My back was really stiff and painful when I woke up the next morning – it took a while to work out a way of getting out of bed after many too painful attempts.
Once I’d started moving around, the pain eased off a bit and I rode the train to the office as planned the next day, even walking into the city at lunchtime, to go and buy some bath salts and check out the Christmas market.
Found a sitting position that made it OK to work at the desk, with regular trips to the coffee machine when the back started to stiffen up.
On the second day back in the office, as there seemed to be no improvement, a colleague recommended an orthopaedic doctor that she had used in the past; she even rang them up for me and booked an appointment for the next day, when I was due to be on holiday as my mum was arriving for a long weekend enjoying the Christmas markets, sampling apple wine and green sauce.
At the doctor’s the next morning, I was expecting him to say it was bruised muscles and to recommend some painkilling cream and lots of massages.
He didn’t say much as he examined me and watched as I stretched and tried to turn. He had an X-Ray machine in the practice though, and it was a complete shock when he showed me the picture on his PC monitor – one of the vertebrae was completely fractured and unstable L
The fracture was of the 12th Thoracic vertebra marked ‘Th12’ on the diagram
The doctor told me that there was no choice and no time to waste – I had to go immediately to the hospital, he expected that they would need to operate to fix the fracture and stabilise the spine. The receptionist had already called a taxi to take me to the hospital.
I called my wife and told her what was happening - she caught a tram with my mum to the hospital where we met up in the waiting area outside the surgical department.
It was becoming very clear that this was extremely serious and could end up taking a while to be sorted out……….
No comments:
Post a Comment