Musings from my hospital bed (1)

The whole of 2022, and first part of this year had been utterly brilliant: in life, in career. I was finally doing the work I was meant to be doing, that I had sacrificed and studied so much for and was passionately engaged in. It was full, busy, engaging, bringing me and many others so much joy and learning. But, after sticking my neck out on an important issue, I clashed with a narcissist, was punished and it ruined the test of 2023.

For the time being, let's just park that: it was an unnecessarily muddy drama, rather like a Latin American telenovela based on Franz Kafka's Trial and, when looking through that lens, it's hard not to see my ensuing accident as a metaphor, the final plot point of a dystopian nightmare.

And, at the same time, how trivial it all was.

On 16 November, exactly 10 months since things went rogue, I accidentally slipped on some mud in a side street (while discussing my sh*t year) and completely lost balance, because the scaffolding I'd reached out for was covered by a net, leaving me with nothing to hold on to. Without support, I dived head-first into concrete... fracturing my C1 with damage to C2.

To save you a trip to Dr. Google, I'll summarise: it's a very serious injury, the first two vertebra at top of the spine hold the skull, and control all movement - they are the atlas and axis -our ability to nod the head up/down, rotate to the sides, and on the z, as well as holding the spinal cord, and pathways to the rest of the body. An injury in this area leads to one of 3 outcomes: death, paralysis, or healing & partial to full recovery.

Obviously, I was luckily spared outcomes 1 & 2, as here I am lying, typing upside down with my phone fixed to a gooseneck device pinned to a tray over my hospital bed. My fracture in C1 is clean, but C2 on is a bit messy with torn ligaments and some very unhappily inflamed nerves (think dagger to the side of my neck, but also think fire dagger whenever it's actually pissed off, or the morphine and gabapentin have worn off).

However, all my limbs are responding perfectly + I would even say my arms are getting quite the workout. At first I was stuck in an Aspen collar - neck brace - for 12 days while I very slowly learned how to roll from side to side by holding onto the bars to support the rest of my body's weight - so I could be regularly bathed, or have my diaper changed, or to pull myself up the bed whenever I had slid down it. These aren't small feats, they took days to learn. However, the multiple attempts to sit me up past 45° consistently failed: my neck simply cannot hold the weight of my head.

Therefore, this weekTuesday, they put me in a Halo, which is a device meant to do the heavy lifting my neck would normally do, and it is screwed into my skull with 4 pins. After a few days of being nauseous - because it feels like I am stuck on a rollercoaster, with even the slightest movements resulting in chaging pressure levels and new pains - but I am getting stronger. Today, I finally sat up to 90° for the first time independently - it was for less than a minute, but still I did it.

At first, when all this happened I was in denial mode - thought I'd be off work for.a week or two, so I tried to keep on top of the important emails and events, but after being told I'll be in my halo for 6-8 weeks, it's beginning to sink in: I may not be sick but I am, for now, very definitely broken. So I've been attempting to tidy up whatever loose ends that I can remember while preparing to focus on getting as strong as possible. Whether or not this works, or if it leads to a more permanent disability, I am staying positive: I am convinced I will soon be even more of a bada** - this is just a crown I need to wear, and bear, for now. Maybe, I'll write about some of my observations, reflections, and experiences along this significantly different and new journey whenever I can: I've never faced such a long period of not working before, so even if officially and temporarily "not fit to work" - the prospect is an antithesis of my self-value as a ?? Manchester worker bee ?? and much more frightening to me than my injuries are.