Last week on Tuesday I decided to go snowboarding with a guy from the university I had gotten to know; Tom, who had told me he was a snowboard instructor himself, so I thought that might be fun.
We went to SnowWorld, where I've been many times in the past.
At around 10:00 PM I was really wearing myself out and getting tired but I didn't plan on going any time soon, which turned out to be something I'd come to regret..
I went up the slope (slope 3 no less, which has no obstacles on it whatsoever, just a plain long slope) and decided to practice some backside 360s on the flats (never did those on the flats before even though I can do them on a jump since a few weeks).
The first one went perfectly, which pleased me, but then when I tried to do it again, overconfident as I was, I came down hard on my side with my elbow between me and the surface of the slope, and really hurt my side!
At first I just laid there on the slope having difficulty breathing (which I've had experienced in the past, even to the point of nausea) but then the pain set in hard.
Tom came up to me talking me through it (breathing patterns and all) but the pain just didn't go away and breathing was still very difficult.
I decided it would be best to just move to the side of the slope instead of lying in the middle of it and try to shake it off there (as I didn't want to alarm anyone at the time), so I stood up and snowboarded the last few meters down and to the side.
After having been lying down for a good 20 minutes or so, it just didn't seem to get any better and I told Tom I'd want to go outside to sit there, and it would maybe also be a good time for us to leave for home.
So I got up and I tried walking toward the exit of the slope but every step I took just hurt a lot!
Having walked for only around 10 meters I came to realize that this wasn't just going to disappear and I wasn't physically able to continue on walking, so I told Tom I'd have to stop.
I sat down on a bench which was nearby and Tom rushed to get an in-house medic to take a look at me.
A guy from SnowWorld itself arrived and analyzed me by asking some generic questions but, him not being a doctor, he told me it would be best to just go to the emergency room at the hospital and gave us directions on how to get there (Tom was able to drive me).
Upon arriving at the hospital, I walked up a few painful steps to the counter where it was requested I should urgently be gotten a wheelchair.
I tried to calm down the desk employee by saying I'd walked for a while and it would be okay, walking would be fine (it had also seemed that standing hurt the least whereas it hurt a lot whenever I sat or lied down), but she would have none of it and expressly told that it wasn't a request, so I sat down and was driven to an examination room.
I explained what happened and how much my side hurt and I was given an intramuscular injection to ease the pain (which I was later told was Morphine — which really surprised me because I'd sooner associate that with much more severe injuries).
After a long time, it was becoming more and more apparent that I wasn't going to be leaving the hospital that night and that was exactly what I was eventually told (after having done an Xray and was told that it wasn't a fracture), so I was driven to an observation room (IV and all) at which point I said goodbye to Tom.
By this time, it was around 1:30 AM, and I was told to get some sleep and I'd be under observation for the night and to let them know if anything was off.
Sleeping, however, almost seemed impossible!
Lying down hurt like hell; I just wasn't able to breathe! Just sitting in my bed hurt (the only way I didn't experience much pain was sitting straight up on the side of my bed).
I hyperventilated a few times, gasping for air, but was calmed by a nurse who told me to focus on my breathing and try to calm that down, which helped; about an hour into this tormention, I was able to find some rest (I would be repeatedly awoken that night for blood samples and a blood pressure test).
Morning came, and a doctor came to me to tell me that I experienced blunt trauma to my abdomen, spoke of something called "kidney concussion" and said I was going to have an ultrasound and a CT scan to have a better view of my abdomen.
The ultrasound revealed internal bleeding and it was not clear where it came from or if it had stopped, which concerned me (causing me to hyperventilate — this is really annoying when you can't take deep breaths and every gasp for air hurts like hell).
After that it was off for the CT scan, which also required quite some effort on my part: lying down (which hurt), moving my arms above my head (which hurt), holding still (which hurt) and taking deep breaths (which hurt even more).
Needless to say, that took a lot of time to do.
After all that was set and done, I returned to the observation room and I just had to wait for the results to come in.
My brother came by to see me during that time (I had, the night before, called my mom to let her know what was up and she had since told my brother who immediately left his work to stop by and see me).
At this point, I was hoping to get the results back and be able to go home (as I didn't want to miss classes at the university and work) but when the doctor came in with the results, it was going to become clear to me that this was far from being over.
The doctor came to me with the results and told me that I've had impact trauma to my spleen and it was ruptured!
He told me in a dead serious tone that I wasn't going to be going home for quite some time!
The standard procedure is to keep a patient under close observation to see if the rupture resolves itself; if it does, I won't require surgery but if it doesn't, well, out goes the spleen.
To conclude an already long story (I didn't plan on writing this much to be honest, heh): I ended up spending a week there bound to strict bed rest, my spleen ended up healing itself shut to stop the bleeding and I am now under way to recovery.
A full recovery will take up to 6 weeks, during which time I will be unable to do any physical exertion (which includes bicycling, at least for the first weeks, which sucks) and I will have to be very careful (walk slowly, take my time going up and down stairs, etc).
Urgh.. what a week.
One final note to end this entry: thanks a lot to my friends and university classmates who came to visit me at the hospital!