Hello everyone

You may have noticed a little delay in my posting schedule this month. For those that don’t know I broke my right wrist on holiday and am now typing with my left hand and only about 2 fingers as I have never been a proficient typist anyway. I am right handed so this has been more of a blow than last year’s accident, if any of you remember back I broke my left wrist on holiday in Morocco, at more or less the same time of year. Last year I knew right away it was broken and was taken to a hospital where they operated and put a metal splint in my arm, which is still there and once I’d finished physio, my left wrist hasn’t been a problem at all. This year’s holiday was a campervan trip with myself, hubby and dog, in which we travelled down through France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and Switzerland and finally reaching Northern Italy where we stayed a few days before turning round and coming home. I fell on the last night in Italy, it had rained a little and on returning from the shower block I slipped on wet tiles and apparently flipped in mid air twisting away from my left arm, unconsciously protecting it I guess, and landed on my right. It hurt, it hurt such a lot, a very nice chap who had seen me go down rushed over with an ice pack and I spent the night with that on my wrist.

• a sprain hurts more than a break, yes this hurt more than last year’s break,
• It was still in a straight line, last year my wrist was hanging in a rather disturbing manner (I am sure it is still bent in a funny way, but it works fine and that’s the main thing).
• It swelled up, sprains do that.

Anyway, we returned nice man’s ice block in the morning, bought a bag of frozen peas, and set off on the return journey, with me vowing never to wear flip-flops again. We had worked out I was wearing the same flip-flops of doom the year before too. I took pain killers for the rest of the journey home, each day more convinced that it was a sprain. We bought a sling from Switzerland as we passed back through it, our home-made attempts were not really helping too much, and a lovely bruise was coming out, but the pain was subsiding, and I was getting movement back into my fingers. Having had a broken wrist the year before, the medicine box was quite well supplied with left-over pain killers. We got back to England 6 days later and I went to Drs just to check, but mainly to get the results of some tests I had done before the holiday. Sadly, though she took one look at me and sent me for an x-ray in hospital. The x-ray person, there must be a long name for them, but I can’t think now, took one look and said it’s broken, how long have you been walking around like this? with horror in her voice. Then sent me to A&E and, after a rather long wait, the Dr there decided to try to re-align it, which meant breaking it again, as it had already started to knit, and pulling back into line. After a local anaesthetic and laughing gas, I can definitely say I would not recommend this procedure to anyone. It was nasty! Well the long shot of that was re-aligning it didn’t work well enough, so after seeing a specialist a couple of days later, I was put on a rolling waiting list to get in and operated on as soon as possible. Thursday, also my birthday, I spent the day in hospital, waiting, hungry and thirsty, only to be sent home. But then on Monday I was in and the operation went ahead, yay. So now I am really on the mend this time, I am in a cast for 4/5 weeks I think, and I believe I have wires in my wrist that will be pulled out then and I will do some weeks of physio and be sent on my merry way. In the meantime I have bought left-handed scissors, but will spend most of my time refreshing my website, Etsy shop and sleeping, these painkiller really knock me out. 

Lessons learnt:

• never wear flip-flops on wet tiles.
• Left handed scissors are real, and necessary for left handed people, you can’t use right handed scissors with your left hand.
• Don’t listen to google on health issues, it will either frighten you unnecessarily or make you ignore something you should do something about.

So, this will hopefully explain my absence, and also excuse my tardiness over the next few weeks.

Would you like to read more about our adventures in the van? I would like to start writing up little pieces of our adventures in the camper van, as I always have a doll with me and do try to take some nice photos that I would love to share. I am thinking of calling them ‘Honey Travels’, Honey being one of the dolls I take around with me. What do you think? Or there’s ‘Out of the Pot’, can you think of a better title?

Until next time

hugs

Ally