The problem with falling

I am a climber, or Maybe I should correct that and say that I am a faller.

I'm bored. That is why I am blogging. I am not a computer geek. I don't watch T.V or at least I didn't till this week, now that is all changing.

I fell from this ridge and pendulummed into a slab a rock hitting it right ankle first. It popped on impact and an explossion of pain ricocheted through my body. Suddenly a scream burst from knowhere and before I could think or stop myself I was bellowing "arghhhhhh" at the top of my lungs over and over. I looked at my ankle and foot, my right foot was pointing oddly to the left, as I grabbed it, it popped again, the pain lessened incredibly.

I stopped screaming as sudden as I started, it was about this time that I realised I was hanging on the end of the rope with a very significant amount of free space beneath me. By this point I had scared the hell out of my climbing buddy (Mark) who had seen me fall, heard me scream and now heard only silence! Thinking I had gone unconscious on the rope he had tied my rope off and escaped from the system in order to try get a better look to see if I was ok. It was at this point that I shouted "climbing". There was something that dawned on me whilst I was hanging there on the rope that said..."if you don't get yourself out of this mess now, you won't get out of it...you got yourself in this mess, you can get yourself out".

It also dawned on me that hanging in a harness leads to the same kind of problems of crush victims, so you can die on the rope. Unlikely in this situation because I was conscious but a motivational thought to get the hell out all the same.

(I fell from the blue cross to the red cross, breaking my ankle at the red cross, climbed out over the dotted route with a recked ankle).

So there I was, climbing. Climbing minus one leg. The right ankle didn't feel right, I had either dislocated it or fractured it, I wasn't sure, either way it wasn't right. I also refused to look at it. I didn't think it would help to see what I had done. The pain had been unreal, I knew it wasn't good. I never knew your body allowed you to feel that much pain, I thought you would just pass out. Looking back I don't know how I climbed. It wasn't easy. I hauled myself up with my arms, used my knee on occasion and balanced on my good foot. I was dizzy and starting to feel spaced out. My heart was also racing. But ask me to climb that route now (broken) and I couldn't. It was like survival instinct kicking in.

By the time I reached Mark I was crawling on hands and knees.

"Are your arms ok?" he asked...

"yeh" I replied. It hadn't occured to me that I could have broken an arm too.

"What have you done...?"

"Hurt my ankle" I muttered, thinking; understatement of the year.
I flopped down and stared at the sky waiting for my head to stop spinning. I felt nauseous.

Mark abseiled down and got the gear I had been unable to get out while I lay there cursing myself for falling off and for hurting myself. No kayaking for me in the Alps in 3 weeks! Mark told me to belay him but he actually abseiled down and prusicked back on a different bit of rope. Mark getting me to belay was an attempt to distract me from the pain and make sure I wasn't phasing out.

What would work say...? Would I lose my job? I thought

"Can you weight bare?"

"No" Merely putting my foot on the floor sent waves of nausea through my body. It didn't even feel like my foot existed. A bit like when you've sat in a funny possition and your leg goes "dead" and fails when you stand on it.

Slightly inconvenient I thought...it's 4pm on a hot and sunny afternoon in June. Our packs are 100m below us at the bottom of the crag. This wasn't going to be a long climb. We would have climbed and walk down back past our packs. The seriousness of the situation dawned on me....

Breaking an ankle falling off a kerb is soo much more simple, at least your only 20mins/ half an hour from help. We were sat on the side of a mountain...and I couldn't walk!

Part 2 -