Eleven-one, braces burst at the knees.
Of all the ways of spending a Friday afternoon, that wasn't my favourite. Shortly before 1pm this very day, while in the grip of only moderate orientation panic, I executed a sharp right turn somewhere between my computer and the kettle and caused my right kneecap to exit its socket with a merry shout of "Sproing!" (This is not to be confused with my left kneecap, which has been known to exit its socket with a merry shout of "Sproing!" on several occasions in the recent and distant past, mostly notably when I was sixteen and waltzing).
I cannot recommend this course of action at all. For a start, a kneecap sitting on the side rather than the front of your leg is all wrong, a misshapen, horrifying Cthulhoid entity causing distress and terror quite apart from the collateral damage, which is the BLINDING PAIN. God, dislocations hurt. Way more than breaks. Also, I unthinkingly fell into my desk chair instead of onto the floor, possibly preserving myself from further limb-disintegration, but also condemning myself to an hour and a half spent hunched in an unnatural position clutching my kneecap while all my other muscles went into spasms of uncontrollable trembling and the bloody ambulance took its own sweet sodding time.
Also, hospitals. Hospitals warp space-time by crowbarring into the normal continuum quite bizarre and unlikely amounts of hanging around waiting, in this case while suffering the Screaming Agony Death Type Three, into the gaping voids between being put on drips, put on oxygen, prodded by nurses, prodded by doctors, X-rayed, pushed around by porters and, thank all the cosmic wossnames, pumped full of decadent and necessary quantities of morphine. This almost helped.
Finally they got bored with the waiting, and around 4pm the nice sister announced that they were going to knock me out while the doctor wrestled the leg back into shape. She added something exotic to the drip, causing extreme sleepiness, and I lay there for a while thinking "Gosh, this is nice, but I'm still mostly awake, they're going to have to step the dose up." Then I looked down and realised my leg was a normal shape again and the lack of pain was not simply sleepiness, but actual lack of pain. Too odd - normally I'm aware of the moment where everything goes black for a microsecond before you wake up to find it all over. This time I had no consciousness of losing consciousness, and regrettably missed the bit where I was apparently very chatty with the doctor, informing him that "I can be rather contrary sometimes".
Dislocations are very weird because, while they're incredibly painful and cause spontaneous generation of brand new religions which worship the notion of never moving ever again for any reason, they're also instant cure. The moment the dislocated bit is back in place the world is suddenly filled with rainbows and roses and fluffy unicorns ridden by Barack Obama with a new world order, and only a moderate amount of bruising. This has left me hobbling slightly, pale, shaken and incredibly woozy, but in all other ways feeling like a total fraud.
Next up, interviews with orthopods to work out exactly how badly I've now buggered up the other cruciate ligament. Go me. Also, extended research may be necessary to track down any of the other monitor contacts they've left adhering to unlikely portions of my anatomy, I keep finding new ones.
I cannot recommend this course of action at all. For a start, a kneecap sitting on the side rather than the front of your leg is all wrong, a misshapen, horrifying Cthulhoid entity causing distress and terror quite apart from the collateral damage, which is the BLINDING PAIN. God, dislocations hurt. Way more than breaks. Also, I unthinkingly fell into my desk chair instead of onto the floor, possibly preserving myself from further limb-disintegration, but also condemning myself to an hour and a half spent hunched in an unnatural position clutching my kneecap while all my other muscles went into spasms of uncontrollable trembling and the bloody ambulance took its own sweet sodding time.
Also, hospitals. Hospitals warp space-time by crowbarring into the normal continuum quite bizarre and unlikely amounts of hanging around waiting, in this case while suffering the Screaming Agony Death Type Three, into the gaping voids between being put on drips, put on oxygen, prodded by nurses, prodded by doctors, X-rayed, pushed around by porters and, thank all the cosmic wossnames, pumped full of decadent and necessary quantities of morphine. This almost helped.
Finally they got bored with the waiting, and around 4pm the nice sister announced that they were going to knock me out while the doctor wrestled the leg back into shape. She added something exotic to the drip, causing extreme sleepiness, and I lay there for a while thinking "Gosh, this is nice, but I'm still mostly awake, they're going to have to step the dose up." Then I looked down and realised my leg was a normal shape again and the lack of pain was not simply sleepiness, but actual lack of pain. Too odd - normally I'm aware of the moment where everything goes black for a microsecond before you wake up to find it all over. This time I had no consciousness of losing consciousness, and regrettably missed the bit where I was apparently very chatty with the doctor, informing him that "I can be rather contrary sometimes".
Dislocations are very weird because, while they're incredibly painful and cause spontaneous generation of brand new religions which worship the notion of never moving ever again for any reason, they're also instant cure. The moment the dislocated bit is back in place the world is suddenly filled with rainbows and roses and fluffy unicorns ridden by Barack Obama with a new world order, and only a moderate amount of bruising. This has left me hobbling slightly, pale, shaken and incredibly woozy, but in all other ways feeling like a total fraud.
Next up, interviews with orthopods to work out exactly how badly I've now buggered up the other cruciate ligament. Go me. Also, extended research may be necessary to track down any of the other monitor contacts they've left adhering to unlikely portions of my anatomy, I keep finding new ones.