I got hit with a pickaxe and all I got was this lousy t-shirt

[oloriel]

One of my secret nightmares during all the digging and pickaxing was that somehow I would hit someone else, or someone else me, or I my foot, or something of the sort. So I (and everyone else, I assume) stayed clear from the radius of the pickaxe, and all was well.

Until yesterday, that is, when I cheerfully swung the pickaxe to loosen the ground (not even stone, in that point, merely trampled clay), and suddenly the pickaxe is behind me, I’m stumbling against the wall, my back hurts like nothing good, and I can’t breathe.

Reconstruction: I miscalculated the distance to the wall, the flat side hit same wall, bounced of it, swung backwards with the impulse of swinging + bouncing-of-the-wall, and propelled the pointed side in my ribs on the right-hand side, which knocked me over and the breath out of my body, small wonder.

Cue panic. Help help I broke my ribs fractured a lung can’t breathe will die.
Cue attempt at rational thinking.
It hurts. Well, it would do that. Breathing fucking hurts, but it seems to work all right. Breathe in, breathe out, yes, of course I’m winded from the impact but it’s slowly getting better. I’m not a medic but I’ll assume that means the lung is actually fine, on either side. I mean, surely otherwise I’d notice? Breathe deep, still working, hurting but not unbearably so. Shoulder and arms can be moved without additional pain, I’m still no medic but I’d figure that if there were broken ribs it’d hurt too much to move, right?

I step outside the ditch for the purpose of recovery, but almost immediately the muscles in my back bunch up, and I suspect if I don’t keep them moving now they’ll be stiff within minutes and I won’t be able to use them for days. So, back into the ditch, back to work. (I even dared to use the pickaxe again, later.)

Let us recapitulate. I got a bloody pickaxe into my backward ribs. Pickaxe. Steel onna stick. Thing I’ve been using to split stone. It probably could’ve killed me, or fulfilled one or several of my horror scenarios of punctured lungs, broken ribs or at least shredded muscles. I assume. Instead, it only hurts, and there’ll probably a royal bruise. I’m fine with that, all things considered.

Except when I have Jörg look at it, once we’re done working in the evening, he says “Looks like a scratched mosquito bite.”

Scratched mosquito bite.
(I did some twisting in front of the mirror, and that pretty much is what it looks like. WTF.)

My mother in law gets big purple bruises when she so much as brushes a stone with her arm, and I get a pickaxe in my back and it looks like a scratched mosquito bite.

I admit that I am disappointed. It fucking hurts and you don’t even see anything. I've mentioned my body's tendency of not doing bruises before, but we're not talking karate practice here, we're talking about a bloody pickaxe.

I heard from three people that I should be glad because surely it would be worse if you could see something.

Sorry, but BULLSHIT.

I’ve had both arms broken when I was younger (not at once; I broke my left arm in gym class and, a few years later, I broke my right arm when slipping on a frozen puddle and forgetting that breaking your fall with your lower arm is all very well in Judo class but this is a street which is somewhat harder than tatami). The first time was more serious, but even then you didn’t see anything (until, obviously, the x-ray). The second time I got up, got scolded for running along the street in late November when I know the puddles are already frozen, and continued to use my arm semi-normally until three days later I leaned on it and promptly toppled forward, at which point I went to the hospital for x-rays and lo and behold, there was a broken bone after all.

With no revealing bruises or otherwise on the outside. Other people look like they’re severely injured because their entire arm is black and blue, and in fact the bruises are all there is to the injury. My husband is again suffering from tendosynovitis again, which you also, you know, don’t see on the outside, and it’s still a serious thing. More serious, for example, than a superficial cut, which bleeds and looks nasty but will under normal circumstances heal within a few days without needing attention.

In other words: “Seeing something” doesn’t mean shit. My arm wasn’t any less broken just because you didn’t see anything, and the fracture wouldn’t have been worse if you’d also seen bruises, except it would likely have been discovered sooner because, you know, it already looks bad. I am assuming that my “scratched mosquito bite” is nothing serious because while it hurts, it seems to be more the sore-muscles-and-blunt-force kind of hurt. It still feels like there’s a bloody big bruise even if there is none. I doubt it’d feel worse if there was one. It’d just be easier to garner pity. As it is, it’s more like “Aww, sounds bad, here, you get a pat on the back, there, now move on, it can’t be that bad, it’s not like you can see anything.”

I doubtlessly had more luck than sense, and I assume I should be glad for my good tissue and for the fact that the corporeal back-up system seems to have worked exactly as it should, but I still feel cheated out of some pity I feel entitled to (yes, I damn well do) because as it is it’s invisible.

I mean, I think I’m heroic because I continued to work despite the accident and the pain (and it fucking did hurt and still does and doubtlessly will continue to invisibly hurt for a while).
Others probably think I’m just being whiny because dude, there’s like nothing to see, stop fussing over that mosquito bite, that can’t possibly hurt badly, there isn’t even a bruise.

No, I’m not glad that “you don’t see anything”. If I have to deal with the pain, at least I want some heroic bruises to boast with. :p

Or, alternatively, I'd want the pain to not be there as well. Then I could tell myself that I am like Claire from Heroes, which at least would be kind of awesome.