My poor wee head

As I kneeled on the bathroom floor with blood pouring into my hands. I was in a complete state of shock and in hindsight, severely concussed. It felt as though time had completely stopped and the blood was falling like a waterfall in slow motion into my hands and they didn’t feel attached to me. It was almost like I was in a horrible dream with some kind of sleep paralysis. I just watched as the blood waterfall hit the pool already in my hands.

I don’t know how long I stayed on the floor.

I started to feel something warm going down my face and the realisation of what was going on hit me. I realised I was bleeding rapidly from my head, I went into a sort of trance and I got up off the floor very slowly, using the sink as a crutch. I tried to stabilise myself. I also didn’t have my glasses on so I couldn’t see properly. As the world around me swung from side to side I knew I had to power on and get help, I am not sure how long it took me to get up or how long it took me to get to the other room.

I walked through to the other room making sure not to touch anything. I went over to Alona’s bed and shook her. She woke up and screamed - in fairness. I sat on the end of her bed. I stared at the towel over my legs watching the blood fall into it telling Alona to call and ambulance. She couldn’t move, she was luminous white and in complete shell shock and she couldn’t speak and I just kept repeating myself.

Once she came to her senses and realised what was going on she went to call the ambulance, she asked me what the emergency number was

Next thing I know, the nurse threw the bathroom towel that was clenched in my hands onto the ground and went to close the ambulance door leaving a very shocked Alona automatically going to pick up the towel. Just before the door shut I looked up and saw a startled Alona holding the towel. Thankfully our friend had arrived so Alona wasn’t on her own.

There was one nurse in the back with me, However I can’t speak Czech and she couldn’t speak English, which in the state I was in was slightly terrifying. In my memory I was speaking fluently but looking back I remember pointing at my head going ‘ Velky Ouch’ (Big ouch) - fluent I know, She a nurse, so of course she knew what the problem was, but as I said I was in a state of shock. She was very kind but all I could think about was wee traumatised Alona.

My friend came into the hospital room with me and very kindly translated for me, meanwhile Alona sat ghost white in the waiting room unable to speak. I also don’t remember too much about this but one thing that I do remember was a giant needle coming towards me. I said ‘No’ in every language I could think of, however they gave me the jag anyway so they could stitch my head.

On the way back from the hospital our friend had stopped off at her house and gave us extra bandages and paper towels. Once we got back to the house, our friend told Alona she should clean the blood off the floor now so it didn’t stain. As I stood at the top of the stairs holding onto the railing with a comical bandage on my head Alona was crouched at the entrance of the building cleaning the stains off the ground. If I am completely honest I think this is something I wouldn’t have the emotional strength to do if the tables were turned.

I went to bed, I couldn’t sleep for a while, Alona came through the front door and started to clean the bathroom, hall and the bedroom. I fell asleep before she had finished.

In the morning Alona had to add an extra bandage to my wound as it had bled through the original bandage. She put the bandage on then we both just sat in silence for a while. I think it was equally as terrifying for both of us.

I woke up very early the next morning like I had been hit with Thor's hammer, with a giant bandage on my head. My face had swollen so much I couldn't recognize myself. Alona kept telling me I looked like a hammerhead shark which kept making me laugh which was very painful. Alona went to the shop to get me easy to eat food and some really strong painkillers. I took one painkiller every four hours for about a week.

I called my family group chat in the afternoon, and my mum answered first. She was horrified to answer the phone to me swollen with a huge bandage on. She panicked and wanted me to fly home, we reassured her I was okay and that we would keep her updated. I think looking back maybe messaging first might have been a better idea, as I suspected my wee sisters were also worried.

I couldn’t take my bandage off and I couldn’t understand the medical report so I was unsure of the extent of my injuries, all I knew was my head was injured and my face was swollen. Thankfully the swelling went down after one or two days. Then came the bruising, on day two I couldn’t open one eye as it had swollen shut.

My eyes and side of my face went balck and blue, I looked like I had been in a fight with Mike Tyson, even now a week and a bit later my eye is still black. I took a few day’s off work to rest and recover.

Eventually it dawned on me to ask my friend what the doctors had said. It turned out I took a huge whack to the head and the doctors were surprised I stayed awake and sem-conscious. I had an eleven centimetre cut across the top of my head that was really deep and had gone down to my skull. I was incredibly lucky that that was the extent of my injury as it could have been a lot worse but I don’t like thinking about it because it scares me.

I went back to work about five days later and I work with young children so I didn’t want to scare them. We spent one evening deciding on what would be a good cover for my bandage. After trying most options in the house we went back to our original idea which was a scarf. So I ended up in a kindergarten looking like a fortune teller. I told the children I had started trying to do my own makeup to cover up the fact my eyes were black and blue and as you imagined they told me to stop trying to do my make up as it was ‘not nice’

The teachers and students (and of course my friends and family) were also very worried about me and everyone was wishing me a speedy recovery. I feel bad that I made so many people so worried but I deeply appreciate all those around me.

When I was leaving school with another teacher we were  walking together and she tripped. Luckily I caught her but I then blacked out and can’t remember anything that happened for the next hour, and that's when It dawned on me that I have some unresolved trauma from the fall.

I needed to go back to the hospital every three days for the first week to get my head checked and for them to change the bandages. Every time I went, Alona would come with me and we would get there at seven in the morning and were usually back home by eight twenty. The doctors told me it was healing fast and Alona puts this down to the fact she went to the shop and got vitamin c tables, skin healing tablets and some ‘magic’ teas, which in all honesty, I think really did help. Also when it first happened I didn’t have an appetite for a few days but Alona told me I should eat so on her herbal shop she got my little baby food smoothies and that was all I ate for three days.

I went to the doctors this morning and they took out my stitches, and got rid of the ‘blood haemorrhage’ which I hope was a mistranslation. They said ‘blueberries’ came out of the wound. It wasn’t painful and only took about fifteen minutes.

I am on the road to recovery and have almost healed. I am waiting to take my bandage off in a few days as when they stitched me up. They shaved my hair so I am waiting to see if I have a huge bald patch with a big scar in the middle of it. I am looking at this experience as a learning curve, it’s very easy to take for granted things like your health and your friends.

I feel very fortunate and lucky to have so many kind people around me who have helped me over the past week.

If you are wondering what happened to cause all of this, I wish it was an amazing heroic story but unfortunately it’s not. What happened was; I needed to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and half asleep, I tripped over a scrunched up towel on the bathroom floor and as I flew forward my arms missed the sink but my head did not. I smashed my head with the force of my whole body off the corner of the sink then as I fell to the floor my face took the impact of the ground.

However, I am almost back to full health and my face is almost back to its original colour, and forever more I will never leave a towel on the bathroom floor so long as I live!

Update: I had my last hospital check on Friday and I am back to full health, although I do have one badass scar across my head and a little on my forehead. My face is back to its original colour and now I can look back at what happened and reflect on it and take the positives from it. It’s now turned into a funny story that me and Alona re-enact for the kids and teachers. I guess at the end of the day I got off lightly and am healthy and happy and it’s now another story in our great tapestry.