“A Mish a Day” #237 Surviving 2020. Te Anau/Christchurch. 31.12.2020. On the 11th of January I got out of bed and got ready for a day’s work on the Fiordland Navigator not knowing that a fridge door was going to begin a challenging mission on the very bumpy road of 2020. What a year! The Navi made her way past Bauza Island and the other small islands at the entrance to Doubtful Sound, enroute for the Tasman Sea. I had rostered myself on as Galley Hand, and was having a great time hanging out with the team’s extremely talented chef Jorge (even better singer than chef!) and we were having a great old time attempting to do our jobs in a workplace that was getting increasingly rougher with each swell as we got closer to the Tasman Sea…
We hit a biggy and anything not secure on the boat went flying. Knowing the inside of the fridge would now look like a smoothie before turning on the blender, I ask one of the crew to check the fridge and give me a damage report. Unfortunately as the fridge was beginning to be assessed we hit an even bigger swell which not only sent more stuff flying, it also swung the fridge door with force towards the spot where I was chopping vegetables. I went from cutting cucumber to the ground in a split second, and somehow managed to keep the knife in my hand without cutting anything. The boat’s skipper was buzzed for the seventieth time, and we turned around and headed back to the calm waters of the fiord. Each time I have to explain how I crushed the muscles in my hip flexor I am met with puzzled looks and comments like “That’s a most unusual way to injure yourself Mr Wilson”. Another frustrating thing about my injury is that it doesn’t fit into the injury categories for places like ACC. It seems they don’t deal with many fridge door accidents! The incident happened on a Sunday and I managed to scrape my way through the rest of the working week (changeover day on the boat is Tuesday), then spent the week watching the bruising and swelling grow. Because I’m stupidly stubborn at times I returned to work the next Tuesday, now sporting a huge purple, red and black hematoma the size of a softball.
After 1 ½ days at work I limped my broken ass off the boat, and unknowingly out of Doubtful Sound for the last time as an employee in one of the most impressive workplaces on the planet. As the days rolled on the swelling and pain increased, and there were a few days when I would have traveled less than 20m, spending 99% of the time on my couch watching the rest of the world getting on with things outside. My first of many scans was the X-Ray/Ultrasound combo in Queenstown late February, and the findings were interesting. Luckily only a hairline fracture in my hip, but some of the muscles which meet at the hip flexor (point of impact) were ripped off the bone. An unfortunate thing about the injury is not much can be done, as I was about to find out over the continuation of the entire year. Little did I know that life wasn’t only going to change for me… Continue this story here…
