Dead Leg IV

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Last run of the day, fading light, a quick joint and then drop into untouched snow between dark green trees.
Powder fizzes as your board cuts over it, and we were riding fast, snaking tight, blind corners through trees.
Fizz- Turn - Swoosh - Cut - my stomach was up in my throat, gripped in concentration as me and Oli raced down the dense forest.
Oli shot off to the left, i took a right hand swerve around a clump of trees.
As I carved fast, i came up against a wall of tree trunks - Instantly my brain calculated i could not stop in time...

CRACK!

A moment of freeze-frame, the taste of blood in my mouth and i sank into snow up to my shoulders.
Then silence.
Then came the pain, deep in my stomach, running down my groin, grasping onto my thigh, sucking all of my body inwards, like a black hole deep inside my body. I had seriously damaged something.

I was thousands of miles from home, trespassing on a Bulgarian army base, half an hours walk from our tiny wooden hut, lost in a forest with darkness setting in, seperated from my buddy who was flying down the mountain right now, and I was in agony everytime i moved.

The silence engulfed me, heavy like a suffocating blanket.

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Perelik Mountain - March 1997

(part I - Dead Leg (1))
(part II - Dead Leg II - Map to a Secret Snow Paradise)
(part III - Dead Leg III - Heaven had no Ski Lifts)

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OLLLLLLLIIIIIEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!! I screamed.
The soft snow and heavy pine trees absorbed the sound. The others had gone back to the hut for the night, me and Oli had hiked off for 'one last run'. Typical. There's an old saying about 'never have a last run.'

I screamed again.
Silence.

I wiggled my toes, hidden below me in the snow. Feet stilll attached. A Good Sign
The snow around me was white, not scarlet from blood, so that was also A Good Sign.
I pushed down to climb out of my hole, and i crumpled in agony. Not Good.
Digging with my hands just scrambled large piles of powder back over myself. With this dead leg I felt like I had been anchored down and trying to swim over the powder, i was engulfed by it, filling my mouth and nose.
Trying to lift or pull my leg felt like i was actually trying to separate it from my body, the muscles and nerves were tearing inside me, all down my leg. I breathed out deeply and slowly to let the pain evaporate.

I looked up, the sky was a slushy grey with clouds full of snow to fall overnight. Behind me, up the hill were perfect undulating snow domes. This was untouched, out back forest. No-one passes here and my tracks would be covered with just the slightest of snowfalls
My snowboard line curved away out of sight and I couldn't see the road even though we had only just taken a few turns into our run. There was a track of animal prints running across my track, each pad about the size of my fist. Probably a wolf, or a small bear?
The trees around looked darker, but the snow seemed to glow from inside as it reflected what light there was around. Everything was still.

OK, i thought, Here i was. Stuck, alone and facing the dark night, frozen and in pain.
Maybe it was the heavy silence... maybe it was my body's reaction to the pain... maybe it was that last pull on the joint... but I lay there and took it all in, calm and serene.
Is this the way that an animal lays down to die in the wild?
Peaceful and accepting of natures fate... do dogs lie down to go to sleep, knowing they were part of a bigger cycle of life?
And as I lay there, was i not a part of nature now?
Death really didn't seem that bad here. Just the absence of existance. All Gone - Literally, nothing to be scared of.
And Nature had given me such a beautiful deathbed - serene, soft and white, i would be absorbed back into natures cycle, at one with the world.


Hang on, I thought.... it was that weed we smoked! I'm facing death, but i'm lying around in the frozen snow, stoned!
I'm not an animal, i'm a human and we've been sticking two fingers up to Nature for thousands of years. There's no way i'm freezing all night out here until a hungry bear rips me apart for a snack!!

OLLLLLLIIIEEEE!!!!!!!!! i screamed again and again

Soon i heard muffled curses behind the trees.

'Where are you?' he yelled 'This snow is crazy, get round here'
'I'M HURT!' I yelled back 'I CAN'T MOVE MY LEG'
'Fuck! Hang on'

It was nearly impossible work, crawling through the powder, up the steep slopes we had sailed down minutes before and took Oli ten minutes to get in sight of me.
I had managed to crawl only about three feet in the same time, my hip screaming pain with every twist and stretch of my body.

'I'm ok, i've pulled or broken something' i said to him, 'i can't get out'
We sat and stared at each other.
'I'll get the tank' he said and started digging his way up the slope, back to the hut and the road.

I scrambled at the snow around me for ages, hardly moving any distance up the slope. Exhausted, I lay there until i heard a growing rumble from above. The old army tank that had been ferrying us up the mountain for days was coming to save the day!

The other guys appeared, sunk deep into the snow, swimming their way through to help pull me out.
Partly laughing, partly panicking, they grabbed me and tried hauling me out. No-one could get stable in the deep snow, everyone else was as buried as I was, and as they tried to lift me out of the snow, they just sunk deeper, my dead leg screaming at me.

We tied a piece of rope to the tank and another to my snowboard, if I could lie on the board, they could drag me out on a makeshift stretcher. Great idea, but the board kept tipping over and I sunk into the snow.

Brute force and determination kicked in as the evening light was fading and our wet clothes were freezing. Inch by inch, like a fish washed up on the beach I flapped and flipped for over an hour. We only had to cover a distance of about a thirty yards, but it was up a 30-40degree slope, digging through shifting, chest deep powder.
We finally dug and dragged me up to the road and they guys lifted me onto the side of the tank in the dark. I hung on and it spluttered us back to the sentry post where Kotsa and Knifeboy normally slept.
As our hut was set back from the road and i couldn't walk, Kotsa swapped beds with me and i spent a sleepless night in a tiny shed.

Kotsa gave me a half an onion, indicating that i should rub it into the pain. Apparently, it was an old remedy in the countryside and actually helped to cool some of the pain away. Unfortunately, the most painful part was below my groin, where my thigh joined my undercarraige... so i spent the night rubbing an onion into my privates and counting the minutes until the sun returned.

Our secret snow paradise had turned into a miserable night of pain in a dirty soldiers cabin.
A grotty night in a grotto, with smelly onion juice over my nuts.

---

Knifeboy's English was non-existent, and my Bulgarian was even less, so we had a bread roll each for breakfast and he switched on the small, black and white television in the hut, to catch the morning broadcast. I soon realised there was only one channel available, and instead of the bright morning TV shows we have in the UK, the broadcast was a static board of words, with an announcer underneath reading things out through a broken microphone. Knifeboy was gripped and listened to every word.

Eventually, the army doctor passed the hut and came to look at me. He didnt seem bothered that there were western youngsters trespassing on the camp, or even suprised that we had been snowboarding, but he was concerned that i couldn't stand on my right leg and arranged an army truck to take me to the hospital.

When we arrived, they dropped me off round the corner from the front of the hospital, as the soldiers would be in trouble if they were spotted giving me a lift. Dancho found me a wheelchair and wheeled me into the crumbling concrete box of Smolyan's hospital.
Quickly, i was whisked along to various rooms and filled in forms until i was pushed in front of three men in white coats, sitting along a long desk and all smoking with bored looks on their faces.
'Walk' said one doctor, waving his cigarette at me
I tried to take the weight on both legs and buckled.
Amazingly, i wasn't in huge amounts of pain, but i had a constant, throbbing ache inside.
The doctors looked at me and saw no pain, so thought there could not be anything serious wrong.
'Insurance?' another one fired at me
'Yes, i have insurance' i nodded.
All three looked at each other through the smoke, muttered something approvingly and waved me away to have a fancy X-ray in their new machine - one of those big white circular things that they scan you with all the way round. I guess they needed to pay for the scanner, and the overinflated insurance claim would come in handy.

When they saw the results, everything stepped up a gear. I was given a room on the top floor, along the end of the corridor. As they wheeled me in and helped me onto the bed we passed a pile of tools by the door, obviously this room was undergoing refurbishment.
But those tools were not meant for the decoration - they were meant for me.
Doctor Ox carried the tools into the room and explained something to Dancho, who interpreted:
'You have broken bone in here' he said 'You need to have drill through leg and weight to pull the leg down'
Considering where i had been last night, staring death in the snowy face, I was safe and being cared for here. Ok i said.

'But.' he carried on. 'No painkiller in hospital.'

'So, you'll just drill straight through my leg, no drugs?'

Doctor Ox pointed at a spot on my leg just below the knee with his drill. A nurse produced some iodine to disinfect the skin.

I took a deep breath.

'OK.'

(part I - Dead Leg (1))

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Comments

[Sanjana]

Great
Great Experience..So thrilling and exciting.. http://www.floridabeachestorivers.com/

[harshal]

nice
nice blog

[liliram]

Awww..........
No painkiller? Ugghhh......can't imagine the pain!