Bubble Boy Breaks (Again)

A real rib-tickler

Hello cherished reader. I write to you from the floor.

This morning I subluxed a rib—meaning it slipped out of the joint and then (kind of) slipped back in. This is an injury usually reserved for people that are pushing their car uphill or playing full contact ice hockey. If only, cherished reader. If only. 

Here’s a fun game: during which of the following mundane morning ablutions do you think I wrenched my rib out of its socket? In randomised order, I:

• Splashed water on my face. 

• Made the bed. 

• Peeled the foil off a new tub of yogurt.

• Wrote out an ambitious to-do list for the day. 

• Flipped the kettle on. 

Let me set the scene a bit before the big reveal. 

When people in movies “throw their back out”, they become rigid, their faces freeze in a ghoulish scream, and then they fall stiffly backwards as if shot in the head. I could see the appeal. Unfortunately what I couldn’t see was the fall-zone behind me, since rotating my neck was completely out of the question. I stayed upright and tried to figure out what to do.

The noise I made when the rib slipped out was part wail, part gurgle, part piercing mid-lung shriek. It scattered birds. 

When you have any sort of spinal trouble, people always tell you the first step is to lie flat on your back on the floor. Once I was down there, I found that no other steps were really possible. So I yowled like a cat that wasn’t being let inside and phoned Maddie to come home and save me.

The answer to the guessing game was… Peeled the foil of a new tub of yogurt. Congratulations to the lucky winners!

In my feeble spine’s defence, I had had a tight neck for a few days. This particularly stubborn yogurt foil was simply the straw that broke the camel’s back (so to speak)(I’m the camel).

 8 grams of protein per serve my big white ass. 

Why always me?

While waiting for Maddie, I realised that anti inflammatory ibuprofen was going to be key. It wasn’t easy getting up off the ground (picture a flipped cockroach’s death rattle), harder still was lining my stomach enough to take on the nurofen. How does one raise a spoon to one’s mouth to take painkillers when one needs painkillers in order to be able to, for example, raise a spoon to one’s mouth?

This was just the beginning. An episode of debilitating pain from a surreal injury can be a great opportunity for self reflection. Take my word for it.

In fact, when asked later if this was the strangest or most embarrassing way I’d ever hurt myself, I had to say, with no small amount of existential dread, that it might not even crack the top three. I’m a magnet for this stuff, be it stitches from e-scooters, broken fingers from vortexes, overhydration (really), or torn ankle ligaments from a jumping high-five. Once is funny. Twice is sus. However many times I’ve done it is a pattern, and it’s starting to look pathological.

The rib is not even the first bone I’ve subluxed this calendar year. I was in a moon boot for all of May after dis- and re-locating my cuboid doing an innocuous and completely unimpeded two-footed jump.

The questions are the easy part of an existential crisis—Am I the weakest man who ever lived? Why are my bones so slippery? What’s next, breaking my collarbone closing the microwave door? The hard part is the answers.

Luckily Maddie is a medical professional (though she did, somewhat unprofessionally, say, ‘Yikes man,’ when she saw the lump of semi protruding rib on my back) with more medical professionals on speed dial. Her mum diagnosed me over the phone. We got a ball of socks under the affected rib and I took my first true pain free breath in half an hour.

Where to from here?

If you don’t know what a glute band is, it’s like a 15” elastic looped resistance band that helps keep your knees together when you squat. I have one wrapped around my torso to hold my rib cage in place. To take pressure of my back muscles I’ve also been using a sling. Because of a yogurt foil. 

If I laugh too much I am in danger. I’ve had to put a blanket ban on all sneezes. I do not stand up off the couch anymore, instead, I roll. It’s an interesting way to live and get around.

I’m not sure how to process the surrealness and objective funniness of the ways I keep getting injured, but it sure would be nice to tell someone why I’m in a sling/cast/moonboot without them biting down on their cheek to stop from smiling. Maybe ice hockey is the answer. At least then broken bones would make physiological sense.

Obviously I can’t keep accidentally maiming myself for the purposes of this blog, so I think it’s time for a holiday. Two months should do it. In Europe. With lots of yoga. And (gentle) sightseeing.

I’m not sure what kind of writing time I’ll have, so posts may be infrequent and small for the rest of the year. But of course, if I tear my PCL while looking up at the Arc de Triomphe or something, you’ll be the first to know. Happy Spring!