THIS IS WHAT A COCK-UP ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE

800 words / 4 minute read

As some readers may be aware, I did myself a mischief earlier in the year which resulted in my now infamous (in Sinville circles at least) “Gammy Hand”.

The cause of the condition was a compressed nerve in my tricep, which resulted in a (slightly scary sounding) "neuropraxic injury" - also known by the (less scary sounding but probably quite politically incorrect) term ”Saturday Night Palsy”.

Before I tell the sorry tale, first let me say: “fear not, since I am on the mend!”, slower than I hoped but things are improving every day.

Don't get me wrong, I would like to be a fully-functioning human being once more but I am philosophical about the whole thing, as it was the catalyst which led me to bring forward my trip to the UK by two months.

This in turn resulted in my other issues being resolved much quicker than they may otherwise have been – I shall add more info on that side of things in due course, but first you are probably keen to discover how I found find myself in this unfortunate position?

HOW EXACTLY DO YOU COMPRESS A NERVE??

So, around March or April time I was struggling a bit as Olga (the name I gave to my tumour for those unaware) was regularly giving me gyp, so I was combatting this by equally regularly sedating myself to escape the suffering and sleep like a log.

The night in question, I was particularly heavily sedated, and woke in the morning to find myself with what felt like a "normal" sleep-induced dead arm, as if I’d been lying on it for half the night.

Like everyone who wakes up in this kind of scenario, and every time it's happened to me before, I thought it would right itself after some wriggling and a bit of discomfort, once the blood started flowing freely again. But alas this was not to be: it didn’t improve at all as the day wore on or over the following night. By this point things were getting a bit alarming and so, after doing some Googling, I thought it would be a good idea to grab my mate Richie and hightail it to the nearest clinic to find out what was wrong.

As you can imagine, medical treatment in Cambodia isn’t free but 20 bucks gets you in front of a doctor, but the first “face value” attempt at a diagnosis was I “may have had a stroke”. Now I’m no medical professional but I could have told him that I hadn’t had a stroke, so I was happy to be put in the CT scanner to find out what was wrong and fork out $300 for the privilege.

They also did the normal blood tests etc and we got an idea first-hand of just how badly I’d damaged the nerve when I couldn’t press hard enough on the spot where they’d taken the blood test to stop the claret from spurting out of the vein! Scary stuff…

HAIRY BIKE JOURNEYS AND CLAWS

This meant that for a long time after the injury I was unable to use my right arm in any obvious natural way but it took a bit of getting used to - you find yourself trying to be “normal” and doing what you've always done.

So when my friend invited me for a drink at our favourite beachside bar venue, I jumped on my bike without thinking but quickly found myself in a position of being unable to control the angle of my grip on the throttle, so it was either 0 or 60 with no subtleties inbetween. This was particularly keenly felt when I lost control of my (thankfully not very high-powered) motorbike and found out that how much it weighs when it landed on top of me.

Thankfully the damage was mere cuts and bruises, but it was enough to make me feel even more sorry for myself, thus deciding to bring forward my trip home and getting on a plane only a week later.

The recovery process has been slow but though gaining access to a physio in the UK and his effective use of electroshock therapy (not really - more like electro-stimulation) and “The Cock-up Claw” to strengthen the muscles, I've come on leaps and bounds even if I've not yet fully 100% returned to form.

Thanks to him I can ride a motorbike again though, so I’m independent once more, "fully mobile" in this town meaning more than simply having use of your legs it seems, even if I can't sign my own name yet!