One moment you pushing a post level attached with two tags on the ramp. The next moment you hanging in the air, post gone. You slowly see your way down, seeing the ground coming closer, especially that rock that was forming straight underneath. A big pointy rock that will haunt me in my nightmares. Doing a 180 degree turning my back to the rock ,i started to fear the worst. No matter how i tried , i couldn’t seem to do anything at my fall, couldn’t move my body to another direction, the bush of spinafix looks for the first time attractive to fall in. But no , the rock kept coming. The only thoughts i had , closing in to the rock were, please, not my spine, NOT my spine, NOT MY spine, NOT MY SPINE, …
then everything went really fast, time took another perspective, hit the rock rock hard by figure of speaking. Rolled to the side in the spinefix . First time in my life a damned spinefix didn’t bother me. The only thought i had was moving everything that’s movable at my body. Arms were moving, my legs were moving, fingers and neck. First peace of mind. Adrenaline was pumping trough my veins. But ‘damned ‘ did it hurt. Hard to catch a breath. Second worry, hope i didn’t broke any ribs or pierced my longs. Thanks to the help of my two workmates , i was more dragged then walked on the ramp again. I lay there for a while trying to catch my breath , but this didn’t happen. So there was just one solution, walking down the track and drive a 14 k’s on dirt to get to the first hospital. A community hospital full of female doctors and nurses. I was really to start thinking , this is my luckiest day in my life so far. First examination , looks positive, nothing broken or long piercing. But the safest way to proceed was having a x-ray or ultra sound. But being remote it’s another mission to find an X-ray or ultra sound. The closest nearby was 346 km away. So back on the road again. It was a good thing it was just 100 k’s of dirt and the rest bitumen. Thankfully they pumped a lot of painkillers in my blood, except morphine. My only chance to see what all the fuss is about morphine. The drive was still a bloody long one , counting the last k’s with the metre.
Arriving at the hospital, i was immediately taken care off. X-rays, ultra sounds, nurses, doctors and all female and super friendly. But the thing was , how better i get, the more the female company was changed by male doctors and nurses. So you can start asking yourself questions.But one night became two nights, and more tests were done. More x-rays , blood tests. I still had the working clothing on, and did’t had a shower since two days. I was starting to fit in with majority of the occupants of the hospital. But enough was enough , i was starting to smell myself. So i used all my charm that they would release me of the hospital, but it didn’t help, maybe if i had done it a day earlier , when i still had female nurses it would have work. The only thing that i achieved was getting a four hour escape from hospital, but at least it was a change to take a warm shower and jump, no , crawl in fresh washed shirt and short.
Updating my blog in a hospital room was not on my agenda in the last weeks that i had in Alice before i flew back to Europe for a couple of weeks.But rethinking every bit of it, i’m glad i ‘m doing it. I reckon this was a moment in my life ,that we call , the flip of a coin , or should i say the flip of a body. And happy the coin felt on the good side and still to be around.