Now, I’m no doctor (though obviously I should be) but as far as I can surmise it appears that I did manage to send my body into something that resembled shock over the weekend. What follows are the events that led to my body’s confused state (listed chronologically so you can replicate them should you have some masochistic bent), combined with my highly scientific suppositions, dumbed down into language you will understand and that I can spell.
Friday afternoon – Time is spent mucking around on a beach with a frisbee. Fun is had. This though is as close to strenuous exercise that my body has experienced in some time. Paunchy though I may be, my working day mainly involves my wandering about carrying stuff, running up and down stairs and other non-sedentary activities. That’s enough to stop my childish diet of crisps and sweets turning me into a mahoossive bloater, but it doesn’t tax my tendons as much as, say, running around on sand after bits of flying plastic. During discus based frolics, said disc catches a gust of wind and I find myself on top of a sand dune, searching for it amongst the pampas. Frisbee is found and I decide that running down the dune would be the best way to get down again. This proves to be the case until I spy, a little too late, a loop of wire sticking out of the sand, its apex at at about knee height. With a dull inevitably, I plough into the thankfully unbarbed metal and let loose a shamefully girly yelp that is thankfully carried away unheard by the wind, preserving what little dignity I possess. At around this point or at least shortly afterwards, my body begins to start trying to mend the damage caused to my leg. Upon examination a while later, the knee has swollen up quite a bit and turned a bright crimson. Thankfully the skin seems unbroken, but kneeling is only possible on a single knee. Walking is fine, as is running as the frisbee play continues upon the beach and indeed in the garden where we are staying after our return. Nevertheless, the knee continues mending itself with blood and and nerves and shit. This is the science part. It’s important, right. Remember it.
Saturday – Awake feeling alright, if a wee bit chilly. The house has no central heating and After jumping from bed into clothes I discover my breath to be visible. The morning passes without much in the way of events, as does the early afternoon. Mid-afternoon, things begin to go awry. While sitting in the lounge – the room with a fire and thereby the warmest in the building – I began to notice some level of pain in my lower legs. At first I assumed this might be related to the knee (still reddened and swollen at this point – magical inside not germ beasties still doing their healing work), until I realising that it was more likely to be my muscles reacting to the exercise of the previous day. Not reacting terribly well either. Within an hour of this I also begin to notice a certain churning in my stomach. Not great, thought I, but presumably nothing to particularly worry about. Having arranged to go on a brief excursion later in the afternoon and having not left the house at this point in the day, I put these minor quibbles to one side and hopped in the car. Throughout the journey, my limbs continued to stiffen somewhat while my stomach’s churning intensified to the extent that I became vaguely worried that I’d lose any semblance of colon control in the back seat. Fortunately we had to pick up groceries in a nearby supermarket which was large enough to have it’s own facilities. There was only one cubicle in the Gent’s which was of course in use, so after a quick check for onlookers I dived into the Disabled loo and voided myself in an uncharacteristically explosive fashion. Pebbledashing complete, things seemed a little better stomach wise, though the aching continued while the knee pixies carried on with their work. I exited sheepishly, considering putting on a limp but not actually going through with it as no wheelchair users were camped outside. By the time we had returned to the house, the stomach was gurgling at me once more, so a bit of a nap seemed like a plan. Sleep after all is the great healer. Unfortunately, my inability to sleep with almost any light coming into a room (my eyelids being less effective than cling film), sleep clearly was not on the cards, so a bit of a lay down was had. It was at this point I noticed that I was unable to get warm. I’d been feeling fairly chilly since before getting into the car and had partly assumed that the car was just a bit cold. Now, fully clothed and wrapped in a duvet, I was freezing and not getting any warmer. This, I think is the point where I actually appear to have accidentally sent my body into shock.
See, I’ve gone into shock on a few occasions; the time my jaw was fractured by a surly youth outside Chicken Cottage and the incident with the cyclist jumping a red light and ploughing into me at full pelt being the two that instantly spring to mind. The symptoms seem remarkably similar to those I was experiencing huddled in that bed. The nausea and upset tummy, the cold (I don’t recall actually starting to shiver, but I was probably nearly there), the stiffening of the limbs. The dizzy spell didn’t come until later when I had to dive back to bed halfway through a plate of spag bol, for fear that I might fall face first into it. No one really wants to drown in bolognese, no matter what they might say. From my previous experiences of going into shock, post trauma, I seemed to have managed it again, but without any real trauma. Yes, there was the knee – that is half of the key (a knee key if you will) – but as I stated, it wasn’t really causing me any inconvenience. My supposition is that the burn I felt from the previous day’s exertion is the other half. While my body was expending much of it’s energy sending doctor molecules (my terminology, soon to be adopted in surgeries worldwide I think you’ll find) to my knee, the hospital centre of my hind brain then became more than a little confused by the signals it was getting about the rest of my body apparently being traumatised too. Possibly actually going into shock itself already, not just a lazy man jogging about a bit for the first time in donkey’s years. At that point everything else started to cease up, go a bit squirty or a little bit loopy. In a shocked way.
That or it was the ten month out of date squash that I drank the day before combined with the lazy aches. But that seems frankly unlikely. At least I didn’t shit the bed.
I think.
