I broke my leg

I broke my collarbone 3 days before starting school, then after 2 months, I finally got to play my first football game and coincidentally ended the match with a broken leg...

It was a cold Tuesday night with Penn Reserves facing Taplow and 40 minutes into the game a loose pass round the back from my team mate sends me moving slightly to my left for the ball, and as the ball reaches me the centre forward comes sliding recklessly into me with one foot hitting me half way up my leg. And snap, it was firework night and it most certainly sounded like a firework exploded when the tackle came in.

I personally did not realise anything had happened to me at this point, I tried to get back on my feet and carry on with the game, but my leg just flopped under my weight, hanging by a thread. Next thing I know, I fall to the ground and am swarmed by the management team. The tackle was a straight red card and the centre forward was sent off. At this point I had so much adrenaline running through me that I did not feel the pain too harshly, it was more of just a funny, tingling sensation running down my leg. I waited an hour and a half on a stretcher, in the tunnel for the paramedics, whilst I laid there in silence, freezing in the cold, listening to my manager's dreadful jokes. All the while my boots and socks were being cut off, absolutely ruined.

When the paramedics finally arrived, they gave me a load of pain killers as gas - I have never felt better in my life. It had seemingly brought me back to life and I felt as though I could walk again, it was brilliant. But this didn’t last for long. I was then moved into the ambulance and taken to Stoke Mandeville Hospital. The drugs made the journey feel like hours, and I remember being asked questions by the paramedics but not being able to move my tongue because it was so numb.

I got to Stoke Mandeville late at night, the doctor tried to manipulate my leg back into the correct position so I blacked out due to the pain. I could unconsciously feel the pain of them bending my leg around but when I came around my leg was encapsulated by this heavy white cast. Minutes later once they were happy with the work they had just done they sent me for a second X-ray to decide whether I would need an operation the next day or not, clearly the X-ray was not so promising.

I spent that next night in hospital, probably ending up with about 3 hours of sleep, it was not pleasant staying up all night thinking to myself that I would never walk again. First thing in the morning, the surgeon comes to my room and tells me that I am second on the list for an operation, I remember them telling me what I was going to have done but I was not listening at all, it is all a bit of a blur. I do remember being told at this point that I had broken both my tibia and my fibula. The surgery they were going to do was to put a metal rod through the bone marrow of the tibia and then screw it in at the ankle and around the knee, this would ensure that my bone would realign and that it would begin to mould back together. It would be a permanent fix in my body as it will remain within my leg forever, leaving nothing but a couple of scars.

I was told the operation would take one hour, and was given general anesthetic, it's staggering how quickly that stuff knocks you out. Faster than going to sleep. I then awoke 6 hours later back in my ward and relatively pain free, I had no cast on anymore it was just a bandage to protect the staples that were in my leg. I believe I must’ve had 24 staples in 5 different places in my leg. They are nothing like paper staples; they are small metal pins that hold together a long incision, nothing like a teacher's stapler.

I then spent the next day in the hospital with the nurses monitoring my recovery closely, from memory I went home on Thursday afternoon having spent Tuesday night, all of Wednesday and then most of Thursday cooped up in a hospital room.

When I got home I had to have regular injections of fragmin to prevent blood clots, my Dad, far from a licensed nurse had to inject me, that was probably where the most pain came from. Sleeping was awkward and difficult as I had to keep my leg elevated, but slowly day by day I began to recover. 10 days later I got the staples taken out which again, wasn’t pleasant.

I am now slowly beginning to walk again, but there is no doubt, the road to recovery will be a long and bumpy road.