Dropping my car off for the annual Ministry of Transport (MOT) test this morning, I was minded of the anniversary of my unfortunate accident last year. I had just collected my car after it’s MOT and slipped on a slightly mossy bit of pavement outside the garage. I twisted as I fell and ended up with a compound fracture and a puncture wound. There then followed four days of fascinating, bizarre and frustrating hospitalisation when I was fitted with a tibial nail, i.e. a long titanium rod down the inside of my leg bone. I then spent seven weeks recouperating at home and a further nine weeks as an outpatient. (Blogged extensively here).
Now, a year on, it mostly doesn’t bother me but I occasionally get random aches in the leg and kneeling sometimes hurts. I had been warned to expect gyp in the knee area for eighteen months, after all, the butchers were hacking around in there with scary looking tools.
Anyway, ever since the accident, I have always walked up and down stairs holding the handrail and whilst I don’t actually need to and can do without if I set my mind to it, I feel uncomfortable. At home, I will frequently come down the stairs one at a time. Thinking back, however, I have been doing that for a very long time indeed, ever since I broke my leg in Florida at Disney Studios. (That happened in 1996BD, i.e. “Before David”.) Ever since 1996, I have shied away from climbing over Stiles, up onto short walls or even over low barriers. I never have a skip in my step and shuffle around hyper-carefully on any slippery conditions.
Show me a ladder that leads up to a theatre stagehouse grid though, and all the aches and pains disappear!
Happy Anniversary! Just kidding. Same leg twice or both legs? It seems you are lucky that such a terrible accident did not cause even more long lasting problems.
It was the same leg, but just a hairline fracture on the Tibia first time, near the ankle. The second time was a compound fracture of the Tibia higher up and a break of the Fibula.