Broken bones and one long lasting impact

Whilst I have had my share of broken bones. It’s not something I recommend trying to get a share in. It’s not fun.

My first broken bone was when I fractured my elbow. I must’ve been around 6 or 7. I remember it clearly till today. My mum had just left home and was already walking past a neighbour’s house when it happened. She dropped her stuff on the road and ran back.

I’d been reading a book and had decided it’d be a good idea to continue reading as I navigated the staircase. I missed the last three stairs and landed rather unceremoniously near at the foot of the staircase in agony.

It all ended well in the end.

Some years later, I think I was in my teens at the time, we had family visiting. My dad and I were outside with some of our family and I don’t even know how to explain what happened, I started pretending to push against him, except that I’d stop before I got to him. We were all laughing and in my mind, I secretly planned to push all the way in the next minute. I wasn’t to know that at precisely that minute, my father’s secret plan was to step away. So I ended up lunging forward, missing my dad, and falling flat on to my wrist. That’s how I fractured my wrist.

Also in my teens, I started having very bad pains on my knee. When they did an x-ray, they realised there were a lot of hairline fractures on my shin that were healing. We have no idea how that happened. I just remember the shock we had when we saw it. This was the start to a diagnosis of ‘growing pains’ which is thankfully long behind me!

The last bone I broke, and I hope it remains the last, was my nose. This happened when I was in university in the north west of England. I was walking down a street on the 3rd of January. It was extremely quiet because people were still recovering from partying. As I walked downhill, and was about to step off one pavement onto the next, I slipped. I’d no idea what had happened but I fell face forward, hitting myself on the pavement. I’d slipped on black ice. I come from Malaysia- we don’t have sleet and black ice here. I ended up breaking my nose and sustaining a fracture on my skull. It was awful.

Unlike the earlier fractures, this last one happened not long before my final exams at university. We couldn’t afford for me to defer my exams and I sat for them with an oozy head. The effect that’s lasted is that my final grade suffered. In the end, I’ve still done well. I just often wonder what other doors would’ve opened if I’d got the best grade I was capable of at the time.