A Belly Flop on the Ice

Last Tuesday I took my two daughters ice skating while on vacation in Florida, and foolishly accepted a challenge from my eldest (who is almost 11 to race her).

Now I will never make a great ice skater, in fact I am an awful skater, being one step away from having to hold on to the side, and I have only ever skated about 20 times in my life as well.

However, I took up the challenge, and just seconds later found myself doing what can only be described as a "belly flop" onto the ice, which knocked the breath out of me quite literally.

Being in my mid fifties and weighing about 240lbs, my hands did little to lessen the impact of my fall, and so I went down flat on my chest, bruising my ribs, and pulling some muscles in the process.

As a result, I can't sit up without pulling myself up, the muscles just aren't strong enough, but the worst thing is that practically any movement in my upper body places stress on my ribs, and causes a lot of pain.

Of course being on vacation with two pre-teen girls means that you can't just sit and do nothing, so I spent a lot of time with them in the pool last week, but couldn't swim or have them grab on to me as they like to do unfortunately.

Any movement that puts pressure on my ribs is extremely painful, such as lifting anything, bending or stretching, or even being hugged.

Trying to sleep has been a nightmare, since the pain if I try to lie on my front or my back is excruciating, and it's so bad that I can't breath. Instead, I have to try and lie on my side, which involves sitting on the bed, taking a deep breath, then trying to lower my top half onto the bed, which of course would usually use the muscles to control my rate of descent, instead of which I am just falling, which hurts a lot.

Changing position in bed requires me to try and sit up, and since I don't have the strength in my torn muscles to do that, I have to slide my legs out of bed, lift my knee, grab hold of it and try to use gravity to rock myself forward, while taking a deep breath and holding it. Trust me, it's painful.

I had thought that the pain was easing slightly, but then Saturday it was time to return to the UK, which meant lugging heavy bags out of the condo that we rented, into the car, on and off shuttles, in and out of the airport, in and out of overhead bins on the plane, and then into the house when we got home.

A 9 hour night flight provided my only relief in one way, since I didn't have to try and lie down while I slept, but I decided anyhow to go to the Emergency Room after I got home, just to make sure there was nothing else going on that I needed to be concerned with.

As a result I am now on a combination of Codeine and Paracetamol to try and help ease the pain, but I am probably going to be pretty uncomfortable for the next six weeks.

Bodily functions that shake your insides, like hiccupping, sneezing, coughing and even laughing, are just too painful, and for the last few days, every time I went to sneeze, I was unable to breath deeply enough for the sneeze to happen, so for about 30 seconds there would be a pattern of breathing in quickly, followed by a groan of pain, repeating until the sneeze decided that it wasn't going to happen.

I tried to catch up on my email this morning and read a joke that I found funny. That hurt far more than was worth the effort, so I think I will save up the rest of the jokes for a while, at least until I can laugh without grimacing in pain as a result.

There are quite a few morals to this story, more than just not taking up a challenge when you might put your health at risk. They include not overeating and allowing yourself to get overweight, especially as you get older, since injuries like this take longer to heal the older you get, and sometimes they don't heal fully. Even though I can see the funny side of this injury, it's patently obvious that laughing isn't always good for you.