The Snap recap...

      Warning, the following post has pictures of myself without clothes. For those of you whom get too excited at unclad demigods please steady yourselves and proceed with caution, or perhaps not at all.

     Well it has been over two months since that fateful day upon the fifth day of the month of November last year and I still remain frustrated at the slow progress that I have made in healing. Frustrated because if I do not work I have no sick pay to fall back on, frustrated as I feel that I have let my clients down, frustrated that plans for our home, garden & garage have been put on hold and finally frustrated at having to let G take the strain of the day to day running of our home on her own as well as having to look after this miserable old git.  As you can imagine these pressures have allowed the Black Dog to sneak in to my head upon occasion but, if truth be told the bad days have been outweighed by the good ones so it is not all gloom and doom.

     A few days after the snap I had an x-ray taken to show the extent of the damage caused by free jumping off a ladder....

     Quite a nice picture of me showing my better side I think. The x-ray clearly shows the Snap in all its glory and the fact that the two pieces of the collar bone are in pretty good alignment. The consultant that I saw was pleased with the positioning of the bone and stated that I should be healed in about six weeks. So a month and a half I thought, could have been a lot worse thinks I......it was!

     So seven weeks after first speaking with the consultant I'm due another visit. I was definitely not healed and my shoulder, although I had regained seventy five per cent movement in my shoulder and arm, it still hurt like hell and lifting any sort of weight was completely out of the question. The first thing the consultant did was to send me for another x-ray...

     Not as clear as the first one I'm afraid, possibly due to fluid build up, but if you squint at the right hand side of the x-ray you can see that the two pieces of bone are at least half their width out of line, oh joy! The consultant was understandably not as enthusiastic as he was during my first visit but, to my surprise, after much prodding, checking my movement and knitting of brows he decided to let sleeping dogs lie and leave it alone as it had knitted together of a fashion. The downsides are another six to eight weeks healing was advised, there would be a large lump of new bone around the break which may affect movement and I wasn't offered any ice cream! (I always was as a child when hospital was visited). 

    That visit was on the twenty second day of the month of December and he wants me to return upon the eighth day of this coming month of February for another check upon the Snap's status. 

     The thing is that I have to admit to have being a tad naughty of late, bourn out of frustration, the fact that since the Snap I have gained nine pounds in weight, and my own impatience to be contributing here at the 'House in the rock'.  Just before the changing of the years I was feeling quite a lot better with the movement being a tad more free and with reduced aches and pains of my collar bone but not with my excess weight and a feeling of reduced strength, Soooo I have pushing myself to start 'doing a bit'. This has included some small jobs around the house, a start on clearing some crap out of the Orc's Workshop and a bit of walking. To my credit I have been careful, working much more mindfully and far more slowly than I am accustomed to, with only the odd piece of Anglo Saxon required due to pain from the Snap (and my knackered knees, damn the extra weight).

     Buoyed by these small steps I approached one of my local clients yesterday to ask if there was any light work that they required doing (its a big site), I start this Sunday so hopefully progress will accelerate after this, fingers crossed.

     Well that's about it in the saga of the Snap for now, so I shall leave you for the present.

 Take care folks, 

John the Gardener.