![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Sofafellonitis
Oct. 30th, 2011 05:05 pmOr... the Sofa that Fell on I.
One of the perils of being an Aussie Bloke, is that you occasionally get asked/duped/'volunteered' into helping other Blokes move large items of furniture around. It's traditional & it's something we swear about, but it's something we have devoted countless Sunday mornings to over the years, on the understanding that, one day, you will be able to call on the same Blokes to help you...
Occasionally, of course, things don't go according to plan. Like today.
Manoeuvring a rather large sofabed down the front stairs of a Glebe terrace house, my lifting companion at the top of the stairs lost his hold on his end. Meaning I, walking backwards down the other end, suddenly had the full weight unexpectedly upon me. I dropped the sofa, it landed on my feet & I fell backwards down the remaining stairs & gracelessly onto the pavement outside.
You know how sometimes these accidents happen & you can pick yourself up, then check for injuries that are usually quite minor? Lying on the Glebe pavement, it took about five seconds for me to realise I wouldn't be doing that... my right foot was already informing me that all was not well. The pain was white-hot & knife-like & sent my vision into some weird kind of high-contrast overload where everything was waaay too bright all of a sudden. Oh dear... The last time I felt anything like that, I'd torn the lateral ligament in my left ankle after slipping in a puddle of water when trying to jayrun-don't-walk across the Hume Highway in Ashfield, so this new agony did not bode well.
After a little rolling around & grasping at fenceposts, I hauled myself to my feet & waited for the body to report in. Initial reports dismissed the ankle as a concern because I could stand upright without screaming & I could turn my foot a little without passing out. Three out of five toes could move without pain, the other two didn't feel like moving at all & the entire top of my foot was blazing away too much for the nerves to report anything more specific than "Aaarrgghh... Bloody Hell this hurts a f@%king LOT!!!". But I could stagger a few steps without falling over, so my inner Optimist hoped for nothing more than nasty bruising once the pain subsided... preferably some time very soon... please.
My L-SP & my lifting companion seemed far more worried than I was & insisted I sit down, but I'd just been doing that on the pavement & my instinct told me that staying upright & trying to move as much as possible would be better for me, but "Yes, a cold drink would be wonderful, thank you."
The nearest Medical Centre didn't have a free slot for another four hours, so I rang my local one & L-SP drove us away, with me lamenting that I hate leaving a job undone & who'd help our mate lift the sofa now?
So, now... back home with a bandaged foot, two painkillers & two Glenlivets to the good & a diagnosis of probably just some bruising but the option of an X-ray if it's painfully appropriate, I'm hobbling around semi-effectively hoping I've dodged the Serious Injury Bullet for another day. I've never broken a bone in my life & the only real damage I've sustained was six stitches in my left knee from a bicycle fall when I was 15 & the aforementioned ligament a few years back. And that's a relatively clean record I'm increasingly-with-age anxious to keep... as these sort of things get more expensive to deal with as you get older.
However, the WaitingMan Furniture Removal Service is temporarily unavailable.
One of the perils of being an Aussie Bloke, is that you occasionally get asked/duped/'volunteered' into helping other Blokes move large items of furniture around. It's traditional & it's something we swear about, but it's something we have devoted countless Sunday mornings to over the years, on the understanding that, one day, you will be able to call on the same Blokes to help you...
Occasionally, of course, things don't go according to plan. Like today.
Manoeuvring a rather large sofabed down the front stairs of a Glebe terrace house, my lifting companion at the top of the stairs lost his hold on his end. Meaning I, walking backwards down the other end, suddenly had the full weight unexpectedly upon me. I dropped the sofa, it landed on my feet & I fell backwards down the remaining stairs & gracelessly onto the pavement outside.
You know how sometimes these accidents happen & you can pick yourself up, then check for injuries that are usually quite minor? Lying on the Glebe pavement, it took about five seconds for me to realise I wouldn't be doing that... my right foot was already informing me that all was not well. The pain was white-hot & knife-like & sent my vision into some weird kind of high-contrast overload where everything was waaay too bright all of a sudden. Oh dear... The last time I felt anything like that, I'd torn the lateral ligament in my left ankle after slipping in a puddle of water when trying to jayrun-don't-walk across the Hume Highway in Ashfield, so this new agony did not bode well.
After a little rolling around & grasping at fenceposts, I hauled myself to my feet & waited for the body to report in. Initial reports dismissed the ankle as a concern because I could stand upright without screaming & I could turn my foot a little without passing out. Three out of five toes could move without pain, the other two didn't feel like moving at all & the entire top of my foot was blazing away too much for the nerves to report anything more specific than "Aaarrgghh... Bloody Hell this hurts a f@%king LOT!!!". But I could stagger a few steps without falling over, so my inner Optimist hoped for nothing more than nasty bruising once the pain subsided... preferably some time very soon... please.
My L-SP & my lifting companion seemed far more worried than I was & insisted I sit down, but I'd just been doing that on the pavement & my instinct told me that staying upright & trying to move as much as possible would be better for me, but "Yes, a cold drink would be wonderful, thank you."
The nearest Medical Centre didn't have a free slot for another four hours, so I rang my local one & L-SP drove us away, with me lamenting that I hate leaving a job undone & who'd help our mate lift the sofa now?
So, now... back home with a bandaged foot, two painkillers & two Glenlivets to the good & a diagnosis of probably just some bruising but the option of an X-ray if it's painfully appropriate, I'm hobbling around semi-effectively hoping I've dodged the Serious Injury Bullet for another day. I've never broken a bone in my life & the only real damage I've sustained was six stitches in my left knee from a bicycle fall when I was 15 & the aforementioned ligament a few years back. And that's a relatively clean record I'm increasingly-with-age anxious to keep... as these sort of things get more expensive to deal with as you get older.
However, the WaitingMan Furniture Removal Service is temporarily unavailable.
