Snap

Oddly shaped elbow

Last Friday was not a good day! The weather had been very cold all week and the inevitable snow had started to fall at dinnertime. It cleared from the main roads very quickly and I didn't feel at all at risk on my journey home. I normally travel down a small and interestingly named road called "Blue Butts" which is an old Yorkshire flagged horse cart road at the bottom of my street. The snow had not cleared on this road and the few vehicles that had been down had packed it into a thick layer of ice. I slowed right down, almost to a complete stop.
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My wheel slipped so quickly that I don't really remember going down. I lay there on the road thinking to myself, "Mmm, that hurts..." When I checked my helmet later, it had taken a fair whack on the side, enough I suspect to have caused some damage in its own right if I hadn't had it on.

It was only a hundred yards to my house so I managed to limp home and ring my wife from the sofa. She didn't really think there was a problem until she got in and saw my arm!

We drove to Pinderfields A&E department, not looking forward to the experience as the hospital trust had been slated in the press recently.

I was sent for an xray very quickly and a male nurse saw me soon after that. The xray showed an "anterior displacement of the right olecranon", which basically means that the "funny bone" part of the elbow had snapped off. I've tried to find a similar xray image but all I have found is that it is a common break and that none of them are quite as displaced as mine. The nurses reaction was an immediate "this will need an operation" which was when the full implications started to hit home - up to that point, I had been thinking how I would ride my bike to work!

Two other nurses came and they put my arm in pot, almost straight and with a C shaped section to make it easier to remove and allow for swelling.

A cat shaped pot!

Next, I had to wait for the doctor to arrive, which took about 75 minutes. We had arrived at casualty at just the right time on a busy, snowy, Friday night and we later found out that they had 955 patients that night. We only saw half a dozen whilst we were waiting.

The doctor discussed the operation and I signed the consent form as best as I could. She said they would ring on Saturday and sent me home.

As it turned out, they couldn't fit me in until Sunday, but even that was literally a dress rehearsal where they got me all robed up before telling me that some more serious cases had come in and I was sent home again.

Getting to hospital for 7:30am on the Monday was a serious challenge. There had been a heavy snowfall and we were the first car to go down the street. Tracy doesn't like driving in slippery conditions so I had to get the car out onto the more open busy roads.

The Monday experience of Pinderfields shows just how well organised the system runs. The car park and paths had already been cleared of snow and the hospital was already busy when we got there. I was booked into a day ward which had about forty patients in the waiting room. Because of the icy conditions, I didn't fancy my chances of being "done" so I settled in for a long wait. I was third on the list and they decided to only do two patients - but number two hadn't arrived yet so there was hope! They called me in just as she arrived so it was a very close call!
Its taken me forever to write this blog post, and I'm only half way there! Part two will have to wait until tomorrow!