Inevitable injuries

In case you didn't know about derby girl mentality, in my world:

Yes they are!

I was always a pretty accident-prone kid. I wasn't clumsy or anything and I don't think I bruise that easily, but I was always running around in the playground banging my shins into the monkey bars or falling over and getting scrapes or something like that. Once I fell on my head because I tried to swing off the monkey bars upside down and flip onto my feet, and of course I failed at that. My mother had a lot to put up with raising me, because pretty much every second day I would come home from school with some new cuts or bruises. But I was always really gung ho about pain and injury. Unless it was stupidly bad, I would keep going until I fell apart and/or had to go to hospital. One time I even got blisters all over the bottoms of my feet because I really wanted to play tag on the painted concrete tennis court we had at school, and I didn't have runners so I just took my school shoes off and ran in my socks, and my feet got all burned. I think I was six or seven years old. My mum had to pop the blisters on my feet that night when I got home.

Totally from punching.

Derby really brings out a similar attitude in me I think. I am usually not a pussbag or drama queen when it comes to injuries. Hell, I have a completely screwed up and cartilage-less knee because I was injured when I played hockey and still liked running so much I ground it all down. Stupid, I know. But anyway, I like getting new bruises sometimes because they are trophies of a sort. My league has an injury page where people can post of their pictures of bruises and cuts and whatever. There are some pretty impressive ones! I have permanent bruses on my knuckles from my wrist guards being a bit too long, but they aren't huge or anything, even if they are pretty original for where they are.

Anyway, this is one of my favorite pictures of my injuries:

In this picture:

Corked thigh, Recovering torn ligaments x2 and torn tendon, bruise from attempted baseball slide, Pulled groin muscle from plow stops, Gout/arthritis in my big toe knuckles, Blister scars from breaking my feet into my skates, bruise from a skate wheel to the shin, Ground down/no cartilage in my knee joint (prederby injury), Bruises from my gasket being too tight, Bruises from deflecting a soccer ball with my leg and a bruise from where I think I poked my leg and it bruised.

Other injuries aren't always that awesome. In the early days of training, we were doing speed laps and I fell over someone on my side and hurt my shoulder. At the time I thought it was just sore and whatever, and I continued on with doing laps. I think we had to smash out as many as we could in 5 minutes, so I kept doing that. All I got was a little bruise there though, so it didn't look so bad.

I tear my shoulder and all I get is this measly bruise?

But then I couldn't rotate my arms, like in a windmill. Actually, I couldn't even raise my arm anything really more than 60 degrees or something. It sucked. I went to the physio. The verdict: torn rotator cuff, and also torn bicep (where it joins my shoulder bones). Gah. It was awful. I couldn't do pushups or planks. In non-derby land, I also didn't have the strength in it to pull my seatbelt on in the car, or push a shopping cart. This was about 3-4 months ago maybe. My shoulder is still a bit sore, and definitely weaker than my other one. I can do pushups and planks and whatever else now, but even sleeping on it for too long is a bit painful. I know it's still recovering, but it still has time to go. I just really wanted to get back on skates. I didn't need to take time off skates, but I couldn't do a lot of the things we were doing at the time, like four point falls, or crawling through people's legs during stuck-in-the-mud. That sucked. But at least I could skate.

Then, two weeks ago, I was trying to whip Boudica and I fell backwards and smashed my head on the track. I thought I was fine, and I didn't feel like I needed to go to hospital then or anything. The moment my head hit the track, I kind of just saw these bright flashes and then I tried to get up (there's the 3 second rule, remember) and couldn't.

This is what stuff looked like when I was concussed

But at the time I could read stuff out loud without getting all garbled and confused, and my pupils were dialating or whatever. So it didn't seem that bad. I refused offers to be taken to hospital, and instead went to my office to do some work. I was reviewing a paper that I had written to send off to a journal, and I started getting really sleepy reading it. It was about 4pm. I thought maybe the paper was just mega boring or something and that was why I was getting tired. Then I decided to go home because I wasn't really being productive at work. I live five minutes away, but when I was driving I couldn't actually see the road. Like, my vision was all blurred and I had to concentrate really hard on the road in order to drive straight. That was super scary. I called my friend Chris and he drove to my house (since clearly I was in no condition to drive) and then he took me to hospital. The triage nurse was a derby fan, so that was awesome, and we had a pretty good talk. Haha. Apparently I had problems spelling things when I checked in, and I couldn't recall my phone number properly. But yeah, resting up and having some ibuprofen and everything seemed to work out okay. I am probably still mildly brain damaged or something though (which isn't that great for my non-derby life, since I need my brain to finish my Ph.D.)

Gratuitious ass shot, with Batman underpants!

On training at Tuesday we were scrimmaging, and it was fantastic. I love scrimmaging. I can usually get through the pack really quickly, and I also had my first proper turn being lead jammer! I made several passes before I called it, but it was awesome to be able to do that on my first jam. I also took a bunch of pretty hard hits and fell a few times and got some mighty ass bruises. The colours are just coming up as I write this. They're pretty awesome. And they match!

But anyway, back to scrimmaging. There I was, skating away and jamming my little heart out. Then, about four jams in, two people stacked in front of me. I tried to avoid them but fell. I stacked but not badly, so I was thinking I could get up and skate around them before they got up. But when I was getting up, I took two steps and rolled my ankle. Fucksauce. They had to blow four whistles. Seriously, I couldn't even lift up my leg to rotate it to see whether anything was broken. Two years ago I rolled my other ankle playing soccer, and tore two ligaments and a tendon, so I know how it feels, and it certainly felt pretty much the same when I tried to skate. I had to sit out for the rest of training on the sidelines, icing my ankle and sulking because I couldn't scrimmage. About ten jams later, I had been icing it for a while and I thought I'd test it out. I asked Sarge if I could go back on. Our conversation went something like this:

Me: Hey Sarge, can I go back in and skate?

I did get a nice hand-meat bruise though.

Sarge: I don't know, can you?
Me: Sure I can! I want to skate.
Sarge: Okay, stand up then.
(I stand up)
Sarge: Stand on one leg.
(I stand on my munty leg)
Sarge: Move your weight around like you are doing a one-leg slalom.
(I do that, and try to look as if my leg isn't hurting like the dickens)
Sarge: Well, if you think you can do it, put your skates on.

I put my skates on. Then I take like two steps, and with the added weight of my skates on, pain is seriously shooting up from my ankles. It was awful, like I was gasping so much from the stabbingness in my ankles and up my legs that I couldn't even swear properly. Instead, I just had to sit back down, take my skates and helmet off, and then go and watch Sarge give everyone else a pep talk in the huddle. Lame. At least I could be useful as bench bitch, I guess. But there was seriously no way I could skate. In fact, there is seriously no way I can currently skate. This sucks.

And what is worse is there isn't even any bruising to show for it. Gah.

This is what my legs look like right now:

Stupid compression bandage. But lesson learned: I need to listen more to my body when it is screaming at me because I am putting it through a whole world of pain. Otherwise, I will just put myself into a situation when I'm going to get MORE injured, and that will mean MORE time off skates. And that is just too much sadface for me to handle.