Injuries

Torn Crotch, Tennis Elbow, Imbedded Tick - they are all part of the farming experience. 

Let's not assume farming does not come with visits to the local hospital and/or doctor. There is always the broken and bruised finger, twisted ankles, sore backs, splinters, strained hamstrings, barb wire cuts and so on but with these it's just 'heads down - bum up' and keep going.

Some times however the injuries are a little worse and living alone out in the bush you need help and it's never funny when the doctor just laughs at you when you do go in.  Here is my latest hospital admission and the M.O.I  (mode of investigation) says it all. At first I thought I'd run onto the end of a stick and the other end had jumped up and stabbed me in the crotch. I was afraid to look down fearing I had been impaled. I guess in retrospect running after the bull trying to cut him away from the cows in a heavy thunder storm and wearing rubber boots was not the smartest thing.

I could hardly move, my leg just wouldn't work, I had a shooting pain from my knee to my stomach and any movement was quickly followed by a yelp like the dog makes when he runs into the electric fence. There I was standing in the middle of the paddock, rain pelting down and barley able to move. Lucky I could actually reach a decent stick and used that as a crotch to get back to the shed. Within an hour I'd got up to the hospital fearing a hernia or worse.  X-rays and Scans over the next few days and the conclusion was a torn muscle which seems evident given the brushing that eventually came out all down my thigh and through my crotch.

Before this little mishap there had been the case of the imbedded tick.  In the early days clearing the farm it was common to get 3 or 4 ticks a day off using tweezers. This particular tick however got into the fleshy part under my upper arm and to see him I needed to twist my arm with the other hand. This made it impossible to get him with the tweezers and turn my arm at the same time.  Not all ideas I have are good ones. I figured I'd just sit down and invert a bottle of kerosine on him and he would eventually back out and I'd be all good again. After about an hour he was still in there the little bugger and had almost disappeared below the skin. Instead of backing out he had gone the other way to get away from the kerosine. Next day saw me off to the doctors and she had to cut it out with a scalpel. I became somewhat of a celebrity that day with all the doctors in the surgery coming in to see the deepest tick any had ever seen. At least I was famous for something.

Then there was the tennis elbow. At first I thought I had poisoned myself somehow and my joints were getting stiff as a result. A neighbour had told me about these trees I'd been cutting down and how poisonous they were and how a School Teacher in Nambour had ended up in hospital with poisoning from them. Then my dad had warned me about getting too mush weed killer on my skin and the effect it could have on your body and he had been a commercial sprayer so had seen the results. After spending endless nights in the cold shed where I was living at the time with both elbows soaking in buckets of cold water to ease the throbbing I relented and went off to see the doctor again. Diagnosis tennis elbow - "It will eventually go away in a year or so", the lady doctor said.

 That's when I learned to just drive the ride on mower through the longest grass or tallest bush and leave the whipper snipper alone for a while. It's amazing how the back and forward swing of the whipper snipper is so much like hitting forward and backhand tennis shots - apparently.