Not at all Humerus

Monday and we're back off to the hospital this afternoon for the CT scan. The car journey is still painful, but I find that wrapping a pashmina around my arm and torso keeps it a bit more stable and reduces the jolting sensation. It takes 3 technicians to get me to lie on my back - anything that pulls my shoulder back is unbearable and lying on my back is something that I cannot do. For this unfortunately I have no option. Luckily it doesn't take too long, but it is extremely painful and I only remember afterwards that they can hear everything you say while doing these scans - there was lot of swearing. Maybe that's why they completed it so fast. They promise to get the report out that afternoon, as I have the followup appointment with Mr Shoulder tomorrow morning. Back home in another painful car journey. And another painful night. The pain gets to be very wearing, it's just constantly dragging at you. The next morning we have to be up early for an appointment at 8...

I discover through a process of trying every different pillow that I own that I need to have more pillows under my head. This keeps me more upright, helps to reduce pulling on my shoulder when lying down, and helps give my left hand a bit more room so it doesn't get stuck underneath me and go numb quite as often. The Tramadol and Diazepam are keeping a lot of the pain and spasms at bay, and I'm able to go out with my mother and get some more clothes that can work with the injury - soft pull-on bras, including a strapless one, and a few more vest style tops. I'm also now able to get a washcloth under my left arm to wash better. It really does become the little things that feel like huge accomplishments with this type of injury. My right hand however is becoming more and more painful, and anything that requires clenching my fingers or twisting my hand can be agony. I still have no appetite, and the spasms still break through, particularly when sitting down or getting up f...

You know you're in a bad way when nurses wince and shudder when they see your arm. An uber ride to the hospital this morning, still really painful but not as bad as before thanks to Tramadol and Diazepam. Felt sorry for the driver who was pretty freaked out by my yelping, and gave him a good tip to make up for it. I was sent round to the waiting area for the consultant, expecting to wait as I was 30 minutes early. A man came out to as I was checking in with the secretary and said "You must be Melissa, come through". I guess if you're a shoulder specialist and see that you have an appointment with someone with a broken shoulder and this turns up it's probably not a huge stretch to figure out who your next appointment is: Mr Shoulder asks a bunch of questions about how it happened, and then walks me round to x-ray in another part of the hospital. He walks fast. I attempt to scurry along in his wake. As I'm waiting in radiology my mother arrives, an...

I have an Amazon order today. Google (which I know doctors just hate us to use) informs me that in many cases of non-union the patient is found to be Vitamin D deficient, but it is still not a recommendation to take Vitamin D. That makes no sense to me at all. I already knew I was Vitamin D deficient from testing in April to check my thyroid function, so I up my Vitamin D supplement to two sprays of 3000 a day. After poor healing from a surgery last year, my doctor in Sydney recommended that I use sprays or sublingual tablets, as the rest of my digestive system doesn't seem terribly good at absorbing vitamins. I also increase my Vitamin B12 spray to twice a day, to help healing generally. And I buy a Bone Support supplement with Calcium, Magnesium, Manganese, Vit K, and Boron. What with the supplements and the Tramadol, Diazepam, Anadin Plus, and occasional Ibuprofen I'm taking, I've had to start keeping track of medications and times to make sure I'm not taking too...

Over the next week the bruising really came out. Tramadol made the pain sort of bearable, and the diazepam kept the spasms under control for the most part. Standing up, getting in or out of bed, sitting down, all still caused spasms, but at least the random spasms had stopped. If I could keep moving the spasms didn't happen, but any time I sat for more than 15 minutes, they would build. I also had to sit in a dining chair, with cushions to keep my back upright. Sofas or armchairs weren't possible as they required me to lean back, which I couldn't do. I had given work the good news that I wasn't back for at least 2 weeks, and called the health fund, who confirmed that they covered my surgeon and his consultations.  I also called the private hospital and they got me an appointment with him for Tuesday 19th June. My mother returned home, but my sister came to cook for me on Sunday, and I had Ocado deliver my groceries while she was there to unpack and carry things. I c...

It took another hideously painful car journey, with the shrieking, yelling and crying that comes with that, but we made it to the private GP the next afternoon. What a joy to deal with a doctor who is actually willing to help. Luckily my sister had taken photos of the xrays on the screen at St Thomas's (which we promised not to post online...well, she did, I didn't, so I think technically we're ok on that score). The GP was very keen to see those and actually winced when she saw them. Already better than the delightful NHS one who laughed. I told her about the spasms and the pain, and then my arm decided a demonstration was in order and went into spasm, so she could see first hand how awful it was, She immediately prescribed Tramadol and Diazepam, and signed me off work for 2 weeks. And referred me for a consultation with a surgeon at the nearby private hospital. We filled the prescriptions on the way home, and then life got a little more bearable - the Diazepam helped ...

It takes a long time for me to be able to get into the car. Bending is difficult, and with only one working hand (that is also getting more painful by the day), it is a logistical challenge to work out how to do it. In the end I manage to back in and swivel round. It's not elegant, and it hurts like hell. But that pain is nothing to when the car starts moving. I basically scream and yelp the entire 15 minute journey, it is just awful. Every bounce of the car (that a normal non-damaged person wouldn't even notice), feels like someone is slicing my arm open from the inside. It is horrible. And not much fun for the driver (poor Mum!) either. We find A&E and now the NHS reverts to the hell that I remember. First we queue at a processing area. Then when we are roundly ignored by the two people talking behind the counters, notice a sign saying that they are not open between 12 and 1, and we should proceed to main A&E reception, just a bit further along. So we shuffle 10 p...

The weekend passed in a haze of pain, and a bit of anger. I can't believe that one bus driver driving badly can inflict this much damage and pain on me. I move between denial that this has happened, and anger that it has happened. Who knew that accidents also follow the stages of grief? I start the obsessive googling of proximal humerus fractures that will continue for quite a few months. The pain is just getting worse, the bruising is coming in, and the spasms are unrelenting. We decide that we will attempt the local hospital A&E on Monday. Google has informed me that the fracture clinic may not be the answer to my pain, as the reviews aren't great and pain isn't something that they seem to care too much about (in this, google turned out to be entirely correct). I add "private gp services" to my search criteria. I manage to have a shower. Well, to be entirely correct I manage to stand under the showerhead while my poor mother washes my hair for me....

Getting up was so painful, it took quite a few attempts and a fair amount of tears to achieve it. Every time I moved to sitting, or to standing, my whole upper arm would spasm and the pain was so awful it wasn't possible to do anything except clutch my arm and cry. Eventually managed to get up and get some clothes on. I could only manage a t-shirt if it had a big enough neck to pull up over my legs, and couldn't begin to get my left arm into it, it just had to hang off my right shoulder and tuck under my left arm. I couldn't even contemplate a bra. Brushing teeth was tricky - I could only use an electric toothbrush as any back and forwards movement, even with my right arm, set off more spasms, and I couldn't lean forward over the sink, that was unbearable. So had to rinse using a cup of water.  I couldn't get the lid off the toothpaste either, as it needed to be unscrewed, which I didn't have hands for.  Getting downstairs was also hard, my balance had g...

Once released from A&E, we managed to get a black cab, and headed to Liverpool St station. Great Anglia now decided to complete the public transport fun I'd had that day by randomly terminating the train 5 stops from home, and cancelling subsequent trains. Luckily my sister immediately requested an uber, and we were on our way again in 20 minutes. By now pain had set in quite badly, and the road from Cheshunt station, with speedbumps every 25 metres, made me cry. Every bump sent my arm into spasm and the pain was really horrific. Later the consultant explained to me that every muscle spasm made the shard edges of the bones essentially slice through my internal soft tissues. The explanation made sense, but didn't change the extreme pain that cause! Eventually home at about 7pm and took codeine. We setup my bed with what we later called the fort - basically a sofa cushion and 5 pillows laid down the middle of the bed with a sheet wrapped round them all to keep them in place...

I've searched and read obsessively since June 7th, the day a London bus driver decided to experiment with launching passengers as missiles and broke my right hand, snapped the head off my left humerus, and knocked me out. Nothing I've been able to find online was similar to the symptoms or experience I had so I've decided to go back to the beginning and write about it, in case it helps someone else who has a similar set of injuries. June 7th, 13:55 I was on a fairly empty bus heading across Southwark Bridge, running a little late for a meeting at 2pm at Red Lion Court. I came downstairs from the upper deck on the bus, I remember looking to the left as I got to the bottom of the stairs and seeing two men also standing at the middle door waiting to get off at the next stop, and then looking to the front of the bus. I remember a bus pole being wrenched out of my right hand and a sudden pain in my hand, and then nothing. The next thing I remember is an explosion of pain, as...