That one time when I fell and nearly broke my neck.....

I know that there are some people out there who enjoy cleaning and even find it therapeutic but it is safe to say that I am definitely not one of them; I never have been and I probably never will be. I hate cleaning. Especially bathrooms. I usually get Seth to do it but I decided that this time I would actually bite the bullet and do it myself. I should probably leave it to Seth in the future!

Last week once I had put the boys to bed, I cleaned the bathroom. I did what I have done a thousand times and stood on the edge of the bath to reach the higher tiles. Our whole bathroom is tiled so there are a lot of them to clean! I then tried to clean the tiles that are above the bathroom window, so I put all my weight on one foot on the sink ready to put the other one on top of the sink unit to walk across and reach the other tiles. I thought the sink was pretty secure, but apparently it isn't (maybe it was just the Universe's way of reminding me that I still have a way to go until I lose all of my baby weight, ha!). The sink moved so I lost my footing and fell back. I was frantically trying to find something to grab onto to break my fall and grabbed onto the shower rail, which I took down with me. My head took the full impact of the fall and then I hit my neck on the edge of the bath and ended up laying in the bath at a bit of an awkward angle. Oh my goodness, it hurt more than just a little bit! My head immediately came up in a huge bump and I may have screamed and started crying! Poor Caleb, he had only been in bed for a little while and wasn't yet asleep so he heard it all. He then started sobbing from his bedroom and called through to me, "Mummy, what did you hurt? Stop crying, Mummy, be happy!". I hobbled out of the bathroom and checked that there was no blood before going into his room to try and comfort him, even though I was still crying myself; I'm not sure who comforted who the most as we were both hugging each other and crying!

I then went into the lounge to phone Seth to see if he was nearly home. He must have freaked out when he heard me as at first he had no idea what was going on, just that I was crying a lot, poor man! When he got home, he said I should probably go to hospital to get checked out, so our neighbour came down to look after the boys and off to the hospital we went!

We arrived at the hospital at around 10pm and it took a while to be seen. I went to the urgent care unit first but they then sent me across to A and E. I saw a triage nurse and then saw a doctor. He poked and prodded a lot (oh, the pain!) and decided that they should probably send me for an x-ray just to make sure everything was okay. He then said that they needed to stabilise my neck so he put a neck brace on me and I had head blocks (is that what they're even called?!) either side of me and taped it all in place. I'm not usually that claustrophobic but I really found it incredibly claustrophobic and I panicked a bit. I had 3 or 4 panic attacks during my course of laying there like that! (I was like that for about 3 hours. I am not usually a panicky person and I thought I would be fine but it was actually pretty scary!). Thank goodness for Seth, I don't know what I would have done without him there to calm me down!

I went for the x-ray and for one of them she said that I had to open my mouth as wide as possible. It was pretty much impossible being as though the neck brace was literally forcing my mouth shut! I have this recurring nightmare of my jaw being clamped shut and not being able to open my mouth at all (I had a jaw operation when I was 16 and my jaws were wired together for 8 weeks so it might stem from that!). The radiographer looked at the x-ray and told me that it looked like I had done some damage to my neck. I then had to go back and see the doctor again, who told me that they were going to send me for a CT scan to confirm what exactly was going on. I hadn't been too scared that I had done any real damage up until that point; I thought that the collar and everything was just a precaution! While we were waiting around, I made Seth take a photo of me in my glamorous state! Who doesn't want photographic evidence of being taped down to a hospital bed?!

Going for the CT scan was fun, about 5 people came with me and lifted me across from the trolley to the table for the scan on the count of three, I felt like I was in an episode of Casualty or something! (is that even still on?! I don't think I've seen it since I was about 15!). It turns out that I hadn't done any major damage, I'm just a freak - my first and second vertebrae are fused together as are the fourth and fifth. Who knew?! It's a congenital thing apparently. So I got to go home 6 hours after arriving at the hospital sans neck brace and all was well! I felt pretty bashed up and stiff for a few days and I have a glorious purple bruise on my thigh the size of a tennis ball (I took a photo of that too. Because I am nice, I will spare your eyes.) which has now faded slightly. My head is still sore and the bump is still there although it's gone down a lot.

The moral of the story? Definitely leave the bathroom cleaning to Seth from now on! I think my "injury" justifiably gets me out of it for at least a few years ;).