Industrial Injury ...

Ouch. Ouch. Ouch. These days it seems I am an accident waiting to happen. It's not uncommon for me to trip over my own feet or even trip over thin air, and my balance at times seems to be shot.

In the midst of an order packing frenzy on Tuesday night I nipped downstairs to fetch a new box of board back envelopes. It was quite heavy, and lugging it up two flights of stairs wasn't exactly my idea of fun, but as no-one else was gonna carry it for me I didn't really have much choice. Coming into the office with it I lost my balance and tripped over my own feet, and nearly landed head first in the bin. Fortunately I managed not to fall - cos it would have been nasty, bearing in mind that I would have landed right on top of one of those Ikea storage box things that fit inside the pigeonhole units, and it would have shattered and no doubt splintered and I could have done myself a real injury.

Anyway, no harm done, or so I thought. I noticed on Wednesday morning that the bottom of my foot, under my heel, was a bit sore, but it wore off quickly and I forgot about it. However, when I got up yesterday it was back, and more painful, but again it seemed to wear off to a certain degree. Unfortunately, as the day wore on it got worse and I adopted a limp as it hurt to actually weight bear on my heel.

Vegging out in front of the TV last night, it was really quite sore, but it was only when I got up to go to bed that I realised just how bad it was ... I needed to fetch something from the car, but it took me ten minutes to himp (that's a cross between and hobble and a limp!) to get to the car and back, and by the time I'd himped upstairs and into the bedroom I had shifted into girlie and pathetic mode. Bloody hell, it hurt! I couldn't even get my boot off, so after a bit of help from Colin we discovered that my whole foot and ankle was very swollen. At that point I hadn't remembered about tripping up, so I was at a loss to know what had caused it.

I had a good night's sleep, and was glad to see when I woke up this morning that the swollen had all but disappeared ... that is, until I tried to stand up. Let's just say my eyes watered. The pain was excruciating. Getting to the bathroom was fun ... a sort of himp alternating with a Commando-style crawl along the landing.

Anyway, the upshot of this all is that it's now lunchtime and I still cannot put any weight down on my heel without turning a strange shade of green and coming out in a cold sweat. Getting around at work has been fun, to say the least. All day I have been putting off going downstairs to Medical Records to find some notes that I need for admissions next week ... but I'm going to have to do it at some point.

To make matters worse, my printer here at work came to the end of it's life yesterday morning, and hence I am bored out of my skull as everything I really need to be doing involves printing. I have huge amounts of clinic letters to do and I'm getting really annoyed that I can't get on and get them done. I have now been waiting 24 hours for someone from Computer Services to come over and either replace the dead printer or fix it. I think I'm going to have to ring them again and impress on them the urgency of my plight.

In the meantime, at least I get out of making the coffee today - with my hopalong himp status, I'd spill most of it before I'd got from the kitchen back to the office.

My Mum told me earlier that I should go to Casualty ... great idea, except the Casualty department here is half a mile up the corridor ... this has to be the only time that I've ever wished that I didn't work in Ophthalmology ... I shouldn't think any of our doctors here have a clue when it comes to bones!

Anyway, this is most obviously an industrial injury, and as such I should really think about suing myself for millions of pounds in compensation ... or at least give myself a weekend off from my life so that I can scrap to my heart's content (Mr Mojo, he come back!).