kareina

Today I kinda hurt my toes on my right foot when attempting the Acroyoga Mermaid sequence. We have managed one rotation of this before--I can go from hanging from his feet right side up, to rotating over, hanging from his feet upside down, and then forward to balancing with my hips resting on his hands. It isn't easy (especially as he and I are much closer to the same height than are the flyer and base in that video), but that much is doable. However, we have never yet managed the transition back over to hanging right side up from his feet again.

Therefore, as today's acroyoga session was winding to a close we decided to give it a try. We managed the first bits, up to where I am kinda hanging upside down from his feet, but my feet are still in his hands. But somehow I didn't have the power needed to lift my legs out of his hands and rotate them around. Therefore I decided to back up and return to right side up, as I have done before on other times that I had that issue. However, instead of accomplishing that reversal, I somehow slipped, and started falling, slowly, point of elbow first, towards his tummy.

Not wanting to injure him with my elbow I quickly stretched my arms out forward, and managed to catch my fall with my hands on the ground on the far side of his body. Yay, a successful savings throw!

...Then my legs finished their decent, and landed, ends of toes of the right foot first, at a greater speed than I would like.

All three middle toes on that foot protested being suddenly forced to bend upwards whilst colliding with a solid surface. Particularly the one in the middle, which never really forgave me for once having had a heavy, electric handheld drill land on it abruptly some years ago.

It only hurt a little at first, but by the time I arrived at work and had to walk the long corridor to the archives it was hurting more, and the toes on my right food didn't at all like part about waking where they need to bend at the joint.

Therefore I called Swedish National Health Care consultation number (1177), and she entered the info of the injury into their system and recommended that I ice and elevate it and contact my local health center (which is upstairs from where I work).

So I did, and they gave me an appointment for 11:15, so I spent the rest of the morning working (choosing tasks that let me stay at the desk, with a cold pack, that I found in the freezer in the break room, wrapped around my toes. By the time I saw the doc, having been iced all morning, they weren't hurting at all if I didn't try touching them or bending them, but there was some visible bruising at the base of my toenail. There also may have been some swelling, but it is hard to tell, since that middle toe has been bigger than its neighbours ever since that above mentioned injury years ago.

The doc decided that we should x-ray it to see if it is broken (which would also be a chance to find out if the old injury had resulted in broken bones, or if that one was only soft tissue damage). Of course, the local health center I was at doesn't have x-ray equipment, so she sent me to the big hospital at Sunderbyn, not quite a half an hour drive away.

So I grabbed my backpack (with nålbinding project) and told my colleague where I was going, and limped carefully out to the car. I had already determined that going barefoot was better, as it was easier to keep the toes from bending, so I carried my sandals till I got to the outer door of the building.

This was my first time getting x-rays here, and I was impressed with the efficiency. I parked the car, walked into the hospital and asked where to find x-rays, found the right room on my first try, and took a number (73). They were already on 72, so I had a very short wait (just long enough to get out the nålbindning and take a couple of stitches, before I was called over to reception, who only wanted to know my name and personal number. Then she sent me to the next waiting room, where I managed only a few more stitches before I was called in and pictures of my foot taken.

The xray technician had me wait there till the doc had looked at the results, incase they showed anything that required urgent attention. Sadly, they told me that I couldn't see the images yet--that their computer has lots of images, from lots of patients, and therefore none may look at them, but if I ask my doctor I will be able to see them later.

So I spent a half hour working on my nålbindning and chatting on the phone with Keldor, till the technician came told me that there is no fracture and I can go.

So I returned to work and finished out my day before coming home and enjoying the Drachenwald Law Council meeting. I did, however, cancel tomorrow's acroyoga session--I don't think I am ready to balance anyone on my feet quite yet. On the other hand, I just tested it, and there is no problem at all to do a DownDog app yoga session, using the settings "restorative yoga (no standing poses)" and boost = "glute strength".

It turns out that we are taking turns getting hurt working around the house. On Wednesday lord_kjar and I finally had time and energy to do some work for the earth cellar project, so we filled in dirt and gravel behind the walls that we had built up before the Medieval Days at Hängnan, and then we moved a few large rocks into the places they will go so that we could concrete them into place the next day. We were nearly done for the day, and decided to move one medium sized rock (read just small enough that he can lift it, so long as he is careful about technique), to the place between the stairs and the door for the earth cellar.

That spot isn't under the large wooden frame we have set up over the wall in progress, so we couldn't use the pulley system that we have been using to move the large stones into place, and, since the rock was that small, it didn't seem worth using the tractor. Therefore he just picked it up and started moving it into place. I asked if he wanted help, but he didn't reply and kept moving.

A few seconds later, as it was nearly where he was going to put it, it slipped out of his gloved hands, fell away from him, bounced off of the large rock it was going to be put next to, and then back towards him, catching the end of the middle finger of his left hand between that rock and the large one on the other side. Luckily, it only bounced off of him and continued its slide into the spot it was being aimed at, so he didn't get caught between the rocks (and he had already been pulling his hands up and away the second it started falling, so it only hit the end of the one finger). Also luckily, nothing was broken, and it looks like he may get to keep the finger nail. We got ice onto it right away, and there was a bit of bleeding from alongside the nail (which is good, because that meant there wasn't a lot of painful swelling under the nail, since the blood had somewhere to go).

It is healing fine, and while he still can't do things like play violin (which requires a fair bit of pressure on exactly that part of that finger), he was able to do other projects around the house today, so long as he was careful not to bump that finger.

So he spent a chunk of today driving tractor and moving stones around. We have finally started building up the flat area near the driveway where we will be putting that new out building we bought last autumn. So he has driven up a fair few large stones to surround the area and hold the dirt in, and then he filled in the area with many scoops of dirt till it looked around large enough and kind of level. Then we carried over the bottom four logs for the shed and laid them more or less into place, putting the ends on piles of stone till we found the right height to make them all level. This gives him a good visual to know how much more dirt needs to be brought up to finish making the under-floor area.

However, in the process it was my turn to hurt myself. Because of his injured hand he was carrying his end of the logs one-handed. They are not small logs, so I needed both hands to hold them against my waist as we walked. Sadly, one of the logs wasn't balanced well for either of us, and started to roll/slip. As a result he lost his one-handed grip and that end fell to the ground, which caused my end to first fall from where I had been holding it against my waist down to my hip, where it landed with sufficient painful force as to make me let go of it and let it fall to the ground.

I fetched one of those little blue ice box things from the freezer, tucked it into the waist band of my trousers, and we finished up the job. It doesn't hurt at all at the moment (three hours later), so long as I don't try to move any muscles connected to the hip. However, I have been fighting off some sort of cold for a couple of days--it hasn't gotten bad enough to be bothersome, but today my body wants to cough a bit, but every time I try the abdominal muscles pull on the bruised area on my hip, and it hurts. I predict that tonight's yoga will be interesting.

However, if all goes well tomorrow, we will be able to do that concreting of those stones that have been waiting patiently for us since Wednesday. If only it weren't so hot...