If I were to write an autobiography, this would be the chapter where I renounced atheism and gained a firm belief in an all-powerful being, for the sole reason that something omnipotent must hate me.
Marathon training was going fairly badly, in that it was barely happening since I passed the last of the kidney stones because of the Beast From the East and my general demotivation, and the Warwick half marathon was cancelled. Sunday, though, the majority of the snow had gone and I’d exhausted my list of excuses, so I reluctantly set out on a 10 mile run. This turned out to be a mistake.
Half a mile in I slipped on something. There was both ice and the largest collection of pigeon shit I’ve ever seen, so it could have been either. I face planted the pavement, lifted my head up, and saw a puddle of blood on the ground. “Shit, I’ve lost a tooth” was my first thought, so I took a glove off to have a feel. Whilst taking my glove off, I noticed the obscene amount of bird crap on it. I sat up, and realised it also coated my trousers, hoodie, and hair. I took a selfie to assess the damage, realised it was an A&E job, thought “no cabbie will let me anywhere near their car in this state”, started hobbling to the hospital, whilst noticing my right ankle and knee were also pretty sore, too.
Luckily where I fell wasn’t far from the hospital, and even more fortunately I walked past the home of an extremely kind woman and her little boy who wouldn’t hear of me walking any further and let me smear the front seat of her new BMW with the pigeon shit I was coated in whilst she drove me to A&E (a bottle of wine will be left on her doorstep).
I got to A&E and was seriously impressed with the speed and quality of my care: I was booked in at reception, triaged, made comfortable, assessed, x-rayed, reviewed, lip wound cleaned out, and discharged with helpful aftercare advice in about 2.5 hours. One thing I was a bit less impressed about was the nurse asking Darryl to leave the room to fetch a wheelchair, and asking me if my injuries were because he’d thumped me whilst he was gone. Now, I deal with a lot of safeguarding issues and I understand these questions need to be asked, especially as I had no injuries to my hands or wrists which you’d typically see in someone who’d slipped and tried to break their fall. No, what really annoyed me was the implication that a) I lack the basic hardwired instinct to break my fall with my hands and instead let my face do the job, and b) the nurse thought I’d date a man who not only punched me in the face, but also absolutely covered me in pigeon shit afterwards.
All in, I had a twisted ankle, a grazed, bruised and swollen right knee, a bruised jaw, cheek and chin, sore teeth, an impressive lip laceration, and mild concussion. It was quite painful, but I didn’t mind too much because I feel quite separate from the pain, which I guess was the concussion. Definitely nothing compared to a kidney stone!
I’ll get my trainers back on when I’m confident I can run in a straight line, which hopefully won’t be too long! I’m starting to feel like The Universe is telling me not to do the marathon, though...
Love Emily x
