This is a rib too far

So my ribs should have stopped hurting so much by now because I broke them at the end of December and they were supposed to heal within three months – but they are still giving me a lot of trouble. 

Of course I didn’t help matters much by moving a few cartons of books in the storeroom downstairs week or so ago - but still. They had to be moved and who else is going to do it?

As we are going Scuba diving in a little more than a month I thought I should get checked again to make sure there is nothing dramatic happening inside me.  

I am quite prepared to die underwater because of something predictable – like a Shark attack or a Stingray barb through my heart – or even the Bends – but not because my broken ribs decide to let go and puncture my lungs.  

So Cate got her Medical Director at work to find me a Doctor - who then wrote me a referral to get an X-ray – without seeing me because this was to happen after the X-ray.   There was a misunderstanding and he asked them to X-ray my shoulder.  Monika the young lady charged with the responsibility of doing the X-Raying – took some convincing.

This – after all is Austria where administration triumphs over everything - and she had in front of her a piece of paper instructing her to X-Ray my ribs. On the other side of the ledger she had this old twit clutching his side and insisting that his ribs were broken and that his shoulder was in reasonable working order.

I managed to convince her by explaining exactly how it happened – how I fell – the pain I felt – how the dogs behaved  - and by clutching my ribs and grimacing.  She agreed to deliberately flout the rules and to ignore the order - provided that I brought back a new order for the X-raying of ribs. This I promised to do.

So I saw the Doctor on Saturday and it turns out that I do not have four broken ribs. I have five broken ribs. Even I can see that on the X-Rays  - which are much clearer that the ones taken in Finland. I think Monika must be very good at what she does.

The Doctor says everything is fine but that I should expect  to be in a lot of pain now – and I can expect to be in a lot of pain for long time yet. But that – apart from the pain – everything is fine. If I die underwater it will not be because of my ribs. Good news there.