Rubber thingies and broken bones

In honour of his foot/leg’s second anniversary, Sir Pe was obviously bored at work kind enough to snap this photo for you of his rubber thingies. The ones with nails that you put on the bottom of your shoes and strap around your ankle. Even if you fell over, you would need all the skills of a yogi in order to impale yourself on them. But good luck trying.

Actually, you if you really wanted some home-made acupuncture, then I would advise going with the Leki stick. It’s got a sharp little spike that you can pull out when needed – it gives you extra grip on the ice. Actually, I was quite impressed to see that the crutches Sir Pe came home with (after his fall two years ago) also had these spike contraptions on them.

Anyway – back to the saga: on the night that Sir Pe came crashing to the ground, so did lots of other people. In fact, Sir Pe found himself in the waiting room of the hospital next to a colleague of his!

“See you around the office?”

“Not for a while…”

Instead of the usual eight falls a night, there were 42 on the night of that snowstorm. So, as you can imagine, patients were stacked up in the corridors because there was nowhere else to put them. (I imagine Michael Moore would have had a field day in there!) Sir Pe spent the first night in the corridor.

The next day and night saw him still waiting for his operation, but at least he was moved up to the deluxe accommodation. He was put into the medial supplies store room. He told me he quite enjoyed it as he got a lot of company from the doctors and nurses who kept popping in to fetch the bandages and drugs. (I’m sure he liked it because he kept inhaling….) As no one knew when he was going to be operated on, he wasn’t allowed to have any food. So, for three days he was kept on a drip with a sugar-salt solution topped up with morphine.

He was moved to a ward on the third day and – finally – got his operation that evening (i.e. three days later). The doctor had been working for two days with no rest, so it’s no wonder the bones didn’t set properly. Well, at least he got the correct leg!

What strikes me as slightly ironic is that there is a craze over here in Sweden for beds of nails. Yes, beds of nails that you might associate with India. People lie on them or stand on them. Supposed to be very therapeutic. And expensive.

Modern bed of nails

Rubber thingies

Can you see the similarity between the nail bed and the nail soles for your shoes? Next time you want some therapy, just give me a call and, for a reasonable fee, I’ll come over and walk on your back with  my rubber thingies.