For the people who weren’t following me a year ago, or missed my posts, on 31st October 2025, I visited Kelvedon Hatch Secret Nuclear Bunker to attend the Halloween event that was being held there, called “The Bunker Below”. I booked my ticket in advance, came off of the A128 and drove up the long drive in the dark to the car park and found a parking space. Knowing that we had been having some unsavoury weather recently, I carefully walked across the gravel car park and the unpaved and dimly lit sloped walk way down to the entrance, and everything was fine, at least until I decided to step to the left to let a group of people coming out of the even to traverse back up towards the car park, and that when disaster struck. I stepped onto some slippery ground, slipped and heavily fell, straight onto my left arm.
As soon as I managed to sit up, still on the ground, I immediately realised something was very wrong with my left arm and instantly pointed out to the person who had come up behind me to help me up, that I thought I had broken it. Thankfully I was surrounded by some very accommodating staff and visitors to the bunker, and I managed to get myself up onto my feet and onto a chair that the staff had brought me over. Someone had called the emergency services, who were unable to come to get me for a few hours, so a taxi was called, who managed to get me to my local A&E.
Once at the hospital, it became very apparent what damage I had managed to do. The initial doctor who saw me, helped me out of my hoodie and I was absolutely shocked at the size of my elbow. We managed various x-rays, where between those and the doctor poking and prodding around realised that, not only had I broken a bone, I’d shattered it, the head of the radius to be precise, I’d also dislocated my ulner and snapped one of my tendons/ligaments. While in A&E, I was given some morphine to help with the pain, some gas & air while they attempted (twice) to relocate my ulner bone, before putting my arm in a temporary cast and sending me down to the orthopaedics ward for what would end up being a whole weekend stay.
5 days agodiscfunctioningdan
The next thing I knew, I was waking up in the recovery room, with my arm in a new mechanical support and with my surgery wound dressed, the scar from which you can see on the photo. I was in pain, so the nurse was kind enough to give me some more pain killers, and she phoned my parents to let them know I was out of surgery. I stayed in hospital that night and was discharged the following day. But I had a 3 or 4 month recovery period until I could permanently remove the support. During which time, I was an out-patient at the hospital, seeing both the physiotherapy department and the fracture clinic, one appointment I also had the staples removed from my arm, and the nurse was shocked that I sat and watched he do it. I was told that I may not get full mobility back in my arm and have since swapped my manual Ford Focus for an automatic Ford Kuga, but I have managed to regain probably 95% of my mobility in my arm and about 90% of it’s strength. Although it has started aching just recently, probably thanks to the weather getting cooler, especially as my left knee is also aching.
5 days agodiscfunctioningdan
During my stay in the hospital, they had to take me to the operating theatre to put me completely to sleep to put my ulner back in place and keep it there. Once I saw the consultant on Monday morning, he informed me that he would be discharging me that day, but I would have to come back at the end of the week to have the surgery done to remove the fragments of bone, to replace the broken bone with a metal one and reattach any tendons and/or ligaments. He initially quoted me the Friday, which would have been 7th November, however, I got a phone call from the hospital to ask me to come in on Thursday 6th November instead. So I went home on Monday, with my arm in a cast, only to return on Thursday morning. I was given a chair in the corridor of the ward while I waited to go to have my surgery done, I was eventually called, so I got prepared and went to theatre. I was awake on the operating table while they put the numbing agent into the nerve serving my arm, which was in my neck and I watched on the TV while the surgeon was finding the nerve, which was an interesting experience and it wasn’t long after that when I lost consciousness, when the general anaesthetic was administered and got to work.
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