When I finally got home, my Mom knew something was wrong right away (aren't moms weird that way?), and insisted I tell her what happened. I did, and she told me to take off my shirt so she could check my back. As she looked at my back I heard her gasp, and I said "What, what!?" She turned me to the mirror, and there I could see that all of the skin over each rib on my back had been scraped off, with the exception of where my bra strap was, and blood was oozing down my back! My knees were OK, having been protected by the tough fabric of my jeans. I have always, since then, been amazed that I was not killed that day. It really drove home the "moral" of this story: Choose the road less traveled by!
January 11, 1995
My Open Water I got at West Palm Beach down in good ol' Flahdeeda. 'Course there was a hurricane about 300 miles offshore, and by the end of the day the water was just about like swimming in oatmeal, but we got two good dives in. It was quite an exhilarating boat ride, too! There were 4 - 6 foot seas, and absolutely everyone on board was chumming for sharks. Everyone except me, my instructor, the capt'n, and the divemaster. So, my instructor, the divemaster, and I went diving while everyone else prayed to die. I had a few problems that day, all from the strong surge and low visibility.
As I held onto the anchorline at the begining of the first dive of the day, the surge slammed me into a nice healthy patch of fire coral. I finished the dive, and we surfaced, clinging to the anchorline all the way up. At the surface, I had a bit of trouble entering the boat. The waves would toss me up over the stern, and then drop me way down below it. I don't have enough upper body strength to hold on during that kind of pounding. So, my instructor managed to get aboard and haul me up one handed and dump me rather unceremoniously onto the deck. After getting my gear off, rinsed, and stored (you don't want oxygen tanks rolling around the deck loose!), we dared to look at my leg. It was stinging like hell, and looked like it too. A bright red patch the size of a softball right in the middle of my calf. My instructor treated it with vinegar (I think - or maybe it was soda...), and it did feel some better. I forgot about it during the rest of the day.
The second spot of trouble I had that day was during the second dive of the day. We submerged, did the required exercises, and ascended to do the surface work. That consisted of restoring positive bouyancy (inflating my vest), dropping my weight belt (a nylon web belt carrying about 8 pounds of lead weights), and removing my gear. Then I had to put it all back on. The problem came while I was trying to remove it. My very long hair had been braided back tightly when we started the day, but during our rough boat ride and one dive, a great deal of it had come loose. Sometime during my second dive, quite a lot of it had managed to wrap itself around my first stage regulator (the bit that sits on top of your air tank). I didn't realize it until I had my gear more than halfway off. I stopped to try to untangle it, but that's pretty hard to do when it's behind you, and you have to keep a mouthpiece attached to a hose attached to your tank in your mouth to keep from drowning. I was not having much luck, and my instructor didn't understand what the trouble was. He thought that I was tired, and couldn't get the gear off of my back, so he reached over and grabbed my tank to help. Just at that moment, another wave passed us, and he went up as I went down. He still had hold of my tank, and when he went up, so did my gear. It yanked my entire body around 180 degrees, and tore a huge hunk of hair right out of my scalp. When I say huge, I mean a 1 inch diameter circle of hair. Do I need to tell you that it hurt like hell? It also pulled my mouthpiece, and consequently my air, out of my mouth. Fortunately I am an excellent swimmer, and not at all afraid of the water. I took a breath, turned myself around, and took two strokes back to my instructor, who was looking in horror at the large handful of hair still attached to my regulator. I retrieved my gear, popped my mouthpiece in, purged it, and got a breath. Then I put my gear back on. He had already tossed my weight belt on deck, so I didn't have to fool with that, thank God. We had to go through the one armed re-entry again to get me back aboard. We treated my oozing scalp with antibiotic ointment, and sat down to rest. By this time, I was getting really, REALLY tired, but we decided to try to do a final dive.
When we got to our last dive site, the divemaster almost decided against letting us go. The water was murky, the seas were high, and the surge was very, very strong. This dive was a simple one however, and he decided that if we would maintain contact with the anchorline at all times, we could go. We did giant step entries instead of sitting entries because of the waves, and when I hit the water my mask slipped, even with my hand on it. I readjusted it - no problem. The divemaster submerged first, one hand on the anchorline. Then my instructor, then me. The water was so full of sand that we literally could not see more than 10 inches in front of our faces. The deeper we got, the murkier it got. Suddenly, something hit my face, and my mask strap snapped. I was blind. I managed to catch my mask, how I don't know. I quickly tucked the strap end into the octopus (that's the extra mouthpiece you carry - all the hoses hanging off make you look like a multi-armed creature) loop on my vest, and then grabbed for my instructor's leg. What I got was a fin in the face. I never saw it. Just after it hit me, I grabbed it and yanked. My instructor (he told me later, I couldn't see it) grabbed at the divemaster, stopped him, and turned around. I gave him the thumbs up sign that I wanted to surface, pointing to my bare face, and the broken strap hanging from my vest. He took my arm and all three of us surfaced as fast as we safely could. I decided that that was going to be it for the day! As it turned out, it was the last dive of the week. The water never got clear enough to dive in the rest of the week we were there. I got my Open Water certificate even though we never finished that third dive - he said that anyone who could handle themselves the way I did during that second dive would not be a saftey risk! By the way, just for the record, I did do the third dive successfully later at a lake, so I am "official". So at the end of a hard day at sea, I had an itchy leg, a sore head, and a pretty certificate to hang on the wall. It was worth every minute! I haven't been diving in a few years, it's hard to make the time and money commitments with two little boys, but someday I plan to go again. After a refresher course, naturally. Preferably NOT at West Palm Beach!! :-)
Sun, 26 May 1996
Anyway...
I've been going to TaeKwonDo class now for three weeks. Promotional testing is this Saturday. That's when you prove you really do know a little bit about what you've been pretending to do, and if you CAN prove it, you get a new belt of a different colour. All very ritualized and great fun. Because I have to work Saturday and can't attend testing, they are allowing me to test at my next class - tomorrow! I figured I ought to go to class tonight for just a bit more reinforcement of the forms and stuff. See, I've been doing it for 3 weeks, but the other class members have had 8 weeks to practice. I need all the help I can get!
After we practiced forms and one-steps, we started doing chair exercises. That's when they set up a couple of rows of chairs and you have to practice kicking over them. It makes you do the kicks correctly, 'cause if you don't, you kick a chair back, and it HURTS. Great motivation! The last round of kicking practice was spinning crescent kicks. Sit in the chair. Pretend someone is annoying you by poking you in the back of the head. Stand up, spin around and with your heel, kick them in the head. Or chest. Depends on how high you can kick.
Now, my crescent kicks are great. Broken jaws all around. My spinning sucks. Either I forget and spin on my heel, or I try to pirouette like a dancer - on my toes. Both wrong. You're supposed to spin on the ball of your foot. The whole time I was doing these spinning kicks, I kept catching my toes in the padding on the floor. Next to the last chair I was thinking to myself, "If I'm not more careful, I'm gonna break my little toe!". Last chair. Sit. Stand. Spin and kick right leg. Sit. Stand. Spin and kick left leg, get toes tangled in the mat, listen to little pinkie toe go SNAP! and put left foot down. Now that snap really didn't faze me too much, my joints snap all the time. It didn't even hurt, so I must have just 'popped' it.
The instructor yells, "Everybody line up as in the beginning!" "Yes SIR!" As he was stretching us out, my foot was aching. I glanced down at my foot, and noticed a small spot of blood oozing out from under the cuticle of my little toenail. Ah, I tore the skin during that last spin. At least I didn't break it.
I asked the red belt standing next to me if she could please bring me
a tissue, and pointed at my toe. She got me a paper towel, and I
patted the spot of blood off. As I patted it, a stabbing pain shot
up my leg. Hmm. There was a short discussion as we finished
stretching, about the number of broken or previously broken digits there
were in the room. Very entertaining! ;o) I walked to
the back of the room, and Larry (my husband, who is also in the class)
came over to see if I was ok. I said
sure, no problem, and reached down to feel of my toe. I grasped
the end of it and gave a little pull just to see where the pain was centered,
and to determine if I had just 'popped' it, or if it had really broken.
I wasn't sure, because it really didn't hurt much at all, though it was
kinda crooked looking. As I pulled, the toe went SNAP! again, and
I thought I would fall down from the pain as the broken bone snapped back
into place (big sissy, I know). THEN it started to hurt. Oh,
boy did it hurt!
After I got home it was still bleeding, so I wrapped it up with gauze and a bit of tape. Then I couldn't walk on it because the bandage made the toe stick out the wrong way. So I took it off. As I sit here I have the broken toe taped to it's neighbor to keep me from knocking it on the furniture and walls and such. It's a lovely blue color, and is attaining new records for toe size.
And I still have to test tomorrow.
Wed, 30 May 2001
He set us up in mock testing, and we ran thru the motions. Then we did it again. Then they partnered us up and we ran thru our one-steps. Then we did it again. (maybe they didn't notice that stupid screw up...) Then we did the whole thing over yet again. Great practice, and those of us testing for real had no idea when we were being watched and when we weren't! Pretty sneaky, I think. My toe didn't bother me too much. I had it all taped up so I wouldn't 'snap' it again, and thank goodness there are no spin kicks in the white belt testing patterns.
Then came the exciting day of the Awards Ceremony. If you're good enough to advance you get to parade yourself in full uniform up in front of everyone to receive your new belt and certificate. If you didn't quite make it, you're not embarrassed, you just stay in your seat. At 2:30 in the afternoon, on that very day, I realized that all of our Do-boks (uniforms) were still sitting in the clothes basket - dirty! I ran down and put them in the washer. Around 2:45, a MAJOR thunderstorm hit our area. High winds, some small hail (enough to shred my hostas), and .6 of an inch of rain in 20 minutes. Not really a big deal, but the lightning was hitting all around the house, and at 3:00, the power went out. This happens frequently. A circuit blows, the power company flips the switch, the power comes back on. At 3:20 my husband called to say he was on his way home. I told him the power was out, but no problem, it would be back on soon. He got home at 4:00. Dinner only half cooked, Do-boks wet, and still no power. The Awards Ceremony started at 5:30. For almost an hour we watched the clock, commenting that yeah, we can still get them dry and make it if the power will just come on by 4:45 or so. At 4:50 the power was still off, we were starved, and it looked like a "no-go" for Matthew's and my first belt Ceremony. Pooh.
We went out for dinner, and drove around a bit to see where the power
outage was. It appeared to be just our neighborhood. We kept
telling each other that the power would be back on any moment. We
found a place to eat, and did so. We completely missed our Ceremony.
Got back to the house to find the power STILL off. In the almost
7 years we've lived
here, the power has never been off that long. Larry was starting
to get nervous - he doesn't sleep well in the heat (96 degrees F) and humidity
(94%!), and even the coolest part of the house was upwards of 80 degrees
by then. If he doesn't sleep well, he gets sick. Whether it's
stress or a physical reaction (he's diabetic), or both we don't know, we
just know it's a fact. Since he leaves the house at 5:30 in the morning
to drive 30 miles to work, being sick and sleepy is not a good combination.
At 9:00, after half an hour of trying to sleep downstairs, Larry came back up to find the kids and me outside trying to catch the breeze and a few fireflys. We were standing around chatting with the neighbors, who were all out trying to catch the same breeze we were catching, when suddenly there was a loud CLICK. For an eyeblink the neighborhood was silent, then a cheer went up. The whole neighborhood was cheering, for the power had come back on!
It was amazing to see hordes of people running back into their homes and slamming windows shut. Hundreds of air conditioners coming on all at once. I'm surprised the power didn't go out again! I'm as guilty as the rest. I went back inside, albeit a bit more slowly, and closed windows and turned on the A/C.
We heard the next day that there had been 27,000 people out of power. The problem was that they couldn't find where the outage originated. It took them all that time to find the failed part - a transformer one block up and one block over from my house.
After all that, we still didn't know if we had advanced to the next rank! Larry went to class the next day (I didn't because I was getting ready to go out of town), and while he was there, he asked about our rank standings. All of us passed. Larry and Rob are now Green belts, and Matthew and I are Yellow belts. I don't actually have a yellow belt - the order was wrong and all they got were kid sized belts. So for now, all I have to show for my whole sore toe ordeal is a nice certificate to hang on the wall, and a tiger (ITA) patch for the front of my uniform!
Tue, 19 Jun 2001
For a couple of weeks I ignored the injury, with the full knowledge
that it was just a muscle pull or tear, because everyone knows that if
you have ligament damage, you can't walk. Then I went back to TKD
class and just lifting my left leg to kick almost threw me to the floor.
I called the doctor the next day. After a physical exam and a set
of x-rays, she agreed that because of the stability of the knee, it was
most likely a soft tissue injury causing the intermittent wobble, maybe
with a bone bruise causing the joint pain. She also recommended that
I have an MRI done to access the extent of the soft tissue damage.
The MRI was done on Monday (two days ago), and my follow up appointment
was this morning.
I have officially been diagnosed as "broken". It seems that in addition to the bone bruise, I have also managed to rupture the anterior cruciate ligament. It was not apparent on physical exam because my musculature is very heavy and highly developed (yes, beneath the layers of blubber - I mean, insulation - there are muscles!), and is managing to compensate in some degree for the loss of the ligament. There is some instability evident now on exam, since the muscles and bone are not as painful.
I've been very careful this last week to be sure my legs were set under me before standing and lifting, and to place my feet carefully when walking on an unstable surface (like the snow we've had!). So, when she came in today, I told her that I thought it was getting better - I had only had one incident of it giving out on me during the entire week, and that was when I slipped on the ice shovelling the drive. She gave me a very odd look, and that's when I knew that there was more to it than a small tear in the meniscus or a bone bruise!
She actually showed me on the MRI where the frayed ends of the ligament were, and what the posterior ligament looked like in comparison. No doubt about the diagnosis. I also have arthritic changes behind both my kneecaps (big surprise there, eh?), and quite a bit of blood in and around the right knee joint. The blood will dissipate, but the arthritic kneecaps are significant in case I do require surgery. I would require a donated ligament (from a cadaver) instead of being able to use my own ligament harvested from the patellar ligament. Blech.
Because of my musculature, she said that I am a good candidate for treatment by physical therapy only, that 30% of patients can manage just fine without the reconstructive surgery. Sounds good to me!! So it's physical therapy for at least 6 wks, then another evaluation to see if the knee has stabilized. If not, then we go to the next step. I'll worry about that when we get there, and work hard on the therapy!
In the mean time, TaeKwonDo is right out. No jumping up and down on one leg allowed! Or jumping from high places. Not that I can imagine myself *wanting* to jump from a high place, but she mentioned it, and I want to make a complete report!
Wed, 23 Jan 2002
That was the BEST fish dinner I've ever eaten. And we had several more meals courtesy of that shark! 'Ems GOOOD eatin'! Especially when you wrap that fat ol' shark steak in foil, drop in a bit of dill, some butter, and a squeeze of lemon and slap that baby on the grill.
Mon, 13 Nov 2000
