19 February 2013

Don't touch the yellow leg


Let me tell you about my Horror Kids Ministry Injury.  Since my last blog post on stupid injuries I've done Horror Sticky-Tape Dispenser Injuries and Horror iPad Injuries but this was something else.

One Sunday morning in January, Mr de Elba and I were running some kids ministry activities at church.  The deal was I would lead some songs from the stage, and then Mr de Elba would present the story and activities.  Our first song was:
which you might notice has quite a long introduction.  I used the introduction to move around among the kids encouraging them to dance and clap (while looking quite lame myself I am sure, but I care not) and then before I knew it, the first verse was coming up fast.

I moved to the front and gracefully leapt up onto the foot-high stage ...

... except I didn't.  I found myself face-down on the stage with a terrible pain in my shin.  During that bit where kids are supposed to be singing, "He's the one who makes the sun shine..." there was instead a shocked pause while kids and attending adults put their hands to their mouths and whispered, "Is she okay?"  I knew I'd missed the step and done a howler of an injury, but there was little to be done except jump up with a false smile plastered on my face and see the song out.

I stood up, shrugged my shoulders and sang, "He's the one who hung the stars" while commanding myself not to look at my shin until the end of the song.

I could barely stand.  I put my weight on the other leg for the whole song while doing the actions, and at the end I finally looked down.  There was a huge scrape extending up most of my shin, with rapidly swelling mauve-ness covering both the bone and muscle.  Mr de Elba didn't know how badly I'd been hurt and suggested we do a few more songs.  I saw out three songs while standing on one leg, trying not to cry or say something terrible, then I hobbled off to find some ice.

In the furthest reaches of the furthest freezer in the furthest room of the church I found the only ice in the town (or so it seemed) - a lone orange icy-pole.  I wrapped it in a dishcloth, hobbled back to the kids room and elevated my leg while moving the icy pole every minute to ice parallel strips of my rapidly swelling purple leg.  The stage had messed up the bone and the muscle and both were radiating an angry painful heat that made me wonder if amputation could be of any help.

After church, I knew I'd done something awful.  I considered medicating with (A) paracetamol, then (B) paracetamol+codeine, but settled instead for (C) a nice rose Moscato. And because you really shouldn't go mixing your Moscatos with your codeines, I was unable to try option B as things worsened.  (Option A was discarded as a complete waste of time.)

That night was painful, and I began my week-long love affair with ice packs.  The next day, as Crazy Sister will bear witness, I was quite incapacitated.  But it wasn't until the day after that I woke up and found I couldn't weight-bear.  I grabbed doors as I staggered down the hall to the bathroom, I only got the children their breakfast by using Rex's wheeled high-chair as a zimmer frame to help me stagger around the kitchen, and I begged Mr de Elba to work from home to mind the children while I went to the doctor.

My lovely doctor made me scream.  He sent me to a radiologist who also made me scream.  I begged two lovely friends to take over the child care and went back to the doctor who looked at the x-rays and said the most amazing thing I'd heard in a long time: "It's not fractured."  I felt like a big hopeless sook with my hobbling and screaming and boo-hoo.

I went home to abstain from Moscato so I could focus on codeine and ice, lie on my couch and be hopeless for a week while reminding my children to "MIND THE PURPLE LEG!"

The bruise, which certainly SHOULD have been violent shades of purple, blue, green and black to lend credence to the level of pain I was experiencing, only ever got to "mauve-ish" on the Colour Wheel of Bruising.  After a week I could weight-bear, by which time it was changing to yellow and I spent the next three or four weeks reminding my poor children to "MIND THE YELLOW LEG!" This sort of smash injury to a muscle can be painful for quite a long time at five and a half weeks post-humiliating injury, it's still pretty sore.  Swimming has helped a little, and I can walk without trouble so the residual pain doesn't bother me too much.

It is a mark of my commitment to kids ministry that I didn't change churches, but stayed on to face the same children and, more humiliating, the same parents who saw me do it.

Now, would you like to hear about my Horror Sticky-Tape Dispenser Injury or Horror iPad Injury?  Or just see pictures of Buzz, Jessie, Woody and Rex variously starting school/kindy/swimming/ballet/looking adorable? Or none of the above?

5 comments:

Tracy P. said...

OWWWW!!! I have been that humiliated before, but probably not in that much pain at the same time. While a cast might have legitimized the extent of your pain and disability, I'm glad you ended up not needing one. I, of course, want pictures, but I AM pretty curious about how you could injure yourself on an iPad.

gartcott aka Penny Hannah said...

OooooowwwwwwwwwwwwCH!!!! Poor Kate. I was beginning to wonder if you had decided to become a hermit hermitress?] as you seemed to have vanished completely from all forms of technology, and here you were SUFFERING. What a rotten thing to happen AND in public view too. As to what comes next? - the whole lot you mentioned.

Unknown said...

Ouch! I'm sorry. You were much braver than I. I would have demanded dr attention immediately!

Hippomanic Jen said...

You poor thing. I hope you're up and dancing in no time flat.

PS I REALLY need to make a trip to Toowoomba sometime. Probably won't be in March.

Allegro ma non troppo said...

It still looked awful, in spite of the lack of lurid colours. It was huge mauve insidiousness. And it's still hurting? My goodness, that's awful.

If you post the iPad injury, can you include the card I gave you? I still can't believe it was right there in the newsagent, waiting to be bought just for you and that particular injury!