kaberett | (un)reassuring headline: I am fine (Reply)

So yesterday I went to the hospital, for what (thankfully) turned out to be a sprained ankle.

Content notes: minor injury, fainting.

I went to the allotment, mid-afternoon, because the weather was good and I'd done some intimidating work and I wanted to get outside and move a bit. I fed the bin; I did some tidying and weeding; I shuffled some infrastructure around.

I was carrying a bulky item across the plot, got to a part where I know the ground is uneven, and tripped and fell. I felt my ankle go crunch; I had an immediate wave of nausea and light-headedness, and went instantly clammy.

I gingerly got myself upright, testing weight-bearing on the ankle very carefully, and moved approximately three feet to one of the plastic chairs I have on the plot. I sat down, still feeling light-headed and nauseated and clammy. Instead of doing the in-retrospect-sensible thing of putting my head between my knees, I leaned back in the chair to take advantage of the back support, trying to cross-reference how I was feeling with memories of how it felt when I broke my foot almost 18 months ago now.

I had a brief, very vivid, sense of... something. I was convinced I was on a bus? Or some other mode of public transport, I think? I had been mid-journey. I couldn't understand why all I could see was blue sky through cherry branches covered in blossom. I was very worried about not having finished whatever it was I was in the middle of. I couldn't work out why the backs of my knees hurt.

The view, and the backs of my knees, were -- as best I can tell -- because I'd fainted, and that had shifted my body-weight enough to tip the chair over backwards, and that in turn meant I was now on my back with my legs elevated in, er, pretty much the optimal recovery position for a faint.

At this point I was still not sure I had fainted, though. I was quite confused. I spent a bit longer on my back staring at the sky, thinking through the part where my ankle hurt, and my phone was in my bag in the greenhouse, and I didn't have a walking stick, and I'd got both of the allotment keys on me, and I thought everyone else who'd been on site earlier in the afternoon had already left. After a while of this, though, I decided I could probably manage rolling out of the chair sideways, and then test my weight on my ankle again.

Which worked! So I limped over to the greenhouse, and picked up my phone, and muzzily messaged A to ask if I could have a flap at him, and then regained enough of my faculties to decide that this was ridiculous and I should just phone him. Which I did. And said something to the tune of "I think I've fainted, I don't think I've broken my ankle, I don't... know what to do?"

I decided I didn't want him to fetch me. I decided I did want him to open Google Maps up and keep an eye on me so that if I stopped moving while heading home he could come and rescue me. I tidied up at the plot slightly more than was probably sensible (spade and trug of weeds back into the greenhouse; greenhouse door shut). I didn't take the photos I'd been wanting to of the cherry, which was pretty much perfect. I didn't try to force myself through more infrastructure. I got back on the Tramper, and whimpered and shook my way up the lane to the front gate, and managed weight-bearing for long enough to unlock, open, close, and relock the gate, getting the Tramper through it in the middle.

I got a little bit toward home before I realised that in fact I should be asking A for more reality-check: the allotment site is right behind the local hospital, so if it was going to be decided that I should go there then it made sense to do it immediately rather than slog home and then back out again, given -- again -- that I was shaky and nauseated, and in increasing pain to the point that I was vocalising involuntarily, which does... not happen very often. A decided he couldn't do triage over the phone at that point, and told me he was going to come and find me. Which he duly did, rather sooner than I expected, and then turned me firmly around and took me in to the hospital.

Which was deserted, unsurprisingly; in spite of the notices on the door (one person only unless responsible adult for a child, no visitors) they did let him in to Urgent Care with me. I was not managing anything remotely approaching complete sentences; A did a bunch of talking for me. (We used copious quantities of hand sanitiser.) There were about three other people, not including staff, in the waiting area. A insistently fed me some Lucozade gel, and I gradually stopped shaking quite so violently, and gradually started managing to talk more normally.

I was triaged, examined, X-rayed, examined some more (head trauma screening! it was conclusively declared that I still have a brain), tested (blood sugars) and treated (compression bandage), then sent on my way. I am currently routinely using two sticks to get around the house, where normally I can walk unaided inside; I am sitting down as much as possible; I'm having to be very careful particularly about standing up, which seems to be the point at which I'm most likely to wrench it.

There is definitely visible swelling, and I'm Emphatically Not to do most of my lower-body physio for some reason, but on the whole I feel pretty lucky to have got off lightly.

The NHS is great. All the staff were very definite that I should be there, and that it was okay for me to have come in. I'm trying not to feel shitty about The Added Burden On The Health Service In These Trying Times, and mostly succeeding.

I'm trying to let myself feel frightened, because it was scary, and to soothe myself about it.

The cherry blossom was beautiful.