At least Ive got a good excuse for not blogging much in the last month!
I'll explain and I'll try not to give too many gory details...
After Scripture Union camp I spent a week at home just chilling out, shopping, seeing friends and catching up on things Id miss while traveling. Then on Friday the 20th of January I flew on a tiny 12 seater plane to Nelson for the TSCF staff and families weekend. It was a really fantastic weekend, I was helping to lead on the kids programme. We were teaching them about Titus and they were interested and learning. The cool thing was were focusing on teaching them about memorizing verses and the plan for the weekend was if they each learnt a verse as a group they would be able to recite the whole of Titus, it was awesome to see the kids working hard to learn it.
Along with the kids programme there was other activities like archery and swimming in the lake. The lake had a big trampoline in the middle, canoes and kayaks and a big slide :D We were going down the slide in 2's, 3's and even 4's... Such rebels!
The other activity that was on offer was go karting...
Luke and I watched some others go speeding round the dirt track and then the time came for our turn. Luke got into the driving seat and I was the passenger (to be fair it was more like a buggy thing with a metal frame roll cage) we put on our seat belts and off we went! When I say off we went I mean it literally, about three quarters round the track the kart skidded on gravel, hit the kerb and flipped over onto my side, I don't remember but as a reflex my left arm went out and smashed the humorus bone to pieces and I severed some nerves as well...
About half a hour later a fire engine arrived with a paramedic and morphine, then the ambulance arrived. However they realised that it would be too dangerous to move me by ambulance so the helicopter arrived.... I believe an hour from the time of the accident we flew off.
That night I had my first operation where they cleaned the wounds and put in fixators to keep it steady. On the Tuesday I had my second operation where again they cleaned the wounds and did some other things to my arm.
On the Wednesday we flew to Lower Hutt Hospital which is the centre for excellence in NZ for plastics and ortho and incidentally Lower Hutt is where I live. We were moved from the hospital in Nelson to the airport by ambulance then flown in a small plane to LH, I thought of it as my private jet :P It was only Ailsa and I, the 2 paramedics and the 2 pilots on the plane, then we were transferred to the hospital by ambulance.
The next few days were spent relaxing, I mainly slept and watched tv. I had amazing support from my friends here so it made my time in hospital easier. The big operation was scheduled for the Saturday at 8.30am so I wasn't allowed to eat from 10pm the night before however, I wasn't taken into surgery until 8pm at night so I couldn't eat all day or drink so I was starving! It didn't help that I tortured myself by watching Master Chef and Come Dine With Me marathons.
The operation started at 8pm and finished at 2am...
Things they did:
Took a bone graph from my hip to replace the bone that had broken off at the accident.
Put metal plates and screws into the arm to hold the bones together.
Found the Ulnar nerve and reattached it again.
Found another nerve that had been severed and reattached it again too.
Pulled the skin back together and stitched it back up.
It went really amazingly and everyone seemed really pleased with the results.
After the op I stayed in hospital for 6 more days and in that time I had to come to terms with a lot of things and had to relearn how to do a lot of things. The nurses, doctors and my friends were an amazing support and I am so grateful for everything they did to help me.
Since getting out of hospital Ive continued to get better. Some things are really hard to cope with and there's quite a lot of things that at the moment I can't do for myself, so I find it hard to be dependent on others. Each day though I'm getting stronger and I go on the motto of "Do one thing every day that scares you" so each day I try to do something new.
Mum has come over for a fortnight so that has been a great support as well.
My life has been changed and my arm will never look the same again but as my Dad said my scars will never define who I am. People keep asking me if Ive booked my flights home now and are constantly surprised when I tell them I'm staying on till July. God has brought me out to NZ and He has a plan for my life and He's not giving up on me; I just have to stay strong, kia kaha.
x
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