also who was consoling my still sobbing girlfriend, apologising for his ruined shirt etc. The ambulance driver and mate start messing about with my leg, more agonising movements as they lift the leg and place it in an inflatable splint, again any attempts by me to see what is going on we’re met with “no, don’t look there’s nothing to see”! But there was plenty to feel. I asked if I could have anything for the pain, no sorry was the reply, you are going to need to go to the operating theatre when we get you to the hospital, we can’t give you any drugs because of the anaesthetic they will be giving you. You can have some gas and air in the ambulance they added. So at this point, not only quite devastating denial of pain relief but also the first mention of surgery. The realisation that this is genuinely serious hitting me now, not just me perhaps not coping too well, operating theatre and soon. The ambulance men had now very unpleasantly inflated the ‘splint’ and were now assembling a contraption around me, it was a kind of split stretcher, with tapered wedge like halves that were slid under me from each side, again very uncomfortable as any movement at all was. The stretcher was locked together with various clicks and clunks, and then I was lifted onto an adjacent wheeled stretcher and painfully manoeuvred to the open ambulance doors. The forest of people had now either disappeared or my full attention had been drawn to the approaching insides of the ambulance. A frightening sight (Years later the sight of an ambulance, lights flashing and especially the back doors open, brought me out in a cold sweat), all those bits and pieces of medical equipment, pipes gauges etc, etc. The trolley thing raised with an agonising jolt, then slid me and the split stretcher into the ambulance. My girlfriend climbed in still crying & in shock herself, I do not recall any conversation with her. She was too young to put on a brave face and attempt to comfort me, she was horrified at what she’d seen and absolutely petrified at the thought of what was going to happen to me. The ambulance began its short but bumpy thus incredibly painful journey to the Brook General Hospital.
“it did nothing for me in terms of pain relief, it just added another negative feeling”
I was 18, I was frightened, I’d been in intolerable pain for more than half an hour, and I’m not ashamed to say that I was pleading for pain relief. The ambulance man handed me the mouthpiece of the gas & air, this I grasped and sucked on manically, too manically apparently, it did nothing for the pain but it made my head spin and buzz in a way I’ve thankfully never experienced since. It was not a pleasant experience as many say it is, it did nothing for me in terms of pain relief, it just added another negative feeling I could well do without! During my maniacal session with the gas and air, the ambulance man with us in the back proceeded to mess about with my leg again! This time to position a contraption that I got a better look at later in the A & E department. It looked like a long metallic box and it’s positioning was agony.
“it was a contraption for collecting blood. My blood, lots of it”
None too soon the agonisingly bumpy ride came to a halt, doors opened, bumpy trolley, open air, those old swing doors bumped painfully open by the feet end of my trolley (none of those automatic doors back then), the still sobbing girlfriend taken aside by a nurse and the nightmarish scenario of the fluorescent ceiling strip lights sliding past above. I say nightmarish because I was totally overcome by fear at this point, no control over my body, my destination, my fate. I was really scared at what lie ahead. I believe that it was at this point a feeling, a kind of 6th sense, something I experienced just once more a little later and thankfully never since. Difficult to describe a real dread. Now due to some extreme wet weather recently, the normal A & E department was out of action, there was a temporary makeshift emergency department where the usual separation of serious / less serious incoming emergencies were for a time at least, lumped in together. I mention this as I later learned this fact when recovering for weeks on the ward, but I did feel for the other patients who were sitting waiting just beyond the knee high curtains hurriedly drawn around my trolley bed thingy. I was lifted bodily by the porters and slid over on the split stretcher and ‘metal box device’ sideways onto another bed. It was here that I discovered the function of the ‘metal box’, it was a contraption for collecting blood. My blood, lots of it, as I was moved it spilt it’s contents onto the floor, the first sound of blood splattering onto the shiny hospital flooring, what a nightmare for those poor people sitting close by waiting to be seen with their minor injuries!
“Every new professional I saw I asked (pleaded) for pain relief”
Semi organised chaos prevailed from this point on. The porters & ambulance men departed and a gaggle of nurses uniforms & white coats fussed around me, cutting off my clothes, shoes everything except underpants. Blood pressure cuff on on one arm, and the other (left) arm held out straight by two male nurses, (meaningless at the time) blood pressure readings were being called out & the two male nurses commanded me to make fists etc, there was a sense of professional panic or perhaps just haste and I was aware that my leg seemed to be less of a priority than the plans they had for my left arm! On went a tourniquet, one of the male nurses started tapping, banging then thumping my inner arm at the elbow, there was an urgency and the nurse taking blood pressure continued to call out numbers that meant nothing to me but their professional concern and tell tale glances to each other conveyed that there was a problem to be sorted. I later learned that this initial problem was quite a simple, basic but potentially life threatening problem, I was bleeding to death. The artery in my lower leg had been severed by the broken bones on their way out through my leg and into the open air, I had lost so much blood (which is confirmed by the falling blood pressure) that my veins had collapsed and therefore getting a ‘line’ in was very difficult. Thankfully, those doctors & nurses in A & E struggled to find a vein in my arm, they cared, they fought hard and they re-assured the frightened 18 year old boy lying before them. More doctors appeared and peered at my leg, there seemed to be a succession of doctors appearing, looking, whispering to each other and more than once asked me what exactly had happened? Had my leg been ‘run over’? All I could say was that I didn’t think so but didn’t really know either! Everyone new I saw I asked (pleaded) for pain relief, no sorry, was always the answer due to imminent surgery. About now the porters reappeared, painfully & messily (another huge splash of blood onto the floor) as the blood collecting contraption was moved with me, the stretcher and now bags of blood being transfused into my arm all en-route for x-rays. So I was on the move, fluorescent lights passing by again on the ceiling, me the porters and a young nurse escort who held my hand, explained and reassured me from this point onwards. The x-rays were a horrendous ordeal, those poor radiographers had the delicate & very messy job of x-raying my mangled leg. I was so grateful to the young nurse who held my hand and joked to take my mind off of the horrendously painful procedure. Often think of her and just by her manner, words and genuine caring, she helped so much. The 18 year old me in 1979 owes much to these professional people.
severed Tibialis Anterior ‘lower leg muscle’, dislocated ankle and fractures to the knee)
The image below shows a comminuted fracture (basically shattered into many pieces) My own injuries were complicated by being ‘Open Comminuted’ where the shattered bones were exposed having been forced out through the flesh and muscle. Many months later I would require further major surgery for ‘Bone Grafting’ (Basically replacing the missing pieces with bone removed from my pelvis) … this was due to ‘delayed union’ and in my case ‘non union’ due to all the soft tissue damage which compromised blood supply to the bone.
The bags of blood were in duplicate. As one drained it’s contents into my arm the valve on the other would be opened and the empty bag replaced with another full bag. The blood capture contraption was failing miserably and the x-ray table, plates & floor were getting covered, the now familiar ‘splash’ on the floor was heard again in the x-ray room. I learned later that the successful start of the blood transfusion is not in itself a life saving happy ending. In my case, the blood was haemorrhaging from my severed artery faster than the top up from the transfusion bags. I was still bleeding to death basically. Of course I didn’t know this at the time, or did I? I’ve wondered if it would be possible to articulate the next part of this account. It may be the reason I’ve felt compelled to write it all down. Somewhere about now in the timeline of this few hours on that Monday morning/afternoon, I became overcome by a feeling I’d never experienced before or since. A real creeping feeling of dread. I guess it is a primeval instinct or awareness of hopelessness. I believe at this point, something happened within my mind, brain, consciousness, whatever that is. I became aware that there was a real, unsaid, instinctive realisation that I might not survive. But no panic or hysteria, I was too weak perhaps for that, but I had lost so much blood (I learned later) I was in mortal danger now. I could literally feel the life draining from me. An awful feeling that perhaps like the pain cannot be communicated to anyone who has not been in that same situation. I remember thinking that this was a crazy way to go, a road traffic accident, how pointless, ridiculous, what a waste, only a couple of hours earlier I had routinely closed my front door behind me and set off like any other day. But that feeling, that feeling of indescribable dread and hopelessness, I couldn’t move, I just lay there, the life draining out of me with absolutely no control over my destiny whatsoever. Perhaps this is why to this day I love and respect those people who dedicate their lives to helping others. I have absolutely no time for those who, I suspect with no experience themselves, knock and disrespect the NHS and it’s staff. They simply have no idea, without those wonderful people I would have died and from something as ‘comical’ in some contexts as a Broken Leg. Anyway, whatever that instinctive feeling or sense was, I would not wish it on anyone.
The medical talk around me now was of imminent transfer to the operating theatre. They had looked, they had assessed, seen the x-rays of the internal damage not obvious, and the gory external protruding bones, muscle, flesh and blood. The porters re-appear and proceeded to take me and an escort of nurses, doctors to the theatre. In the anaesthetic room I was parked between benches and shelves of equipment, the double doors with their circular ‘port hole’ type glass windows waiting closed. A man approached in full surgeons gear, with his assistant. He introduced himself as Mr Ono, he was very jolly and down to earth, he proceeded to explain that he was going to ‘clean up’ the ends of the broken bones and put my smashed leg back together. In a more serious tone he told me that he could not ‘promise’ anything, but he would do his best. At least once more he repeated ‘No Promises’. I’m not sure that I really understood what he meant by that at the time, later I realised he meant that I may or may not wake up with two legs, but I do know that despite that impossible to describe feeling of dread I’ve already mentioned, I never once doubted that I would wake up (Was that the Fight for life of which people speak?). Things happened very quickly from here, still conscious I was manoeuvred into the theatre and onto the hard and very narrow ‘table’ everyone here hatted, masked and gloved with only eyes showing, the anaesthetist was fussing around and I was petrified. It is now approximately 12:45, the last two and a bit hours had been a living nightmare for me. As the longed for relief from the pain, the tension, fear and dread all all began to fade into a blissful pain free sleep, the 18 year old boy drifted off into the dark unconsciousness to awake several hours later a physically, emotionally and mentally changed man.
I write this stuff as therapy. And it works for me. Somehow getting the thoughts out of my head and into written words reduces the frequency of unwanted flashbacks. I like to think, and from feedback I know that to some extent these accounts help people who have experienced similar. And for those who have not, I hope you never do but encourage empathy maybe for many who suffer in silence. However, these experiences are what have made me the person I now am, for that I am strangely fond, even grateful for having selected by fate to join this exclusive club.
There will be more of this story and my recovery. Life threatening shock. Months in hospital. Bone grafting, learning to walk again and the psychological effects.
(1) – belated thank you to the neighbour/nurse. was it you? Here: maps / junction, and the shirt & tie man.
(2) – an update March 2025, I get comments saying that I might be exagerating my injuries and point out that I use an image other than my actual injury. Well, in 1979 we didn’t all carry cameras in our pockets, and quite frankly, if I did, I was in no state of mind to consider or request a picture to be taken!
All I can do in response is post pictures of my leg now, 46 years later! No doubt the ‘fake’ call will come once again but hey ho 😉
Image below captured on a garden ‘Trail Cam’ (see post relating to that hobby) the barely visible scars now ¡¡
“Helmed in elegant and exhilarating style by Spike Lee, David Byrne’s American Utopia is a concert film that doubles as a joyously cathartic celebration.”[12]
If like me you love the 1984 Stop Making Sense concert film, I think you’ll like this. How do you top possibly the best live concert film ever? Do things differently, completely different. Unlike any other live gig, with a very nice nod to its 1984 predecessor.
Baffled Ape 
