Dismal attempt at Levitation

What started out as a simple tramp to a nice spot in the forest where we could eat lunch, quickly turned into an unexpected attempt at me trying to levitate in the air. Unfortunately poor practice, bad placement of body and gravity were all working against me.

Our time in Arthur’s Pass was good. However this is covered in another Blog entry. None the less around lunch time we decided that we wanted a nice place to sit and eat. So far we hadn’t seen any benches around. The tramp that we had discussed doing was probably going to take us a little too long, so we opted for a shorter walk. The board said that it was only 30 minutes, which was not too bad. Lunch at the Chasm, how cool would that be?

The track cut through the damp forest in little up-down-zig-zag lines. I had already noticed something interesting as we walked through the forest. My boots seemed to be battling to grip onto the wet undergrowth. It wasn’t something that was too worrying, at the time, just something that surprised me. I had expected better grip. Perhaps I was confusing them with older boots that I used to have. Making a mental note, I wanted to check the underneath of the boots to see if they had anything on them about slip or grip. In my mind I had a visual of an oval yellow mark that proudly announced that the boots were skid proof.

Suddenly we were through the track, standing on the edge of the churning river as it bouldered over the rocks in its path. Fiona walked down to the edge of the river, probably looking for a place to sit on the rocks. The large rock I was standing on sloped down at about 45 degrees, although I wasn’t paying too much attention to that, I was looking at the water. Suddenly both my feet shot out from under me. The damp and sand between the soles of my boots and the rock proving to be my undoing.

Over the next split second, I probably hung around in the air before gravity kicked in and sucked me back down onto the face of the rock. My lower back hit first, followed by my upper back. I must have tried to roll to my left, because I had slight graze marks on the outside of my left knee. Once I had made contact with the rock, gravity continued to suck as it pulled me down the length of the rock, down to where Fiona was standing. It was also the first time that my hands came into contact with the rock.

The pain was… well… seriously painful. An explosion of thoughts went through me. The first was probably … crap the boots have no grip. Second was, don’t break the new watch (okay it’s not new, but Fiona got it for me a little while ago). This is probably why I twisted to my left. I also realised that if my back was seriously injured then there was going to be a huge problem. I knew that a search and rescue unit would take ages to get a stretcher through the forest. It was going to be painful as hell and there was no-way that I was going to go through that to get out. As someone that I work with always says, it was time to “man up”. (i.e. quit moaning and just get on and do it).

Taking a deep breath I stood up and started to pace back and forth over the rocks. In my mind I needed to find the focal point of the pain and concentrate on it, but the pain was all over the place. Thankfully Fiona was holding the camera when I fell, because the small binoculars that I was carrying, now lay on the rock. (Note to self, remember to check if they are damaged or not?) The pain was unbearable, but because there was nothing that I could do about or nothing that I could take, I had to just walk it off. Kind of reminded me about an article I read a few months ago. A man who was shot in South Africa was told (by his doctor) to stop complaining and simply to walk it off! And that’s what I had to do.

After a little while the next wave came crashing over me. Instead of seeing stars before me, I had small puffs of clouds swirling around me. Then the nausea kicked in. From my limited (or lack) of medical knowledge I know that I probably banged my brain around inside my skull. I hadn’t hit the rock with my head, but I watched a documentary on the discovery channel about someone who had their brain badly bruised from being banged on the inside of the skull. I figured that I hadn’t received so much abuse, but it was still unsettling. Fiona was concerned about me, but when I get into this kind of situation I tend to block out those around me and focus on things that I need to do. It’s second time I have experienced this, the other was when I was choking on a piece of meat – but that’s another story.

Telling Fiona I was okay, I get to the side of river and washed my face with the water. It was clean, fresh spring water. Ice cold, but good.

During the little time between the fall and eating lunch I had worked out a few things. I had received more than just having the wind knocked out of me. The pain was pure white. At the same time I didn’t want Fiona to really know how injured I was – I wasn’t even sure. Because I could walk, it knew my spine was working. There was no searing pain as I walked, which also meant that there were no broken bones, cracks maybe, but nothing broken. Again these are things that I gathered from either watching TV or reading. Dang, who needs a edukashin!!!

By the time we got back to the car, the pain had eased off because I was ignoring it and I was focusing on a time when I wouldn’t have pain. Weird, I know, but something I use to overcome pain. Although climbing into the passenger seat, I rediscovered the pain again. In fact whenever something touched my lower back or tail bone, I remembered the pain.

It wasn’t until later that evening that I showed Fiona just how badly my lower back was swollen. Now Fiona wanted to take me home so that we could go to an emergency surgery. A little hard when you’re in just past Arthur’s Pass. The closest town, aside from Arthur’s Pass was either Hokatika or Christchurch. Either way it was well over an hour’s drive. I managed to convince Fiona that we should wait until the next day.

By the time we got home, after fetching Lauren from the youth camp, Fiona was again trying to convince me that it was time to go to the emergency surgery. Finally I agreed and off we went. It was easier to stand around waiting than sitting. The final diagnosis (after the doctor repeatedly pressing his finger into the base of my spine) was that there was no need to take x-rays because if the tail bone was broken (which I doubted) or cracked (more likely) there was nothing that they could do about it. There is no way you can put your back into a cast. So it was pain killers that they gave me instead.

The biggest problem was sitting for long periods. Which is great considering the work that I do… sitting for long periods… ;o)

Take care
later days
EsP