(early 1999)
Here We Go Here We Go Here We Go

(This bit was written later to replace some text that got cut off a while back when I was revising this document.) On the evening of 9 December 1998, I was struck by a car and had my leg run over. I had just gotten off the bus and was in the middle of the crosswalk when a nursing student piloting a 1986 Subaru looked up from her speedometer (instead of watching the road) and saw me too late to stop. She was swerving as she hit me with the broadside of her vehicle, hard enough to knock me down but not hard enough to knock me away. I broke her right-side rearview mirror with my elbow on the way down and my left leg went under her car, then her right rear tire rolled over my shin, crushing the bone and damaging the muscles and tissues.

The following day in hospital they operated on me for four hours to try and get the bone bits sorted out enough to get an "intramedullary nail" (a big long slightly bent steel rod: see pictures above) put in and fixed to the upper and lower parts of my leg. My shin was swollen wider than my thigh. I was in hospital until 23 December, and I spent the next four and a half months completely at home in a wheelchair. During that time I had to keep my leg elevated. I tried to eat as few painkillers as possible, pestered people at my office, read about a cubic yard of books and did some writing and game-designing at a drafting table set up by the window (and giving myself chilblains on the foot near the window). I finished off work on Battle for China and its expansion kit and wrote a long article on Nestor Makhno for Strategy and Tactics.

(29 April 1999)
Waiting for the Bone Man, or Someone Like Him
Well, I had two of the screws taken out of my leg on schedule on 6 April, a 10-minute bit of surgery that nevertheless took 5 weeks to schedule and a two-hour wait on the day itself, on a day when the hospital was far from busy! The first few days afterwards were quite painful as things seemed to shift around to some new sort of equilibrium; it's been over three weeks now and it still hurts, demonstrating to me that yes, my leg is still broken and now free at one end, so don't go waving that limb around too vigourously, Buster.

And yesterday I went to the doc for my first X-ray in seven weeks, and hopefully a Prognosis. Bad news is that the X-ray of 28 April looks very similar to the one of 1 March, which looks very much like the one of 25 January. There is little progress but at least it hasn't deteriorated, which apparently does happen sometimes. Good news is that the doc gave me permission to return to work in mid-May, for half a day at a time. So I go back on Monday 17 May, into what my boss tells me is an organizational maelstrom of Dilbertian proportions.

So there it is. On 1 June I see the doc again for another X-ray and a decision on whether or not to have the bone graft operation. Right now he thinks the odds are 50/50. If it comes to that, that will mean another long wait for the surgery, a 2-3 day stay in the hospital, and about two weeks at home recuperating.

(3 June 1999)
Once More Onto the Table, My Friends
On Monday of this week I went to the doc for another X-ray and, as it turned out, another delay. The X-ray looked very much like the one before that, and the one before THAT, and so on. After discussion we decided that about the only thing to do was to go ahead and schedule a date for the bone graft operation, and 2-3 weeks before that date come in for another X-ray. If there is some kind of miraculous improvement we will cancel the operation, otherwise go ahead and do it. Method of operation as described way below.

Next week will see the six-month mark since the accident. Half a bloody year on crutches, with the hope of tottering on a cane by Xmas if all goes well. Even my sense of humour and famous obliviousness to adversity is starting to wear thin. Even more sobering is the thought that something like what happened to me happens to thousands of other people every single day in North America - if we lined up an equivalent number of people each day on street corners and executed or crippled them with meat-axes, people would say and do something about it, but we don't. But such is the social and economic cost of the automobile. Before this I didn't own a car because I hated driving, was no good at it, and flat-out couldn't afford to keep one. Now I will refuse to drive one because I can't consider being responsible for dealing such an injury to another innocent person.

Seen in passing last night at the new David Cronenberg film eXistenZ: some VR-type game software for sale in a store, entitled "HIT BY A CAR." A propos, eh?

[21 June 1999]
Shinbones are GO !!
Today I went to see the doc for the last X-ray and check before my bone graft surgery, which has been booked for July 8. Obviously the Magical Happy Tibia Fairy hasn’t paid me a visit to give me a shiny new one over the weekend, so it’s all systems go. I will be in the hospital for two nights and then spend 2 weeks at home recuperating, then back to work part-time as before. One thing I didn’t want to hear was that since he wants to replace the metal rod in my leg with another one at a slightly different angle, he needs more bone scrapings than my leg can supply, so it looks as if he will have to cut my hip open and take some bone from there after all. So I get a sore hip for a few weeks on top of everything else. The prognosis is that within 2-3 months I will be on a cane, all other things being equal, and that the metal rod will have to stay in there for another year at least. But it will be nice to start walking half-normally again. But he did promise to give me the old rod and screws when he takes them out - I will commission Gary to do something with them. Also been quite busy working on an article on "Finland in WW II" for Strategy & Tactics - a rush job that has to be done by this weekend, I don’t like these but it was a good chance to help out.

[28 July 1999]
Hamburger Leggy
Well, on time I went in to the hospital for the bone graft operation, which apparently went off without a hitch. I woke up an hour or three after it, and had a chance to admire the foot-long metal rod they had pulled out of my leg (there is an even bigger one in there now) before really starting to feel ill. I spent the next eight or nine hours retching nothing into a cardboard tray, due to an unfortunate reaction to the anaesthetic or the morphine, whichever it was it wasn't pleasant to be doubled up heaving and coughing against the fresh incision on my hip. My leg was swollen up like a football too. After a while they changed the anti-nausea drug for something that worked against nausea, and I could sleep - but my vocal cords were wrecked for a week afterward.

I had started in the short-stay surgical ward because they thought I could be kicked out on Saturday morning, but obviously I wasn't going anywhere, so they moved me back into the ordinary surgical ward as the short-stay ward is closed on weekends. They moved me back into exactly the same room I was in in December, except this time I was in the inboard bed! Terrible feeling of moving in circles. My roommate was a caution too - I called him "Missing Link". He was there because he and his buddies had gotten all pissed up and into an altercation with some other Australopithecanthropi, and it ended with someone driving a car past him at 40 mph with the door open - the window exploded and bam, he ended up with over 100 stitches in him. I heard this story over and over again as an unending string of his disreputable 'people' came in to see him - they were the type of people who are biker wannabes. Thirty-two years old and I think the only thing he had ever done in his life was to give his ten-year-old daughter a broken home. Fortunately he didn't bother me too much, for when he wasn't telling The Story he was staring at his little TV and talking for hours on the phone. There were also two senile old things with new hips on the ward, who never seemed to sleep and couldn't hang on to where they where or what had happened to them for more than two minutes at a time. Anyway, a lesson or two about lives lived - ones that never get started, and ones that keep going after they are effectively over. Sad.

I got out on Wednesday the 14th, and was very happy to get home, to get some decent food if nothing else. The following week I went back to the doc's office to have the staples pulled out of my incisions (four new ones on my leg plus one on the hip), go back in five weeks for another X-ray to see if this is doing the trick. Let's hope so. Meanwhile, I am home until 3 August, reading reams of old SF magazines and all the Orwell I can reach out of the bookcase.

(3 September)
All's Well that Ends Wealed
Today I went to the doctor for the first X-ray since the bone graft operation, and for once there was some good news. I knew that I was getting better since I was much more able to put weight on my leg, and my general pain level was much lower, but it was important to get confirmation of this. So, YES, there is significant improvement, and the doc doesn't want to see me again until the first anniversary of the accident, and I can go off crutches and to a cane whenever I feel strong enough, and ditto for returning to work full-time!

Last week I also started physiotherapy (delayed two weeks because I got an abscess in one of my stitches, so had to go on antibiotics to get rid of it), so get to sweat and grunt twice a week or more. The guys there are quite positive, but my knee and ankle were rather stiffer than I thought they would be. They will improve in time, and my leg will get stronger too. Looking at the two of them in the mirror really points out how wasted my left leg has become - it looks positively bowed next to the other one because there is no muscle bulk left in it at all.

It's great to have finally turned the corner on this. I know that there is some time to go, and that I will probably always have trouble with the leg, but at least there is an ending to this - and I did get out of it alive. Thanks to everyone who wrote or called while I was laid up, and no thanks to anyone who didn't.

(24 October)
A Few Happy Returns
Not much to say this time, just overhauling the web page and thought I would add something here. And it's my birthday today, so here's Sid Vicious to sing:

"Happy fucking birthday
Happy fucking birthday
Happy fucking birthday
To youuuuu...."

Physio is going along at the usual pace. I continue to get stronger, and will be giving the can another try next week. A week or two ago I tried it and my leg was still too weak, so I leaned too heavily on the cane and gave myself killer tendonitis in the arm. Must watch that, since it's my mouse arm!

No real news on the ICBC front, except that my adjustor is being a king-hell prick, but that's nothing new for ICBC, nor is it any news for any of the folks who have dealt with him before. May he fall on his head again some day, and onto something sharp too.

Back at work full time, and things are just as busy or worse - needs to be 1 1/2 of me and I don't have as much energy as I did before the accident. Makes for some long days. I would like to find this "bloated civil service" the papers are always talking about: maybe they are just talking about some physically bloated individuals I've seen treading the hallways.

My new game Battle for China has just been released by the Microgame Co-op, to positive reviews. I'm working on another design on the Algerian War 1954-62 right now. See the "games page"here for details.

(29 November 1999)
New Old Stuff
Added: a gallery of rubberstamp images I made from carved erasers, back when I relied on the global postal system for mental nourishment and cheap laughs. (Still do, but the diet is leaner and the laughs dearer.)

On a cane all the time now. Coming up on the first anniversary of my crippling. Actually, every night is like the anniversary, as I have to walk across the same spot where I got hit....

(9 December 1999)
Feast of the Jellied Limb
In the SubGenius Calendar of Saints today is the Martyrdom of St. Kenny, but I call it the Feast of the Jellied Limb. One year ago today. I went to the doc yesterday and he is pleased with how my shinbone is healing (although it's a little crooked, but not enough to worry about - think I will end up with one leg permanently shorter), recommends further physio to keep putting strength back into my leg, and perhaps we'll take out that metal rod in 1 or 2 years. Yippee. It's kind of hard to write anything about this today. I have certainly never had a year like this in my life, and wouldn't care to have another. Have I learned anything? Sure; and I hope the woman who ran over me learned something too. I'm feeling a lot less charitable towards her lately. Perhaps it's that old holiday magic... Maybe tonight at 7 p.m. I will go to the scene of the crime and throw an orange into the traffic, as a sacrifice to Pedwok, God of Well-marked Crossing Zones....

(17 December 1999)
Hey, Look at this!
My friend Gary has a digital camera, so the other day we took some pictures of the nail the doc hauled out of my leg in July. It was a 9mm x 31.5 cm stainless steel intramedullary nail, and here it is shown with a GI Joe to show scale (I have an 11mm x 31.5 cm in there now). GI Joe is holding two of the screws used to moor the nail. Enjoy!