Am becoming a veteran of dance with orthopaedic injuries... dislocated my knee (again!) during the last rehearsal for Nunuk Ragang on Tuesday. Will be off dancing for a bit. Again. Goddess' post (whichI've been trying to leave a message on but some strange formatting prevents me from entering the word verification response) neatly describes the Knee Incident. That was one stretch I shouldn't have done. Or it could have been because I forgot to bring along my knee guard that day, though I'm not sure the knee guard would have saved it. Thanks to Goddess & Pilates Instructor for the innovative hot 'rice-pack' (which quite amused the medical officer at A&E).
I didn't realise how prone my kneecap actually was to popping again until my appointment with the orthopaedic surgeon the following day. Doc was able to move the patella around like it was floating on water, and just as it was beginning to sink in how strange that looked and felt, doc manages to actually slightly shift it sideways again! It would seem that the fibres which prevent too much sideways movement of the patella are either torn or severely weakened (probably mostly from the last injury). Am to go for physio for 4 weeks, and doc will reassess the knee after that. Surgery is an option for some patients, to sew up the said fibres. But strengthening the thigh muscles and physiotherapy 'for the rest of my life' probably would be sufficient.
I can walk fine, using a patella-stabilising knee brace. This new one I got doesn't seem to be as ergonomic as the model I used the last time - the lower section is too narrow and has a deadly grip on my calf, which gets really sore by the end of the day. Also, it takes 5 minutes, friction and a lot of tugging of neoprene material on already-sore calves to take off the brace.. I could well get other injuries in the process, ha ha. Anyway, that's going to end - armed with IKEA velcro, a pair of scissors and needle and thread, I am going to make modifications to the knee brace to incorporate a slit where it covers the shin (which can be opened/closed/adjusted using the Velcro) that would allow for improved circulation and safer removal!
Was looking forward very much to performing the dance but I guess I'll have to resign to the fact that with the bad knee I really can't leap and stretch anymore without risking an aggravation of the old injury. (Tap dancing is obviously not the best thing to do to a bad knee either, but at least the movements are more controllable... though I'd probably never be able to do single-leg pull-backs on the left ;-D)
I shall leave you for now to be entertained by some old war stories:
- The last kneecap dislocation and the first physio session with the electrodes
- Easter weekend, a danged earring stud, and an absent-minded triage nurse
- The oddest fracture: Don't think I've blogged about this incident from university days, other than the brief reference to it in 'the last kneecap dislocation' above... the lesson here was, make sure you do dance practices on a proper floor; don't ever compromise on that. A team of university mates putting on a contemporary dance piece to the theme song of 1998 HK movie 'The Stormriders' rehearsed on carpeted cement floor in the Hall dining room due to lack of proper rehearsal space. Yours truly executed the mother of all front kicks on pointe (i.e. atop the hard shoes that allow ballet dancers to stand on their toes). The upward momentum threw me off balance and I fell sitting on the floor. I felt mostly just numb for the rest of the day, and nobody, including the campus GP, suspected anything more than a bad jolt and some shocked thigh muscles until the x-ray results showed a hairline fracture on the pelvic bone. So for weeks I went to classes on the university's Disability Services van, hobbled around on crutches, even gave the campus sports doctor a scolding for scheduling an appointment to "teach me how to use crutches" on a date TWO weeks after I got the crutches by which time I would already be 'pro' at it (tho it really wasn't his fault), and went everywhere clutching a cushion which i had to sit on. And obviously had to pull out from the dance. No fun.
Showing posts with label War stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label War stories. Show all posts
Friday, July 10, 2009
Friday, June 22, 2007
words of wisdom
Warning: If you have aversions to dental treatment and drilling sounds in general... Now is the time to face your fears and read on!! (evil grin)
just back from the wisdom tooth extraction. it's the sort of thing that is so mentally and physically exhausting you just need to tell somebody.. anybody.. about it. (and yes, yes, i mean write about it - i can only make inaudible noises right now, with all that bloody (pun intended) gauze stuffed up the right side of my mouth!)
due to a combination of dense bones and the fact that the tooth in question had two curved roots and a real tight grip, the procedure took longer than expected - about one and a half hours instead of the estimated half an hour. one would have thought that one would be suitably conditioned for tooth extractions after having had four pre-molars removed during days of metallic orthodontic grins, but this turned out to be quite the ultimate test of endurance... there was a lot of what sounded like drilling (well, actually it was sawing, which doesn't sound any better :-D)... the tooth was cut into three and taken out in three separate parts. there was a lot of major pulling, jaw ache, plus the nagging anxiety that at any second the anaesthetic may wear out (am afraid i don't really have a high threshold for pain.. see other local-anaesthesia stories here..)
so, after endless rounds of tugging and sawing at the tooth and altogether 6 jabs of local anaesthetic (apparently 2 jabs are usually sufficient) you wouldn't believe the relief when the last piece of tooth finally came out.
the tooth fairy had better give me a blank cheque for this.
just back from the wisdom tooth extraction. it's the sort of thing that is so mentally and physically exhausting you just need to tell somebody.. anybody.. about it. (and yes, yes, i mean write about it - i can only make inaudible noises right now, with all that bloody (pun intended) gauze stuffed up the right side of my mouth!)
due to a combination of dense bones and the fact that the tooth in question had two curved roots and a real tight grip, the procedure took longer than expected - about one and a half hours instead of the estimated half an hour. one would have thought that one would be suitably conditioned for tooth extractions after having had four pre-molars removed during days of metallic orthodontic grins, but this turned out to be quite the ultimate test of endurance... there was a lot of what sounded like drilling (well, actually it was sawing, which doesn't sound any better :-D)... the tooth was cut into three and taken out in three separate parts. there was a lot of major pulling, jaw ache, plus the nagging anxiety that at any second the anaesthetic may wear out (am afraid i don't really have a high threshold for pain.. see other local-anaesthesia stories here..)
so, after endless rounds of tugging and sawing at the tooth and altogether 6 jabs of local anaesthetic (apparently 2 jabs are usually sufficient) you wouldn't believe the relief when the last piece of tooth finally came out.
the tooth fairy had better give me a blank cheque for this.
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
discipline
these physio exercises actually take up a lot of time.. an hour of it the first thing in the morning, and before you know it, your lunch has digested and the next hourly set has to go on, and before you know it again, you've watched all the comedies on tv and it's time for the next hour of knee-bending and knee-stretching. tried reading something during the process but found that i'd either lose count or lose my page. the only feasible side-entertainment is to listen to the radio and play bejeweled on the pda..
'Ear this...
i started talking to a friend on the IM yesterday about my busted knee, and the conversation turned to one on war stories.. of past injuries and trips to the A&E. my friend was an active fellow and started off by saying nobody could beat the stuff he'd been through. i agreed. he however decided to relinquish his title after getting a load of the weird stuff i've managed to put myself through.. well, not everyone likes to hear injury war-stories so i'll just post one bizarre one here.. no, it's not particularly graphic, but given that i seem to have a rather high tolerance of these things (i dunno, so far everyone's cringed at the fact that i readjusted my own dislocated patella), feel free to skip the parts you'd rather not hear..
the story starts some time back in my final undergraduate year, easter holidays. i had just had my ears pierced and had finally switched from the boring ol' piercing set (which stems are larger in diameter) to a new pair (which is the regular type you find in stores, i.e. stems aren't as thick). so i went to bed with the said new earrings on (NB. i never did so again ever after this incident).
the next morning i got out of bed with blood on one side of my shirt, wondering whether i was still in some strange dream. nope, perfectly awake. and the blood was real.
initial thought - mosquito. but hell, with the amount of blood there was, i would have had to wipe out an entire colony in my sleep!
then i noticed there was also blood on my right ear, and although the earring was still there, the stud-fastener at the back had come off.
ahhh ok, so the sharp point of the exposed earring stem must have cut against some part of my outer ear or the back of my neck. so i pulled the earring off and looked into the mirror.
nope, no cuts or scratches on ear or neck.
and there was still this dull pain in the ear lobe.
after much peering into the mirror and probing around a bloody earlobe, i finally found out what happened - the small earring fastener had somehow got itself embedded INSIDE the raw flesh at the back of the ear lobe (i had pierced my ears only recently, remember).
and to make matters worse, by pulling out the earring from the other side earlier on, i had inadvertently pulled the offending fastener deeper into the flesh. ow. cringe.
so i got a perplexed corridor-mate to hold up a mirror behind my head while i tried to figure out how i could get myself out of the mess. it was just too hard to get any leverage on something embedded in the back of my ear... my friends didnt dare try, so i went to the campus GP who tried easing out the fastener with tweezers but it hurt like hell so he sent me to the university hospital's A&E for local anaesthesia.
so, on a bright early Sunday morning, i had left my wonderful breakfast of pancakes behind to trod down to the A&E centre of the UK's largest hospital (apparently also Europe's largest teaching hospital), with a thing in my earlobe (and a long-suffering friend who had probably by then been totally put off earrings).
finally it was gonna be a-ok, there would be no pain, the danged fastener's gonna be out, and i'm never going to wear that pair of earrings ever again.
however there was a minor 'drama' at A&E. the triage nurse who took my particulars absent-mindedly wrote down "FB [foreign body] in right ear". in my anxiety, i didn't notice the crucial typo.
when i finally got to see a doctor after about 2 hours' wait, he went, "ooo-k, what do we have here, foreign body in right ear..". all at once I realised the nurse's error but before I could correct him the doc started PULLING HARD ON THE EAR LOBE to look inside the ear and i started screeching "ear LOBE! ear LOBE!" at which doc responded "Ear lobe? Ahhh. Easy-peasy. Just let me get some tweezers and we'll have it out in a jiffy, love," and i must have screeched a bunch of expletives I don't recall now. well, i didn't walk all the way across campus and wait for 2 hours only to have someone else do the same thing the campus GP had already unsuccessfully attempted earlier, dammit!
so there was another wait, this time for 4 hours (not kidding), now outside the operating theatre while i struck up a conversation with a poor fellow who nearly got his finger shaved off in an industrial accident; and other poor souls with miscellaneous maladies. the wait was so long i was starting to have visions of the wound closing around the foreign body and having to live the rest of my life with a thing in my earlobe.
and so finally, the stark brightness of the OT (with pleasant music playing to boot) was a nice welcome change of atmosphere from the waiting benches in the dim corridor outside. must say i felt like an idiot climbing onto the steel table myself (by the way, operating tables look like tiny kitchen trolleys!) and lying down while chatting with the attending doctor ignoring all the machinery around me (I was probably the strangest person to have come through the OT doors that day), but boy was i glad when the needle went in (I didn't even feel it!) and everything was over within 10 seconds of that.
so i trodded back to Hall, just in time for dinner which my pals had whipped up for their poor corridor-mate who had just returned from the hospital with the thing that was in her ear.
no, earlobe!
the story starts some time back in my final undergraduate year, easter holidays. i had just had my ears pierced and had finally switched from the boring ol' piercing set (which stems are larger in diameter) to a new pair (which is the regular type you find in stores, i.e. stems aren't as thick). so i went to bed with the said new earrings on (NB. i never did so again ever after this incident).
the next morning i got out of bed with blood on one side of my shirt, wondering whether i was still in some strange dream. nope, perfectly awake. and the blood was real.
initial thought - mosquito. but hell, with the amount of blood there was, i would have had to wipe out an entire colony in my sleep!
then i noticed there was also blood on my right ear, and although the earring was still there, the stud-fastener at the back had come off.
ahhh ok, so the sharp point of the exposed earring stem must have cut against some part of my outer ear or the back of my neck. so i pulled the earring off and looked into the mirror.
nope, no cuts or scratches on ear or neck.
and there was still this dull pain in the ear lobe.
after much peering into the mirror and probing around a bloody earlobe, i finally found out what happened - the small earring fastener had somehow got itself embedded INSIDE the raw flesh at the back of the ear lobe (i had pierced my ears only recently, remember).
and to make matters worse, by pulling out the earring from the other side earlier on, i had inadvertently pulled the offending fastener deeper into the flesh. ow. cringe.
so i got a perplexed corridor-mate to hold up a mirror behind my head while i tried to figure out how i could get myself out of the mess. it was just too hard to get any leverage on something embedded in the back of my ear... my friends didnt dare try, so i went to the campus GP who tried easing out the fastener with tweezers but it hurt like hell so he sent me to the university hospital's A&E for local anaesthesia.
so, on a bright early Sunday morning, i had left my wonderful breakfast of pancakes behind to trod down to the A&E centre of the UK's largest hospital (apparently also Europe's largest teaching hospital), with a thing in my earlobe (and a long-suffering friend who had probably by then been totally put off earrings).
finally it was gonna be a-ok, there would be no pain, the danged fastener's gonna be out, and i'm never going to wear that pair of earrings ever again.
however there was a minor 'drama' at A&E. the triage nurse who took my particulars absent-mindedly wrote down "FB [foreign body] in right ear". in my anxiety, i didn't notice the crucial typo.
when i finally got to see a doctor after about 2 hours' wait, he went, "ooo-k, what do we have here, foreign body in right ear..". all at once I realised the nurse's error but before I could correct him the doc started PULLING HARD ON THE EAR LOBE to look inside the ear and i started screeching "ear LOBE! ear LOBE!" at which doc responded "Ear lobe? Ahhh. Easy-peasy. Just let me get some tweezers and we'll have it out in a jiffy, love," and i must have screeched a bunch of expletives I don't recall now. well, i didn't walk all the way across campus and wait for 2 hours only to have someone else do the same thing the campus GP had already unsuccessfully attempted earlier, dammit!
so there was another wait, this time for 4 hours (not kidding), now outside the operating theatre while i struck up a conversation with a poor fellow who nearly got his finger shaved off in an industrial accident; and other poor souls with miscellaneous maladies. the wait was so long i was starting to have visions of the wound closing around the foreign body and having to live the rest of my life with a thing in my earlobe.
and so finally, the stark brightness of the OT (with pleasant music playing to boot) was a nice welcome change of atmosphere from the waiting benches in the dim corridor outside. must say i felt like an idiot climbing onto the steel table myself (by the way, operating tables look like tiny kitchen trolleys!) and lying down while chatting with the attending doctor ignoring all the machinery around me (I was probably the strangest person to have come through the OT doors that day), but boy was i glad when the needle went in (I didn't even feel it!) and everything was over within 10 seconds of that.
so i trodded back to Hall, just in time for dinner which my pals had whipped up for their poor corridor-mate who had just returned from the hospital with the thing that was in her ear.
no, earlobe!
Monday, June 20, 2005
knee-arly there
went to see the physiotherapist on knee today. apparently the MO who saw me last week shoulda referred me to physio a lot earlier (in fact he didn't at all, i went only because i thot i needed it because after a week on crutches i felt i didn't know how to walk on that leg anymore!) and that should have given be a patella-stabilising knee brace in addition to the tubigrip.
i got a huge reprimand from the physiotherapist, "my dear girl, your muscles are all wasted!! who told you not to put weight on your knee for a week?"
the medical officer at A&E!
"well that shouldn't have been the case because your muscles will waste if you don't use them for just one or two days!"
ok, i want to kill somebody at A&E.
yep, it looked bad, i couldn't straighten my left leg fully no matter how much i willed my thigh muscles to do it, cos the muscles were pretty much, well, wasted.
then there was all this prodding the area around the kneecap.
then came the electrodes. a mild current was passed thru the relevant thigh muscles to jolt them back to life. (it didn't seem mild at all as the dial had to be turned up a few notches from what the nurse thought she could start with, before my muscles started twitching!) and they'd have to do this during all physio sessions over the next week or so until my thigh muscles awaken again. all i can say is that the involuntary twitching of the muscles around the kneecap is the most scary thing... a whole lot scarier than when the knee popped out and i popped it back!
anyways, i think the leg has slightly more life now, i can put some weight on it already with one crutch less, and the aim is to get off crutches altogether by next week. *fingers, toes & knees crossed!*
i got a huge reprimand from the physiotherapist, "my dear girl, your muscles are all wasted!! who told you not to put weight on your knee for a week?"
the medical officer at A&E!
"well that shouldn't have been the case because your muscles will waste if you don't use them for just one or two days!"
ok, i want to kill somebody at A&E.
yep, it looked bad, i couldn't straighten my left leg fully no matter how much i willed my thigh muscles to do it, cos the muscles were pretty much, well, wasted.
then there was all this prodding the area around the kneecap.
then came the electrodes. a mild current was passed thru the relevant thigh muscles to jolt them back to life. (it didn't seem mild at all as the dial had to be turned up a few notches from what the nurse thought she could start with, before my muscles started twitching!) and they'd have to do this during all physio sessions over the next week or so until my thigh muscles awaken again. all i can say is that the involuntary twitching of the muscles around the kneecap is the most scary thing... a whole lot scarier than when the knee popped out and i popped it back!
anyways, i think the leg has slightly more life now, i can put some weight on it already with one crutch less, and the aim is to get off crutches altogether by next week. *fingers, toes & knees crossed!*
Sunday, June 19, 2005
the deviant knee
yep, i haven't blogged in ages. anyway, the 2nd semester exams have finished, and i dislocated my left knee-cap last week. have been on crutches for nearly a week now, and the inflammation has reduced somewhat. should be off crutches soon. now comes the next hurdle - i haven't used the left leg for a week, it'll probably take some time to have it get used to having weight placed on it again. i can't remember how i did it the last time i fractured something during my undergrad days and had to go on 3 weeks' hobbling on crutches.
the scariest part of it all wasn't actually seeing the patella pop entirely to one side, or popping it back myself (that scared a lot of people, but hey, i'd probably go insane with the pain if i left it awkwardly popped out and wait for the doctor to pop it back!) but the fact that the doc said if your knee's popped once, it can pop again so watch out. will have to stop tap-dancing for a while (hopefully i won't have to give it up forever!) and it doesn't look like i'll have any chance of planning a trip to Mt Kinabalu anytime soon, ha ha :P
have been off-campus for a week now. everyone's been wonderful, i've got a recording of the workshop i missed and a bunch of notes. looking forward to going back in again hopefully this coming week. am going insane living a sedentary lifestyle. driving wouldn't be a problem as i drive an automatic and the left leg ain't needed ;), but accessibility is gonna be a problem. the lifts only go down as far as the ground floor - they closed the basement lift lobby for security reasons some time back. so there's a flight of steps one has to take from the basement car park to ground level. and even if i can get permission to park at the porch near the CEO's lot, i'd still have to maneuver either jelly legs or clumsy crutches up about 10 steps up to the main entrance.
in fact the whole episode made me realise how not disabled-friendly a lot of our public places/malls are.. so far i only know of the Megamall and The Curve having motorised vehicles for loan, for instance. was at The Curve today on one of those contraptions. quite a nifty little machine, complete with a deafening horn and indicators. but then you run into a bit of trouble when you want to enter the shops - most of the merchandise racks are arranged so closely together there's no way you can fit anything bigger than a pram between them!
the other thing you get is, of course, stares. :-D don't know whether it's the fabric grip on my knee or the crutches or the pimple on my forehead :-D, but man, you get the stares. (and i normally grin back.) you also get some people who approach you and ask you what happened and give you bits of advice on taking care of the knee. but mostly, there are stares. ;) probably a Malaysian thing. I don't remember any stares when i had a fracture and had to haul myself into the university's disabled-services van for three weeks from hall to the faculty and back, when i hobbled around from one lecture hall to the next, or when i decided to take a cab and a few hops to Sainsbury's when i got tired of the four walls of the hall.
anyway, i should go get the cold-pack and wrap it around the knee now. hope to be able to return the crutches by the end of the week. and lug myself back into the campus to catch up on the work and classes (not looking forward to that)! (and in the meantime enjoy all the coffee and chips that's being delivered to me while i sit snugly in front of the TV! :D)
the scariest part of it all wasn't actually seeing the patella pop entirely to one side, or popping it back myself (that scared a lot of people, but hey, i'd probably go insane with the pain if i left it awkwardly popped out and wait for the doctor to pop it back!) but the fact that the doc said if your knee's popped once, it can pop again so watch out. will have to stop tap-dancing for a while (hopefully i won't have to give it up forever!) and it doesn't look like i'll have any chance of planning a trip to Mt Kinabalu anytime soon, ha ha :P
have been off-campus for a week now. everyone's been wonderful, i've got a recording of the workshop i missed and a bunch of notes. looking forward to going back in again hopefully this coming week. am going insane living a sedentary lifestyle. driving wouldn't be a problem as i drive an automatic and the left leg ain't needed ;), but accessibility is gonna be a problem. the lifts only go down as far as the ground floor - they closed the basement lift lobby for security reasons some time back. so there's a flight of steps one has to take from the basement car park to ground level. and even if i can get permission to park at the porch near the CEO's lot, i'd still have to maneuver either jelly legs or clumsy crutches up about 10 steps up to the main entrance.
in fact the whole episode made me realise how not disabled-friendly a lot of our public places/malls are.. so far i only know of the Megamall and The Curve having motorised vehicles for loan, for instance. was at The Curve today on one of those contraptions. quite a nifty little machine, complete with a deafening horn and indicators. but then you run into a bit of trouble when you want to enter the shops - most of the merchandise racks are arranged so closely together there's no way you can fit anything bigger than a pram between them!
the other thing you get is, of course, stares. :-D don't know whether it's the fabric grip on my knee or the crutches or the pimple on my forehead :-D, but man, you get the stares. (and i normally grin back.) you also get some people who approach you and ask you what happened and give you bits of advice on taking care of the knee. but mostly, there are stares. ;) probably a Malaysian thing. I don't remember any stares when i had a fracture and had to haul myself into the university's disabled-services van for three weeks from hall to the faculty and back, when i hobbled around from one lecture hall to the next, or when i decided to take a cab and a few hops to Sainsbury's when i got tired of the four walls of the hall.
anyway, i should go get the cold-pack and wrap it around the knee now. hope to be able to return the crutches by the end of the week. and lug myself back into the campus to catch up on the work and classes (not looking forward to that)! (and in the meantime enjoy all the coffee and chips that's being delivered to me while i sit snugly in front of the TV! :D)
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