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Skiing Update
Written by Chloe on Saturday, January 10, 2009
The first time I skied after getting my recent new wheelchair was with the same person I was skiing with when I had my back injury two years ago. I had not skied with him in those two years. After a few runs I noticed that down by the ski racks was sitting a Quickie GPV, just like my new chair. I love good omens.
Later on we saw the guy sitskiing. Ah yes, envy abounds.
Towards the end of the day I had a good high speed aerial crash, leaving the skis far behind. My ski companion was somewhat concerned about all the blood. However, it was merely a rather profuse nosebleed resulting from the faceplant. Today, Jan 2, four days later the top of my nose is still pretty sore; but it doesn’t feel like it’s broken (I have broken my nose before).
On New Year’s Eve we skied my first run of the season with a degree of difficulty rating of 9.5. I was actually trembling with fear standing at the top, but I calmed down enough. A fall towards the bottom of the run did not hurt me at all.
Today I had another good crash. I landed very hard on the back of my head. It actually felt like my brain was sloshing around. There was an intense headache, but it only lasted about ten minutes. After a few minutes of sitting down, rather dazed, we skied down to get a coffee and assess how I was doing. Two tables away was that same guy we saw on Monday, in his Quickie GPV, also having a coffee.
It was only after we had sat down with the coffee that I realised something weird was going on with my arms. They were both partially numb and rather weak. I could hold them out in front of me, but not without them shaking a lot. The numbness gradually wore off over the next couple of hours, starting at the fingers and working up. Still at the coffee table, the previously dislocated finger started hurting a great deal as the numbness retreated. Somewhat later I realised that the main impact had actually been to the hand rather than the finger.
I tried to remember the crash, but couldn’t remember anything at all for about the minute prior to it. My companion had to tell me what happened.
I figured I was okay to keep skiing. The guy in the GPV had preceeded us and was transferring to the skichair as we were putting on our skis. Argh, the envy!
I soon found out that going over bumps made my head hurt, so we kept to groomed runs for the rest of the day. We usually decided what runs to do at the bottom of the chairlift. By the time we got to the top I kept forgetting what we had planned to do. My short term memory was a bit screwed up. Nothing like that has happened to me before.
I had a minor fall going very fast on a groomer; just a bruise on my right leg; no big deal. As the numbness retreated up my arms I found out that the bash to my left hand had triggered a significant fibromyalgia episode in my whole left arm. We needed to go home.
On the way home my companion said something that made me laugh, and I threw my head back. Ouch! My neck hurts quite a bit to do that, as also when I turn my head.
I hope this doesn’t all sound like whining. It’s not. I choose to do this. It’s just the way it is.
My companion and I had a long discussion about how to get the injury I need. These high speed aerial crashes are not working. I’ve been getting plenty of bruises to my arms, legs and hips; and I’ve hit my head several times. I’ve been able to get increased back pain, but that’s it. We figured that what I should do is focus more on how I injured my back when we were skiing together two years ago. That was not from a high speed crash. What’s needed is tight turns on difficult steep runs, with vertical impact to the back. The high speed crashes seem more likely to result in a TBI or quadriplegia if I keep it up; not what I need.
Tags: Blood, Crash, Injury, Pain, Quadriplegia, Wheelchair
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4 Comments
Your experiences remind me of the number of times I used to fall off horses in my teens – The worse thing that happened to me was a concussion and a night in the casualty department. The rest was just bruises.
Riding horses is a dangerous activity – we all know this – it broke the neck of a neighbour of mine – but she died. Someone else I know got up and walked away – only finding out later that she had actually broken her neck as well (she’s been told that if she falls again she could lose her life or become tetraplegic).
I don’t know that I deliberately fell off at any time, althoug the thought was often in my head. But lack of skill and coordination, to ssay nothing of the odd grumpy mount, used to tip me off regularly without any need to try.
I never got what I wanted though!
Concussion and whiplash sounds exactly right, Sophie. Sean pointed me towards some information on concussion. Apparently the current medical terminology is “mild traumatic brain injury” (MTBI). Looks like I had a grade 2: post-traumatic amnesia for events both prior to and after the injury; confusion (I had a very hard time figuring out how to get coffee in the cafeteria afterwards); headache. The headache started up again the morning after and it has been getting worse. Today, a week later, has been the worst day and the headache was accompanied by nausea. My left hand still shakes a bit when I hold it up.
Regarding whiplash, my neck hurts to move it at all; and it is accompanied by funny squishy creaky clicking sounds. I started wearing my neck brace, as I am right now. I’ll wear it all the time for the next few days to see if it calms things down. It feels better to do that anyway.
Of course none of this has stopped me from skiing. I skied yesterday, including another scary steep chute with a 9.5 degree of difficuly. I didn’t fall on it, and didn’t hit my head all day. However, I had to leave in the middle of the afternoon because both my head and my neck were hurting too much. My left leg had had quite enough too.
Like Cath, I’ve not been deliberately falling, crashing, and hurting myself. I just ski in a sufficiently reckless manner to make such things rather likely ;). Mostly it’s just bruises. I still have three quite impressive looking bruises on my right leg from last week.
There’s something about all this that makes me want to burst out laughing at how ridiculous I am :)
4 On 10 January, 2009, Sophie said:
Go visit your doctor. Bare minimum he’ll give you anti-inflammatories to help with the pain. I had minor whiplash once from when I crashed my car.
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1 On 10 January, 2009, Sophie said:
Sounds like you had concussion and whiplash. They would have made the symptoms of your existing back and nerve problems worse IMO. I may be wrong though, I wasn’t there.