Peace with the Cage

As the time went on, I got brave. I started looking at my cage more and more. I didn't like it but I was going to have to live with it. I couldn't quite look at the pins going into my leg, but I could look at them. My friend knitted me a little Santa and we thought it'd be funny to attach him to my cage to make it look more festive.

The worst time to fall

On the 8th of December, I was admitted to hospital. I didn't leave until the 24th.
The date I fell was one of the busiest A&E days the hospital had seen in ten years. I was not a priority. Whilst I had decided I wanted the external fixation, I was not operated on until the 18th December. In those ten days I'd had around twenty injections, two blood tests and an IV line; not bad for someone who is terrified of needles.

Ward with the screaming ladies

After my x-rays and resetting, I was put in a hard cast and put on a ward until it was clearer whether I needed surgery or not. I am very frightened of hospitals and the past 24 hours seemed like something out of a horror film, but my situation did not get better. I was put on a ward normally reserved for ladies with dementia. I understand the illness of dementia, I have even wrote a paper on it but nothing could have braced me for the screaming in the nights. The elderly ladies would scream for hours on end, shout the most terrible things and call for their mothers. I'm not afraid to admit that for the first night on the ward, I sat and sobbed.

Eventually, the women were moved or taken home and while the ward grew quieter, it still remained hostile. Visiting hours were strict and not all my friends came to visit. I was 200 miles from my family and frightened. My partners job, while understanding of his situation, was a huge demand and my best friend could only make the morning visiting hours. I was lucky when my father, and later my mother, drove from Wales to see me and stayed past the visiting hours to calm me down.