Ouch

Sorry about lack of posting, it's been a bit of a stressful week. I've been trying to finalise holiday stuff (I fly out next Monday), tie up a stack of loose ends at work before I leave for six weeks, and prepare for the preliminary final against Altona (we went down 3-2 and I'm not talking about it).

Worst of all, Dad got put in hospital on Monday, with a compound fracture of the leg.

He was up on the roof cleaning some of the boards around the back of the side deck (behind the chimney). The ladder collapsed from under him when he stepped on it. He did this while Mum was out - so he had to use the other ladder as a sort of walking frame to slowly drag himself inside the house, through the mezzanine, up the stairs to the lounge, and across to the phone to call Mum - who came home and instantly called an ambulance. Bones sticking through skin are generally not good news. He went to Leongatha hospital, where x-rays showed a swirl break in the tibia (near the ankle) and another break in the fibula (near the knee). They set things straight at Leongatha, but it needed surgery, and there's no orthopaedic surgeon in Leongatha. There was an orthopaedic surgeon in Traralgon, but no bed for him there. Same at Monash, and the reverse at Dandenong. Eventually they found both a bed and an orthopaedic surgeon at the Alfred hospital, where they operated at least ten hours after he'd broken it. They open up the leg near the kneecap, drill a hole all the way down the tibia, and drop a titanium rod down the length of the bone. A couple of screws to hold it in place, and you're done.

They also wanted to assist the healing process by putting him in a hyperbaric chamber, so he casually asked the doctors if he would be allowed to have a smoke while he was in there.

Precisely one of the eight doctors got the joke.

Ultimately he failed in the hyperbaric chamber after his ears started to implode when they'd only got to 20% of the normal operating pressure.

A second operation was required a week later, as it had got infected, and they needed to drain the wound of whatever junk was holding up the swelling, and he's now hooked up to a pump that continually sucks the stuff out of the leg, keeps him awake at nights, and prevents him from sneaking out the back door with the guy in the next bed (skiing accident) for a cigarette.

So, I'm very worried about him. These things don't heal so quick when your in your 50's. Although he could quite easily have broken a pelvis instead, which means he would have been lying out there till Mum had got home, and the internal bleeding could have well and truly got him by then. We will have stern words to him about what he is and isn't allowed to do on his own from now on. Again.

I just want him home before I leave. That's all.