Rachel Wise: More whoa than go

Rachel Wise. Photo / File

It's three weeks today since I got on a horse that I thought had more whoa than go and it kicked my butt.

Well, broke my butt, or least my pelvis in four places, my right hip socket, and six ribs.

Turns out some horses are so whoa they would rather stand on their back legs for a bit, than walk past the paddock gate. Three times.

Fine by me, I thought, as I have had good tuition in that little dance move, from my former horse Gladys the Mare From Hell.

Sadly this current horse took things a bit further and tried a back flip. Just as well I was there to break her fall, huh? Or she could have got real hurt.

Meanwhile, across the paddock, my daughter attempted to heroically leap from her horse and dash to my side. She got the leap bit kind of okay, but it went a bit pear-shaped as my – now vacant – equine rushed past hers at speed, spooking hers and causing CJ to botch her landing a little.

Hence CJ crawling across a muddy paddock with not one but two torn ligaments in her knee, phoning the ambulance as she went.

She did a great job though.

So good that we ended up with two ambulances, neither of which could get to us through the mud so we were hoisted aboard husband's flat deck ute (not just flung, there were stretchers and Very Good Painkillers involved) and transferred to the ambulance and here I am, stuck in a hospital bed without possibility of parole for ooh, ages.

Possibly up to three months.

I'm allowed up in a wheelchair for good behavior – and bathroom visits. Which is a whole 'nother story!

It's a bit of a learning curve since, despite several failed attempts at equine acrobatics, I have managed to spend minimal time in hospital. In fact only one night, apart from when I had my children.

So somewhere in my brain there was still an image of a hospital being a peaceful place of rest and healing.

Not sure how that image got in there.

If you imagine a big, whirring buzzing beeping clattering and thrumming machine with many many operators all rushing about pushing buttons and shifting equipment and issuing instructions, you'd be closer.

Add a bunch of sick people and lots of bits of kit with wheels, flocks of surgeons, specialists and doctors travelling rapidly in studious groups, and some rowdy but generally cheerful visitors and you'd be closer still.

A hospital is like a small enclosed city that never sleeps.

Everything in the hospital seems to be on wheels, except the visitors' chairs.

These bulky items are probably the most shifted piece of equipment in a room (they are either in the way, thus being shifted, or they are needed at a distant bedside so are being moved, or they are needed back again for one's own visitors so are being dragged closer) and they make a particularly obnoxious scraping, juddering noise as they go.

The stuff that does have wheels generally also has a mind of its own, and some sort of obstacle-seeking technology on board so one trip to radiology on your hospital bed can have you bumping into several doorways, corridor corners, stationary objects and moving pedestrians.

I was particularly shaken by a very near miss between my bed and the dinner trolley, leaving me with a residual fear of gravy.

But there are bright spots. I found if I tightened my oxygen line snugly under my jaw it gave my double chin an uplift.

I got to meet new and interesting people. Some of them were even conscious.

I discovered some visitors' chairs make a noise like a whoopee cushion when sat upon. If you get one of those, fend off all who try to remove it, for they are hours of fun.

I also found out not to raise my bed while my tray table was over it, and at the same time learned that answer to "how far can one jug of water spread?"

It was a learning curve for more than just me.

Hubby learned to read labels after a request for moisturiser resulted in a delivery of leave-in hair conditioner. (No, I cannot just use it anyway).

So, I'm in for the duration, while CJ is trussed up in a bionic knee brace thing but she was allowed home.

The horse is unscathed.