Three I'll mention:
1. Playing football for a team when I was around 11 and the pitch we were playing on was at a local public park. I'm naturally a winger and was running with the ball down the line when a larger boy decided to shoulder barge me. There was a fence literally only about three yards away from the edge of the pitch and as I was losing my balance I reached out and grabbed it with a reflex action, little did I realise when I clenched down that the fence was barbed wire...
Some 20 years later, the scar on my middle finger, where I have no feeling around the knuckle is still pretty recognisable!:
2. Broke my left ankle not a couple of years after the barbed wire incident - also playing football, but it wasn't as bad as the latest one...
3. Early November last year (three months ago), playing football and I was through on goal, with my side already winning by four goals with less than five minutes left in the game. lifted my right leg back to shoot and some idiot decided to try to clear the ball from behind going between my legs (rather than from the side which is the acceptable tackle of that nature). He badly mis-timed it, and instead of taking the ball went straight through my standing leg which had my entire weight on it. Result was multiple breaks and a section of the ankle completely detached, with the place where the section was detached being partially crushed. They didn't discover the crush until during surgery, which prolomged the surgery longer than they hoped as each time they tried to reattach the detached area and screw it back in with a titanium screw it warped out of position. Result was they had to compromise by not screwing it loose so it would stay and heal in the correct position, with being tight enough to actually bond back with the main section. Then after surgery I had a bad reaction to a drug I was given that it turns out I have an allergy to (oxy-norm), and nearly died - was hooked up to machines for about 14 hours.
Prospects and long term prognosis for the leg were not good...
Fast forward three months to now. Everything has come along much much better than everyone thought, everything is healing well, I got rid of my crutches a few weeks ago and was given a walking stick, then last week managed to get rid of that too, so am walking unassisted. Still a fair bit of physio to go (another 2 months probably), but I'm on schedule for getting back about 95% of my original range of motion from an original prediction of as little as 50%. Can't believe how well (and quickly) everything has progressed!
I'm aiming to get back to both running and football by the end of June, which is nothing short of a miracle.
Here are a couple of photos of me in hospital after the op, then at home doing my own physio on the rowing machine (you can see the scar), and the latest x-rays where you can make out one of the breaks, and see the titanium screws that are at each side of the leg. :
Favourite racing series: F1, Indycar, NASCAR, GP2, F3, Formula E, Trophee Andros, DTM, WTCC, BTCC, World Endurance... etc. etc.
