Friday 13th June
My arm was still sore since I had injured it playing football in Darwin the previous week. The swelling had gone down and the colour of my flesh had changed from a dark purple to a more jaundiced hue, but I still couldn't do much with it. Marie-Therese is a nurse and works at the local hospital in Murwillumbah, so she took me there to get have someone look at it and see what they could do to make it better.
We spent a few hours in the hospital; my arm was x-rayed and the doctor was surprised that I hadn't had any medical attention for a week. The reason for his concern was that the bottom of the radius bone in the arm had been fractured, crushed by the impact of my hand when I had fallen on it when making that heroic tackle. There were also signs that the bone had started to heal. The doctor told me that they would have to put me to sleep, re-break the bone and then manipulate it into a suitable position before they could put a cast on the arm. So, this they did, and I didn't feel a thing, I was completely out of it. I woke up to find my arm in a temporary cast, and feeling slightly more sore than before they had manipulated it. But, it didn't feel too bad and the doctor gave me some synthetic morphine tablets to take with me to kill any pain that I should encounter. He also gave me instructions to have the temporary cast removed and a new fibreglass cast fitted within the next week, something that I would have to get done in New Zealand.
I was surprised to find out that the arm was fractured, but glad that I had got it looked at. The staff at the Murwillumbah Hospital were all very friendly and down to earth, and it helped to have Marie-Therese along as she knew most of the people there.
Brian had kindly arranged to go out fishing that afternoon, but I was feeling a bit under the weather after taking the painkiller and didn't feel up to going fishing and most likely spend it sitting in the car. Instead, Brian and Dad went off for the afternoon and I went to bed for an hour before I got up and watched some of the Euro 2008 replays on the TV.
