Most of my stuff ups generally revolve around eating or drinking some thing that makes me sick as a dog but one trip stands out as a monument to my stupidity ,
On the last day of a week long deer and pig hunting trip I gave the property owner a hand to pick up 40 steel temporary yard panels he'd been using as a cattle trap around a water hole , we had to carry them 100 metres out to the truck and they were heavy , we got them out fine but just as I was about to get up into the truck to leave I managed to knock my sunglasses off as the door swung open , I bent down to pick them up and my back went out big time ,
So there I was a heap on the ground and not able to stand , the property owner had to help me climb up into the truck as I'd never have made it by my self , the 20 miles along that rough bush track was extremely painful ,
Now this is where the stuff up comes in , now I have a bad back and know it , I know it's likely to go out bad at any time and I tend to count my self lucky if it only does it once a week , I've been putting it out regularly since I was 15 but it's gotten much worse in the last 8 years , the stupid thing I did was say " No , I'll be right , just drop me off at my camp " when he offered to take me into town to the ambulance or at the least have me stay in the spare bed at the homestead and get the ambulance out to me
So he dropped me off at my camp , helped me into my hammock and filled a empty soda water bottle with dry white wine from cooler in the car , now the white wine allowed me to get a little sleep for about three hours but then I woke up and needed to have a pee ,
Now laying in a hammock when your back is out isn't too bad but getting out of it is some thing else all together , so eventually I managed to fall out flat on my face and pass out , when I come too I still needed to pee only worse , so I had to do it laying on my side and then roll a half turn away from it so I wasn't laying in it , after a few hours I was able to get up enough to half stand , if I tried to stand fully it pressed on a nerve and I went paralysed from the waist down and hit the ground again ,
I cut the ropes on the hammock and shoved it into the ute , that was the only gear I had out so that was easy , I was able to get into the ute and drive very slowly and careful but having to get out and open and shut the three gates between my camp and the road was painful and slow , I was lucky in that for the 250 km home all but 10 km of it was on back roads so I was able to drive very slowly , got back into town that afternoon and went straight to the doctors ,
Doc wanted to put me straight into hospital but there wasn't a bed spare so he then wanted to send me to Emerald by ambulance but the ambulances were out on a bad smash 200 km up the charters tower road so I convinced him to let me go home and he gave me some muscle relaxants and pain killers that just knocked me out , he reckoned that if I was unconscious then I wouldn't be able to do any thing else silly , that was probably about the worst I've ever put my back out , was pretty much off my feet for a month and then put my back out almost as bad several times over the next few months
Doc reckoned that if I'd let the property owner take me into the ambulance or call the ambulance for me I'd probably have been back on my feet in a week and that doing it my way resulted in me doing even more permanent damage than I had before
David