In which 2011 ends by kicking my ass

Thankfully in life it's not that often I'm left pondering my vulnerability as a human, but here we are for the second time in a 6 week period with myself heading to the emergency room. Not horse related this time though, but possibly something I am pretty blase about, and that's using the quad bike. I was racing around a mob of calves trying to stop them crossing over the culvert and keep them heading for the gate, and apparently lost my orientation because all of a sudden I was much to close to the drain and about where the calves had been walking down to the water they had cut away a lot of ground.

My front right wheel dropped into where the ground was cut away and the bike started to flip. I'm not sure if I bailed or was thrown off, Dan reckons I might have bailed, but I do remember being at the top of drain, feeling the bike starting to kick over and thinking I was never going to get out of this without being killed. I hit the bottom of the drain before the bike did and I hustled to get out of the way but wasn't quick enough and the bike pinned my ankle and I was trapped in the bottom of the drain. As the quad settled the weight on my leg got worse and the pain was unreal. I was screaming for poor old Dan to save me. He thought he was running to find my corpse so to hear my hollering was a positive.

Dan lifted the bike up enough I could scoot my leg out and I was free. I was limping back across the paddock to the gate when I realised my pants were torn and looking through I had a wicked gash on my knee that was just fill of mud. Blerk. Off to the ER we go, wait for hours, get both knee and ankle to make sure of no broken bones and big pieces of gravel. You know it's bad when the nurses are quite impressed. Anyway, it took about 45 minutes to clean and cut away the dirty flesh in my knee which was bizarre to watch. It didn't hurt but you are cutting me bro. The local was the worst part, that almost made me vomit, especially as I was on an empty stomach in case I had to go to surgery for it to be cleaned.

Luckily there was no real joint involvement, thought there was a small hole that went through to my knee cap. Sick! So 6 internal stitches and 9 external stitches and I can't drive, ride or bend my knee for at least 10 days to make sure the stitches hold. It hurts like an absolute bitch, but I'm really grateful that I'm alive and not seriously injured, just the gash and a few scrapes and bruises on my lower legs, and that I was out with Dan who was able to lift the bike off me. Lucky me. Though I don't like the rate I'm losing my lives at ha.