A week ago I took a very standard fall in an overhung section of my gym on a relatively easy problem. In retrospect, I realized I should have bumped right to the finish hold, but I went left, held onto a big jug for a second, and fell, with my feet cutting out from under me. I fell, heard a snap, screamed, and said, “oh my god, I broke my leg.”
I waited maybe ten (?) minutes for an ambulance to show up. The worse part was not the pain, but the psychological pain of knowing that I was going to have to stop climbing and running, and that my life was going to be very different for a while. This seemed like particularly bad timing as I am currently finishing my dissertation and then moving halfway around the world in two months. People gathered around me and talked to me while I waited for the ambulance, which helped a lot. I could see that my foot was flopped over to the side, and I had a small amount of bleeding on the inside of my left leg, about four inches above my ankle.
The EMTs came and got a splint under my leg so they could lift me onto a stretcher. The one thing I distinctly remember them saying was, “I think we’re going to have to cut it off,” to which I responded, “my leg?!?!” Turns out they just needed to cut my shoe off, which…I had actually just been talking about how the heel cup was slightly too big for really solid heel hooks. If anyone wants to buy a used size 38 men’s Solution for the right foot, get in touch.
I got carted out of the gym, waving goodbye to people and being like, see you in May! They put me into the ambulance, and I was warned that all of the bumps in the road might make it hurt more. I have a medication that I take that has potential interactions with all opiates, which I told the EMT
s, which meant that I was on my own pain-wise until I got to the hospital. It was actually manageable — I rated the pain 6 out of 10 when I got there. In the ambulance I made sure to talk to the EMT who was with me the whole time, and the ride was over pretty quickly. The EMT gave me an award for the calmest person he had ever taken away from my gym. Someone from the climbing gym stayed with me in the hospital for an hour or so, until the doctor who was going to attend to me arrived, which was great.
If you are reading this, you’ve probably already broken your leg, or you are my friend and I hope you never break your leg, but my takeaway lesson from this is: keep talking to someone to focus on something else besides the pain and your injury.
I Broke My Leg Bouldering 