The Blurred Line

Day 1 - The Incident

The above picture is courtesy of Alberto Ranedo and shows us scrambling the day before up Liathach in Torridon. I'm the second one from the top in the orange and green and I absolutely love scrambling! For those of you who don't know, scrambling encompasses the grey area between hiking and climbing. We use technical manoeuvres to climb over rocks but without being quite as technical as normal rock climbing. The exhilaration from working you're way up a particularly hard piece of rock and contorting your body so that you can achieve reaching the top in just the most breath taking of places is beyond compare.

So we had done a relatively long scramble the day before and this was a rest day for a couple of us. We got up late at the youth hostel and were kicked out when they wanted to clean at 10.30. Kim, Laura and I had planned to do a little bit of scrambling on some rocks by the roadside before meeting a few others and going to a seafood restaurant in Strathcarron. Man I love seafood!

The three of us left the hostel and tried to look around the information centre but it was full of empty boxes. Because our legs were tired, I suggested we follow a path that was off to the left and led to some rocky boulders rather than walk to the end of the Liathach track liked we planned. There are so many instances that I look back on and think if we had just carried on instead of turning left, would I still be in this hospital now?

Bizarrely, and inevitably luckily, we met Jonny and Tom who were turning back after a morning of bouldering and easily managed to convince them to do a bit of scrambling with us. We went up one bit – just about! (I sort of followed Laura up something and realised she had longer legs than me but with knees and a bit of technical bum I got up.) Jonny had already wondered off one way but I called to him, "What about here?", looking at a large rock that looked interesting but not too technical.

I easily got 4 foot up onto a ledge but then realised that everything in front was a bit heathery – if I hung onto that, I ran the risk of the heather dislodging and a nasty fall for me. It ran through my mind to just get off and look for another bit to go up but I don't like to leave things unfinished so I looked to my right where there was a large boulder that I could shuffle around to reach a rockier bit on my right hand side. I recall someone – Tom – saying that a boulder looked loose (this turned out not to be the same infamous boulder) but I didn't have much time to take the information in.

The boulder dislodged. It fell with me on it. I just remember trying to jump back and save my head and back before intense pain. "My leg my leg my leg my leg my leg, oh my god oh my god oh my god." I knew I had severely broken my leg what I didn't find out until the day before yesterday (day 11) was that my leg was crushed under the boulder.

From Laura's perspective, who was a bit further back than everyone else, the others jumped back out of the way whereas I was on the ground. From my shouting, there was no doubt I had done something to my leg but she thought I'd sprained or broken it in the fall but it quickly became apparent I was trapped under the boulder. The boulder was so large that Laura couldn't move it when she tried but thankfully Jonny could. In hindsight, though this was instinct, this meant that I still had circulation to my toes and maybe I would not have them had he not moved the boulder.

My mind has completely wiped the fact that I was under the boulder. Later on I assumed that the boulder had rolled off. I remembered shouting about my leg and so much pain that I didn't open my eyes. Jonny had his hands under my arms and I wear the bruises on my arm with pride. Somebody said that I needed to have my head up but my years of St John Ambulance experience kicked in. I said, "you need to keep my head down, I'm going into shock." I thought I would faint from the pain but I didn't – fortunately or unfortunately. With the pain, I hoped to faint but I was scared that I would never wake up again.

I became conscious that I could bleed to death. I felt liquid dribble down my leg and when I brought my hand up to my eyes, it was covered in blood – blood that remained in my fingernail beds for days afterwards. "You need to make a tourniquet," I said. Laura tried using her hands to apply pressure to my thigh – nobody had a belt except me. "I have a belt." Jonny helped me remove my belt and I laid back, unable to keep myself up any longer. I clung tight to Jonny's left leg and kept requesting for a tourniquet but Jonny said that we they were just getting water bottles for it. Water bottles were a really good idea – they would keep the tourniquet tight. Whether the tourniquet was a good idea is debateable. I was terrified that I was going to bleed to death even though I actually may not have been bleeding as much as I thought. On the other hand, tourniquets build up dangerous levels of toxins. When I went to hospital, I had very high levels of potassium from the tourniquet so they put me on a glucose drip. At the time however, the need to put on a tourniquet seemed almost instinctual and necessary.

When Laura was on the phone to the emergency services, she said she could see "subcutaneous tissue" and they put something on my wound to stop the bleeding but I'm not sure what. Then the howl started. "The howl" is a phrase I will use a fair deal. My brain wants to form words but the only sound that is produced is a primordial scream that can't be stopped until you get so exhausted you don't have the energy to scream any more. Laura reckons made the operator understand the urgency of the situation.

I became exhausted but still managed to crack jokes about not being able to go to the seafood restaurant, that Laura's jacket that she'd draped over me shouldn't get wet and at least it wasn't raining.

After 40 minutes, GPs from the local practice arrived and gave me Entonox which was absolutely fantastic. After so long with so much pain, this was a relief and felt so good. They splinted my leg and took off the tourniquet but I was so exhausted by this time that I can hardly recall what else they did.

I'm really sorry but my family is being kicked out and are taking my laptop because my mum is scared it'll be nicked. I'm going for my big op tomorrow and will be in a lot of pain for at least 48 hours. I'm a bit nervous but excited at the same time so will keep you posted when I'm better and will have to finish this story maybe on Friday. (written Monday 4th April)

To be continued.....