Yesterday was my grandson’s fourth birthday party; he’s very much into dinosaurs and on the spur of the moment,- I volunteered to take part in the entertainment - his other grandad was feeling too tired and hot after performing in some dancing games, dressed in a self-inflating T-Rex suit, so I leapt at the chance to stand in. It turns out that dancing and running around inside a tiny, poorly ventilated dinosaur-shaped tent is hot and exhausting work, but I enjoyed it and everything seemed OK.
I didn’t get the chance to drink very much until we were on the way home (a 2 hour drive in the afternoon after driving out there in the morning), but I drank a bottle of some fruity fizz drink on the way home and had some water when I got back.
In the late afternoon, we took the dog out for a walk and I was still feeling hot and tired, but otherwise OK. I stepped half-on, half-off the raised edge of a paved path and felt my ankle turn under me as my full weight came down on the joint - there was a bright flash of light in my vision as well as the intense pain. As I fell, my left shin came down across the same edge of the pavement and grazed the skin, severely from top to bottom.
I righted myself, but remained seated on the edge of the path, catching my breath and waiting for the pain to subside and I felt my hands and toes tingling, and a wave of nausea and faintness washing over me.
The next thing I remember is three people waking me from a very lovely sleep that was filled with random pleasant thoughts; apparently I had slumped forward in my seated position and stopped breathing (probably due to the position I contrived to slump into). Two of our friends had happened along just at that moment and wrestled me over onto my side, but apparently I didn’t resume breathing until the point where I woke hearing the three of them (including my wife) calling my name and moving me.
This happened on a rough, rural country lane; one of the friends called for an ambulance the moment I had fallen unconscious and it arrived only a couple of minutes later; the ambulance crew checked me over, got me inside the van and checked blood pressure (OK), checked blood glucose (OK) and hooked me up to ECG (not OK - there were abnormalities of some sort in the trace) - by this time I was also sweating uncontrollably and vomiting (which also gave the paramedics concerns about potential heart issues)
Everyone was naturally concerned whether I had hit my head (I hadn’t), or if the fall might have been preceded by the nausea/dizziness (it wasn’t)
They rushed me off to A&E where I was seen and triaged quite quickly, but they were busy, so the whole process took all night - they took bloods (tricky because I was dehydrated and they couldn’t find a vein at first) and checked for cardiac problems, put me on saline, x-rayed my twisted ankle and cleaned and dressed my massive shin graze. Gradually I started feeling better.
No broken bones, no cardiac issues - in the end the conclusion was exhaustion (from the full-on day plus dinosaur dancing) plus dehydration, plus the sudden pain of the injury had put me into shock. I was there most of the night. I’m much better today now I am properly hydrated and somewhat rested, but my left leg looks like a no-cheese pizza.
I’m kind of surprised at myself for not realising I was so dehydrated, but my main takeaways from this whole incident are:
Firstly, the NHS is frickin awesome. Although they were busy and clearly stretched very thin, I received excellent care and everyone involved was just brilliant.
But also, note to future self: if I find myself in a similar situation again, don’t sit with knees up and head cradled between them - better to just lie straight down in the recovery position, or at least sit so as to collapse onto my side. If I’d been walking alone and had collapsed in that slumped forward position, I might not have been here to write this.
