CraigHMan or Machine?
September 30th 2006 04:08
The fall itself must have lasted only about eight seconds but I had enough time to prepare myself for the landing. I instinctively knew I had to land on both feet and then roll to one side.
When I hit the rock at the base of the cliff my first thought was, I'm OK, I'm just winded. I was having difficulty breathing so I lay still on the cool, damp earth and tried to make myself breath slowly and deeply. The rotting vegetation on the forest floor was dank and wet while the sunlight trickled through the high cover above me. I enjoyed that solitary restful moment - waiting to regain my breath before I could start climbing again.
When I had steadied myself a little, I went to sit up. A merciless pain ripped through my back made and made me cry out. I collapsed, gasping, eyes screwed tight waiting for the waves of pain and nausea to subside. It was then that I noticed my wrist. It looked as if someone had clamped my forearm in a vice and then translated my right hand laterally by a full three inches . I stared at in disbelief. It was broken, very broken. How am I going to drive home like this, I thought still not thinking straight. Then I remembered that I couldn't even sit up.
By now the adrenalin was starting to wear off. A dull pain throbbed at the base of my spine, my wrist and ankle and I suddenly became very cold. I tried to wriggle my toes and found to my great joy that they responded in good order. At least I wasn't a paraplegic. I heard some other climbers nearby and called out to them. Two of them were nurses. They checked me for bleeding, asked me a few questions and covered me with a blanket. One of them then called the emergency services and arranged a helicopter to come and winch me out.
The paramedics approached first on foot. As I lay in the cold ground cursing myself for my stupidity I could hear their sirens in the distance getting progressively louder. The sound travelled unimpeded over the tranquil lagoon below me. Knowing the topology of the area well, I could follow their progress even though I could not see them. I heard the sirens die, the vehicles stop and the doors slam, and then listened quietly as one of the nurses led them up the steep wooded slope below where I lay. Suddenly they were upon me, radioing the helicopter in overhead. They gave me morphine, placed plastic safety glasses over my eyes and strapped me into a fibreglass cocoon. Then I was winched up through the tree canopy, through the sun set sky into the chopper and whisked away without a word across the indifferent roofs of Sydney to a beautiful green park in Artarmon. Once the rotors stopped, I was loaded into the waiting ambulance and driven a few meters to the emergency department of the Royal North Shore Hospital.
A doctor did eventually speak to me.
He said, "Here, sign this."
Through the fug of morphine I had just enough presence of mind to realise I should probably shouldn't sign straight away.
"Whaa is i'?" I slurred.
"A consent form."
"Do do wha'?"
"Operate on your arm."
"Whaa' are you goin' ... to do?"
"Give you a general anaesthetic and reset your broken wrist."
Despite being unable to read a single word, I lifted my left hand, took the pen and scribbled a meaningless mark on a randomly selected portion of the page. The clipboard was instantly whisked away and they wheeled me towards the operating theatre. I still had the grit and sand which had been stirred up by the helicopter's rotors all through my hair.
When I came to I was alone in a hospital ward in a bed, alone. I couldn't see out of the window. I didn't know the time of day nor the day of the week. I had no idea of where I was in the hospital, what was wrong with me, who my doctor was or how long I would have to stay there. I looked down and saw that my right wrist was in plaster. I tried to sit up and the now familiar angry pain shot up my back. It felt as if a sliver of glass has been inserted the length of my spine and was being none too gently agitated back and forth. I involuntarily cried out. No one came to see what the matter was. I quickly fell back and lay very still until the pain subsided to a bearable level. Over what seemed like the next few hours I experimented with different movements to see what I was capable of. I soon found it was very little. Still no one resembling a doctor came to see me. In a way it was quite peaceful. In a strange way I felt quite free. All my plans and responsibilities dropped away and I had no choice but to surrender to the will of my carers and to the providence of mother nature. During the rescue there had been fear, fear that the paramedics winching me up to the helicopter might make a mistake and
send me to my plunging to my death.. the usual sort of thing, but once I was in hospital all that fell away, except for one fear. Every night I dreamt that the hospital was on fire and that, being unable to sit up or walk, I was left helpless in my bed to be consumed by the flames as the hospital staff fled. I even thought of asking the nurses about the hospital evacuation procedure but couldn't quite bring myself to do it.
A few days later a doctor came to see me. Actually, he didn't come to see me, he came to see my wrist. I could tell that because he didn't look at me but he did look at my wrist. Furthermore he didn't ask me about me, about how I was going and how I was feeling, but he did ask about my wrist. I learned a few interesting things about hospitals during my stay. I learned that hospitals are very depressing places because no one want to be there. The patients don't want to be there because their presence in hospital means that they are sick. The nurses don't want to be there because they are abused by the patients, and the doctors don't want to be there because they're have too many patients to deal with properly and they can't wait to get out and spend the good money they're earning by working in unsanitary and unsavoury surroundings.
I learnt that in a hospital you don't get told anything unless you ask, and even if you ask you may not get an answer.
I often asked, "Will I fully recover from these injuries?"
I never recieved a definite answer to that question. No one tells you how a hospital works, who your doctor is, when he will be coming next or what other options you have. None of this is too bad if you are reasonably well educated and if English is your mother tongue, if that is not the case you would be in serious strife.
In the bed next to me was a very old Italian man called Giuseppe (really). He was over ninety. He couldn't speak English and had a huge septic growth on his leg. One morning he tried to get out of bed to go to the toilet. He fell over, couldn't get up and soiled himself on the floor. Above my bed hung a device which allowed me to call for help. I pressed the appropriate button. Nothing happened. I called out to the nurses. No response. Giuseppe lay there in is own excrement, writhing about and trying to get up until a nurse finally saw him and sorted him out.
The other thing I learned in hospital is that to the doctor who is in high demand, the patient is not a person, the patient is an injury or illness. To the back specialist, the patient is an injured back, to the wrist specialist, he is a wrist; to the foot specialist, he is a foot. In one way it is very reassuring to have a doctor whose sole concern while he is at your bedside is your wrist, but in another way is it very dehumanising to be treated as a nobody with no history, no plans and no feelings. Still, that's the assumption upon which the whole of modern medicine is based. The patient is a biochemical machine and is to be treated as such. Certainly It's very effective in one level, whether it's the whole story remains to be seen.
Once I discharged myself from hospital I had to spend three weeks in a steel back brace. The brace prevented me bending my lower back, which allowed the compressed vertebrae to mend themselves.
It was during these three weeks that I first noticed the pain in my foot. It turned out that the impact of landing on my foot had damaged the nerves. The resulting sensation was one of a very hot iron being applied to the sole of my right foot. Painkillers had no effect on nerve damage and I simply has to put up with it for a few weeks until the nerves repaired themselves. Unfortunately the pain made it impossible to sleep. Even brandy didn't work.
This experience of being tortured by an invisible sadist at whom one can curse to no effect proved to be an excellent testing ground for the philosophical idea that the self is not the body. Despite my earnest desire, my experience found this emphatically not to be the case.
*Images courtesy of www.morguefile.com
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