Another take on things

Nothing of note has been happening the past couple of days apart from the increased boredom so here's Mike's take on the events of Sunday 6th ...

Not content with a day climbing on Stanage yesterday, Bob and I decided to re-create Doug Scot's epic retreat from the Ogre.

Bob kindly offered to take on the role of Doug, while I emulated Chris Bonnington (minus the beard and posh accent).  To maximise realism, Bob then threw himself from the top of Stanage (luckily a fairly low bit) clutching a rather large detached block, and landed heavily from a good 20 feet.

To maximise reality, this took place at the far end, furthest from the road, but since we couldn't abseil back to the car, we decided to go for upper body injuries instead of broken legs.  We weren't sure at the time, but these later transpired to be a cracked lower vertebrae, dislocated elbow and broken wrist.

Bob comes from tough farming stock who think nothing of getting to hospital minus an arm, so when he'd recovered a bit, he set off walking to the car, while I packed up and followed with the rucksacks.  His pace was such that I didn't catch up with him till the car.  Unfortunately, this led to the low point of the day, when he had to flag down some 'off roaders' on the causeway to help him over the stile!

We then proceeded to the Northern General, where as ever the treatment was excellent, except for when the Radiographer dropped a lead tablet on said elbow.  the screams from Bob were blood curdling, and created some very worried looks from the other walking wounded waiting for an x-ray. Given they had just given him a shot of morphine, it must have been VERY
painful.

Two goes at resetting the elbow resulted in Bob being taken to the operating theatre under a general anaesthetic about 8.30 last night.  I got a message from Cath to say he was back on the ward about 10ish, and things had gone well.

So to the kittens: it's their first time to the vets tonight for the first of their immunisation shots. A couple of weeks after the second shot and they should be good to start exploring outside. We'll also have to think about getting them neutered before too long, though really it's probably going to be a surprise Xmas present for them!