The day after Heather left I fell off the boat and broke my ass, and just for fun, in several different ways.
This time I was by myself; I have no one else to share the blame with. I violated one of the very first, most important boat rules we learned. One hand for the boat; one hand for you. I wasn't holding onto anything to balance myself in the wind, on the rocking boat, which was bumping into the dock every few seconds. I guess I was feeling cocky, but I wasn't going to feel that way again for a very long time.
I was turning around on the side of the boat and scuffed the bottom of my right shoe on the rail which forms the perimeter of the boat deck. With that slight loss of balance I was starting to fall face forward towards the concrete dock below, and what flashed in my head was our neighbor across the dock last year who had done just that, breaking both arms. I didn't like the sound of that and windmilled my arms, didn't catch anything, but now I was falling more backwards. I landed on my right butt cheek on the side of the very gate in the lifelines I was trying to pass through. I bent the 1/4" stainless loop for the latch a good 25-30 degrees. With my butt cheek, if that wasn't clear.
I wasn't done yet. Gravity kept doing its thing, and in the trauma of the first hit I lost my footing completely, with both feet followed by legs sliding down the side of the boat. I then hit the first thing sticking out on the way down, the same, poor right butt cheek. This spun me around 180 degrees, and I landed on my feet, facing the boat, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. I only landed on the dock instead of in the water because the wind was pushing the boat so hard against the dock the fenders were almost flat.
I must have been a little bit in shock, because after the initial wave, things didn't hurt that bad - yet. After a minute or two I gathered all the crap I was carrying off the boat and trudged slowly up the ramp to shore. After ditching the trash and recycling in the appropriate receptacles, I continued up to the car and got in. My right butt cheek was very tender, but not really alarming just yet.
I wisely decided I wan't going to the gym after all, but somehow I was still set on going to pick up some dinner. A drive thru started sounding much more appealing. As the minutes went by I started feeling worse and worse, and by the time I was in the drive through I was ready to be back on the boat. When I got back to the marina and got out of the car there was blood on the seat. Now I was worried.
The bleeding stopped almost immediately after I got back to the boat, but not before a little gusher which got my attention. I think this contributed to my overconfidence that I could deal with this situation. To be fair, given the location, I couldn't see what was what, and I wasn't encouraged to feel what was what in any detail based on the feedback I was receiving.
I cleaned things up. Once the bleeding stopped, what hurt the most right then was my right cheek which had slammed into to the boat rail after sliding down the side of the boat more than three feet. Since my butt cheek hit the boat rail a few inches before my feet hit the dock, it almost completely stopped my fall. I could see that the whole cheek was one big ugly bruise, but nothing seemed broken or fractured or dislocated. It was a muscle-y, bruise-y kind of pain.
After about 36 hours the bruise kind of pain let up, and/or the wound pain shot up. This was now the primary focus of my attention if I moved the wrong way, which included sitting of any flavor, and for that matter, sometimes breathing.
I watched whole seasons of TV shows we had on board, really only pausing to briefly sleep, but I would soon move in some way and the pain would wake me back up again. I would slog up to the showers, at first twice a day, then as things slowed down, once at day. I cleaned the wound hourly if I was awake, and every time I woke up. The bleeding never really resumed, at least not in the vigorous manner it did when I first got back to the boat, and what little there was still was a little less every day.
I was still under the idiotic impression that I would just heal up and put this behind me, as it were.
I couldn't drive because I couldn't sit, so I really couldn't go anywhere. I really didn't want to go to a medical facility in Brunswick, and I didn't want to call an ambulance. That still seemed excessive. But I was on my back or standing up because anything touching my right cheek, or touching something connected to my right cheek, was very painful. I suddenly found time for things I could still do while flat on my back, for example, this very blog.
I fanatically checked the size of the blood spot on the gauze every hour, and it kept getting smaller, but then after about a week it started getting slightly bigger again. Once it became clear that I wasn't going to be better in any appreciable way before Heather got back, I broke the news to her and we arranged for her fly back sooner, since I was now in greater need. She flew back that day, and caught an Uber up to Brunswick.
That'e enough for now, and trust me, you don't want any pictures, although I regret to say, eventually pictures were taken. Strictly for professional purposes. It's not like I have any pride left.
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