On a summers day in 2010 my life changed! I was in 6th year at Park Mains High School (Erskine, Scotland), in my final/leavers week to be exact. I was casually outside the school theatre playing football (playing wally) with some friends when I had a traumatic experience, I will not be forgetting about it anytime soon let me tell you that!
I was playing on a pathway that ran alongside (the now knocked-down) theatre when the ball came to a halt on the ground. Perfectly positioned for a strike (or so I thought) I took a swing at it. I managed to connect with the ground more than the ball! At the time I wore 'pointy' suit style shoes. Later on I've found that the ball came to a rest on an uneven slab! The tip of my shoe caught the upturned area of the slab, before dragging my foot directly toward the earth, all whilst I was trying to smack a football full pelt off a wall! You can imagine what happened. No? Well let me tell you exactly what went down (Don't worry; I have pictures to show you! Haha).
After hopping down to the school reception (alone I will add), I was driven to the hospital by my good friend A*. I sat in A&E at the Southern General Hospital, Glasgow for about an hour before seeing nurse number 1. At this point I had not taken my shoe off (Wouldn't have been able to get shoe back on because swelling would have occurred, or something like that). I knew I had "broken" my toe back at school, but what I faced was a little bit worse than that! Shoe came off and then the sock.......all I could see was blood, and my toe literally hanging off with a bone sticking out. My toe is actually twitching just writing and thinking about this again, ha!
It turned out, after x-rays etc etc that I had a compound fracture of the great toe. Basically, I had snapped the main tendon in the toe which allowed the bone to pierce the skin which led to fractures of the toe. It looked gruesome. I was treated by two consultants who after injecting the toe with 10+ injections, tried to manoeuvre and wiggle the bone back inside the toe, even under the anaesthetic this was agony! They couldn't do it, surgery was the only option. I went into a ward and wasn't to eat for 24 hours, so my operation was supposed to be the next day. They couldn't get me in the next day, so I waited even longer without food. Finally starving and in pain, I was taken down and put under general anaesthetic (Put to sleep, knocked out etc)."10, 9, 8, 7........ZzzzZzzzzz".
Since then I have a gigantic toe, swollen with scar marks of the surgery. Got arthritis in it and it takes a pounding playing football, which is not ideal for me as I love my sport!
Big thanks to the staff of the Southern General in Glasgow. Thanks to everyone that helped me out back at the school as well (and A*).
Thanks folks
G x
GRAPHIC images coming up, look away if queasy!
(X-Ray)
(1st sight of the toe after sock came off, sick!)
(The shiny thing is the bone!)
(K-Wire Pin through the whole toe and stiching)
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