Several weeks ago I suffered a rather unfortunate injury while playing dodgeball.

Normally I wouldn’t complain about being hurt playing sports, because that’s simply a risk you take whenever you play sports and I’ve collected a wonderful trophy case of sports injuries:

• Carted off the BMX track by an ambulance crew in C-Spine precautions;
• Dislocated a knee skiing in New Zealand;
• Dislocated the other knee on a BMX track;
• Broke my left foot training for a 10km;
• Broke my right foot (ok that was me throwing a tantrum like a toddler and falling off my singular front step);
• Bashed my head in snowboarding;
• Broke my wrist doing gymnastics;
• Bruised a rib falling off a horse;
• etc etc etc.

The point is, I’m extremely accident prone and I do a lot of dumb things at sports that I’m not necessarily very good at, but enjoy doing because they’re fun.

My friends play dodgeball competitively. Yes, apparently that actually is a thing. They usually run short on players so I’ve been roped in to play with them. It’s fun and surprisingly much harder than I thought since the balls are really hard to throw with any kind of accuracy and my aim tends to pretty much consist of throwing it to the other team to catch and getting myself out. For those of you unfamiliar with the sport, this is not what you’re supposed to do!

So, the other day I was having a cracker of a game. My aim was awesome. I even got some people out! Hooray! Then, from out of nowhere, BAM! I’m fucked. What I think happened, because my memory is a bit patchy, is that as I was leaning down to pick up a ball to throw at the bastards on the other team (I was planning on aiming for the dude who looked like my ex-boyfriend, for no other reason than the fact that he just reminded me of him), when a ball hit me in the face. I suspect I may have seen it coming from the corner of my eye and put my hand up and then the force of the ball hitting my hand made me gouge my eye out. I think. I honestly can’t remember what happened because it was so quick. All I remember is dropping to my knees, my face on fire. I couldn’t open my eye at first and it was burning with crazy intense pain. Being hit in the face is a no no and will get the other team out, but I couldn’t play on.

I limped awkwardly off the court and sat down. My concerned friends and teammates came to see if I was OK, probably thinking I was being a drama queen wussbag because those balls are really not weighty enough to cause too much damage. They all looked at me and recoiled. This is where I started to get a bit worried. I couldn’t see out of my eye and people were physically shrinking away from me like I’d turned into Sloth from The Goonies.

Nobody was appreciating my poor puns either. For the weeks while I looked like a horror movie extra I would say dodgy puns (lol) like equating myself to Steve the Pirate or saying things like how it’s super fun until someone loses an eye, or anything with an eye/seeing pun I could work in there. I really don’t know why more people weren’t amused. It was my eye FFS! I wasn’t mad at the dude who hit me, it wasn’t like he was trying to do it, and I wasn’t mad at myself for doing something dumb (for once), it was just a random accident that had the potential to be much worse and I’m used to dealing with bad situations with awful humour.

Yes, that is blood beginning to fill the anterior chamber of my eye, also known as a hyphema. A dude on the other team turned out to be a baby doctor (baby as in new, not paediatrics) and even he started freaking out. So I trundled off to the nearest hospital, conveniently the one with the opthalmology specialists. There, I waited for ages as the lady on the triage desk barely looked at me and triaged me in the wrong category (and before you start criticising me for being judgy, that actually is my job so I do know what I’m talking about). Eventually another baby doctor came to examine me and attempted to take my eye pressures to make sure I wasn’t going to bust an eyeball everywhere. This involves basically getting a tiny little cotton bud type thing and punching it into your eye. It doesn’t hurt, it’s not meant to hurt and it’s extremely gentle, unless in the hands of a baby doctor who clearly didn’t know how to use it and I’m pretty sure caused more trauma. The opthalmology registrar decided I could just visit them again in the morning and be reviewed in the eye trauma clinic.

At the eye trauma clinic, I was told about a thousand different ways that one wrong move would lose me my eye. I was put on 100% total bedrest and not allowed to do anything that would irritate my eye, which meant no reading. I wasn’t even allowed to get up to cook dinner, it was walk to piss only. I was lucky, the only reason they didn’t admit me immediately into hospital was because I’m an RN and they assumed that I would be a good girl and actually listen to their instructions. Thus began 5 days of bedrest. I was forced to sleep at a 45 degree angle. I’m a tummy starfish. This did not sit well with me. Neither did the not reading. I listened to so many podcasts over this five days that I began to pick up on all the irritating tics that the hosts have. I began losing my mind. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t watch television. I couldn’t read. All I could do was lie there and fade in and out of a boredom coma.

After the initial 5 days, I went back to the trauma clinic, expecting to be given the all clear. I wasn’t. To say I was mad was an understatement. The doctor made me cancel all of my plans for the weekend. It was my husband’s birthday, I had tickets to see Epica, one of my favourite bands, I had tickets to see the Sound of Music, I had plans to go to the Warwick Horse Show with a friend, I had plans to go out for dinner with some old co-workers from FNQ. It was the weekend of STUFF! I called him Satan and he conceded to let me watch television.

So I finished The Vampire Diaries. Elena annoys the shit out of me with her whiny feelings. Please girl, you’re shagging Damon who’s like the best thing ever, although why he likes you when you’re such a wet blanket, I don’t know. Then I watched 2 seasons of The 100. It’s like Battlestar Galactica mixed with The Walking Dead and no zombies. I like the grounder chicks, they’re badass. Then I started Pretty Little Liars. It’s the most over the top ridiculous car crash but I can’t stop. I have a girl crush on Spencer because she’s such a neurotic overachiever and I like her clothes. Everyone else in the show is stupid. I hate Aria the most. Actually no, I hate Ezra the most. Insipid twat.

I cancelled all my plans. Simone Simons from Epica tweeted me a get well message. That was nice of her. I’m still devastated that I missed seeing her. She and Floor Jansen are my idols.

I finally got let off bedrest and allowed back into the world. It was grand. I did end up having dinner with my friends from FNQ. It made me homesick, but not for actually moving back there or anything crazy, just homesick to want to work with a bunch of awesome people that I am totally sweet with socialising with outside of work. There are 200 staff in my department down here and I don’t know anyone.

The David Bowie/Terminator eye continued until yesterday when it finally shrank back to normal size. I think I’m actually a little disappointed, as far as disfigurements go it was pretty badass.