Aw hun *squeezes CBC* arthritis really fucking blows goat. And the bone fragmenting thing with your spine, I know what thats like, not with my spine, but due to my getting my knee impaled through the gap between the top of my tibia and my kneecap, penetrating through the tendon, when I fell on some broken glass as a child, and the having it stamped on, along with my face, right when I was trying to recover.
I had surgery a few years back after the pain, which had long since the initial events to remove just that kind of fragmented little bone spikelets from the joint. What was done was to split the tendon lengthways, reach inside guided by whatever imaging tech they used, and to reach inside and dissect out any sharp, pointy little osseous fragments they were able to find. Although it did me not one whit of good, and indeed quite the opposite.
Somewhat of a prolonged recovery period, spent on crutches (luckily, in a sense, because I have needed them several times since, and I never got round after my op to returning them to the hospital. Its been many years now, and if they haven't replaced them then they aren't bothering to, by now. I've been immobilized several times by the autoimmunity shite that has been causing my body to attack itself, and fuck my feet and ankles up, recently as a few days ago in fact. And another case, was my once ending up going over a 40-odd foot drop onto what was most decidedly NOT a very nice lot of things to land on. Was walking home from seeing a then friend, went past the pub on the way back only to hear 'oi! wot wot wot u fuckin nigger!' (yeah, it sounded like the way I deliberately missspelled it, dumbfuck charver filth.) stormed out of the place plainly looking to kick fuck out of the first person to cross their path. Obviously so, since they presumably must have worked out how to pronounce 'oi' 'wot' and 'nigger', and had to keep it circulating in memory because there just wasn't the space between that pack of haploid, cryptorchid faggotmeisters to hold more than those words/pseudo-words in their thick skulls, and continue to both walk and breathe (unfortunately, especially the latter) at one and the same time.
Had to run for it, there were too many for there to be anything but a certain outcome of my trying to fight them unarmed, and at the time, I was indeed, unarmed, save for a pocket knife. Not much use in a fight unless someone would aim every time to land either a fatal, or incapacitating blow, such as an arterial wound, severed tendons, blade driven into a nerve plexus etc. Even HAD I been about to do so, the odds would have been poor indeed and while I'm sure I'd have been able to take at least a few of them out of the fight, permanently or otherwise, I'm also pretty confident I'd have ended up being at some point, disarmed by the rest and the knife used against me also.
So I ran like hell, with these fucking glans-gargling mongrel whoreborn sewage made flesh, and came to what I THOUGHT was a garden boundary wall or something of that nature, intending on chancing there being a dog, angry homeowner etc., relying on a combination of surprise and sprinting for my skin, which believe it or not, tends to make one forget how badly one's fucked up, neuropathy-beplagued, bursitis-cursed joints until afterwards, to make sure that the possible dog/home owners had insufficient time to react to me, and if anybody, their anger directed against those chasing after me.
But, bad luck for me. No fence, railway bridge instead and I didn't realize it until I'd sprinted up to it, grabbed the top jumped up and flicked myself over it, I couldn't see the other side until I was already winging through the air, with no way whatsoever to prevent the inevitable bone-crunching drop. 30 feet at the least, 40 easy.
Dropped straight onto the very bottom of the embankment, onto a load of rocks, in a huge patch of bramble canes and stinging nettles. I'm just glad I was 'lucky' enough to miss the overhead live wires and avoid frying myself extra-crispy. Ended up in hospital, but thankfully no broken bones. Got fucking lucky there really, in that sense at least. Because that fall was long enough to have killed me if I'd have landed in the wrong way, and hadn't had my fall broken by being snagged up in the thorns, those fucking blackberry bushes are tough as wire near enough, and absolutely laden with vicious fucking hooked thorns. God damn am I ever thankful that I had a very tough coat on, might have had my leathers on underneath too, but at the time I remember, (you tend to remember that kind of thing when your life just flashed before your eyes in slow-motion
:P:P) that I was wearing an ex army issue tough-as-fuck gore-tex coat that I was given by a staff member at my last school, who used to be special forces ex army dude, along with his old beret (not the Regiment badge, but the beret itself and his old camo coat, both of which I still have, and I often wear the coat, when it starts pissing it down, and especially in the wind, because it really doesn't let anything through, although its breathable and not excessively hot or cold, but keeps one as comfortable as possible regardless)
And it even managed to help, along with whatever was under it, to stop me getting torn to bloodied meat .ribbons anywhere nearly as badly as I would otherwise have, given the nature of my initial landing (initial as in, not counting the bouncing, the rolling, the thump-swearing-thump-swearing-thump-swearing.
Hasn't helped my joints one bit. Christ, fucked up my ankle pretty bad too that night. Although I'm mostly just thankful I didn't end up lying there, immobilized, my spine broken, both legs broken or something, or just snapping my neck and being killed instantly. Or worse, ending up quadriplegic.
