Around Canada Day, I get a little sentimental. I, unlike nearly six billion other unfortunates on this planet, was lucky enough to be born a Canadian and to grow up with hockey, maple syrup, five per cent beer and The Tragically Hip. I was also lucky enough to grow up in a country that has universal health care – because when all is said and done, I’m really unlucky.
I was born in a hospital, and I’ll probably die in a hospital – in the meantime it seems that I’m destined to spend a lot of my time there.
It’s not that I "go big," because I don’t – I’m too afraid I’ll wind up back in the hospital. Compared to a lot of the adrenaline junkies in this town, I’m a total pantywaist.
Most recently, I dislocated a number of ribs from my vertebrae – I’m not sure of the exact number because I don’t know how many the chiropractor and physiotherapist popped back in between them. My physiotherapist said she got three, so judging by the number of pops I heard at the chiropractor I’m guessing five ribs altogether.
I didn’t notice the injury when it happened. I got tackled in rugby, and a ruck formed (a ruck is a play whereby players on one team attempt to push the players on the other team off the ball).
As soon as the pile had moved over me, I started to crawl up and out of the pile of bodies towards the light. Before I could get away cleanly, however, a couple of big guys that were still grappling for field position collapsed on top of me. I got a rear end to the shoulder and was pinned briefly beneath about 400 pounds of bulk.
I thought I heard something pop, or, more accurately, I thought I heard everything pop. It didn’t hurt much so I kept playing. Two days later, when the pain kept me up nights, I went in for a few X-rays.
The doctor noticed the problem immediately – my ribs were indeed out of joint, probably because I had bent and twisted some of my vertebrae out of place as a result of up to three previous spinal injuries.
Without going into too much more detail, I’m going to be just fine. The ribs are back in place, and I’m doing stretches and exercises to straighten my spine out. But for how long will I be fine?
It all started back in kindergarten. I was playing Star Wars with glow in the dark swords in a darkened basement with my older brother, and he was working me over pretty good. I got in close to get out of the way of his slashes and grabbed him. We lost balance and fell to the floor.
I felt something go in my leg and started to scream.
My mom, convinced I had a Charlie Horse waited almost a full day to take me to the hospital. My leg was blue by then. It turns out I had broken my femur.
It was a total fluke accident, one that would be next to impossible to re-create, and yet I had to bathe in the sink and be pulled to school on a toboggan for six whole weeks. The same year I was taken to the hospital for observation with the worse case of chicken pox my doctor had ever seen. Mumps were no picnic either, and all four of my wisdom teeth were impacted. I contracted Mono and missed my entire March break.
The bad luck has continued. I had my ankle plate kicked in playing soccer. I cracked a rib falling off a train. I broke a bone in my hand break dancing. The front wheel fell off my BMX bike while I was dirt jumping and I embedded gravel in both knees and elbows and dislocated my jaw. I broke my nose playing basketball and two toes banging it into a chair. I dislocated two fingers when a friend slammed a car door on them.
Playing high school football and rugby, I broke a finger, my nose, and slipped a disc in my lower back. I tore cartilage in one knee and tore two ligaments in the other – a couple of guys fell on the side of my leg while I was running for the ball. (See a pattern here?) They didn’t operate because it was 1992 and the protocol back then was to wait a whole year to see if I could rehabilitate the ligaments on my own. After nearly six months on crutches and eight months of physio, I could run well enough so I never went back for the surgery – the knee has plagued me ever since, most recently cutting short a hiking trip to Mexico and annoying me off of a 10K run.
Skateboarding, playing football and rugby, I also managed to log seven concussions, losing consciousness twice.
I’ve gone to the hospital for road rash, stitches, migraine headaches, persistent sinus infections, and dislocated shoulders. I’ve had CAT scans, MRIs, Ultrasounds, and blood tests galore.
I sprained a ligament in the tail bone area while trying to break up a fight. At university, I had to take the train from Toronto to Halifax because I had bone chips lodged in the sinus over my left eye – it was seriously infected and it hurt too much to depressurize in an airplane. I had an operation during reading week one year, and the surgeon forgot to tell me that he left a suture and a wad of gauze up there. It got infected once again.
I know some people have been injured far worse than I have, and there are probably a few people out there that have been injured far more often.
In any case, while Canada is not a perfect country, it’s the perfect place for me – if I had to pay for all of my medical bills, my parents would have had to take out a second mortgage on the house.
— Andrew Mitchell
