Racing

Went to see the hand man this morning.

He was due to remove the two k-wires from my hand but, er one of them came loose last week, so we took it out then. But he seemed happy enough, and says that I probably won't need the titanium plate (along the metacarpal of my index finger) removed. The hand looked more like A Hooded Claw than a human's hand - still swollen, and an unpleasant colour, mostly due to having been wrapped up for six weeks.

I then went to see the physio, who was lovely and she didn't cause any pain at all! She said a wash would get rid of the dead skin and yellow colour, and then gave me some exercises to do.

The whole hand feels pretty weak and weird, but I'm already using it to type some of this!

Here's some pictures, but trust me, it looks worse in real life.

Well, that didn't work out as intended. This blog is now about something quite different...

Instead of having a straightforward day racing on the ZX10R Superbike, setting it up for the TT, I crashed it at Killane bridge and put myself in hospital. I had a good bang on the head, so have no memory of it, which is probably a good thing - I'm told that the marshals had to give me CPR for 3 minutes before I started breathing for myself. It doesn't get much closer than that...

So, I came to in hospital with the following shopping list:

• Broken right femur ("at least" three places)
• Broken left tibia
• Broken jaw
• Three broken metacarpels in right hand

I was kept full of morphine on the Saturday night, and then was in the operating theatre for 5 hours on the Sunday while they put a nail right down the femur, a couple of screws in the tibia and some plates in the jaw. The hand was left in plaster for now. After waking from this I was a bit more compos mentis, but still on regular morphine for the next few days. But I had a few mates visit, and my wonderful girlfriend Fiona flew out to the Isle of Man to visit me too. And my phone buzzed with dozens of get well messages - thanks, everyone.

On Thursday 22nd I was flown from the Isle of Man to Staverton airport in Gloucestershire, and thence transferred to Cheltenham General Hospital. I was in a busy ward, with one guy who kept us awake all night, so the next day I checked out my private healthcare cover (thru my job) and eventually got transferred to a private room on Sunday. In the meantime several doctors saw me, and advised that the legs were really a waiting game, but that the hand would be operated on.

On Weds 28th May my hand was opened up. I had broken the metacarpels for the ring and middle fingers 'simply', but made a bit more of a mess of the index metacarpel. This last was plated, while the other two had wires put alongside them, and the whole lot re-bandaged up. After this op I felt lousy, but was mostly ok by the next day.

And so, on Sunday 1st June I was discharged, into the care of my dear old mum. Living alone in 1st floor flat meant I couldn't really go home - I'm currently wheelchair bound, and frankly need looking after.

I'm doing ok now, and waiting for everything to fix. Thanks to everybody for the good wishes they've sent - they really are appreciated.