Day 4 photos--April 6, the day I broke my leg bones

April 6, 2022.  What an eventful day it was.   But it started as a normal day, with a beautiful morning.  We walked to the famous Brauð & Co bakery in downtown Reykjavik and bought their out-of-this-world bread.  There is something special about the Icelandic wheat, and that is why the Icelandic bread in general tastes so good.  May be the very long summer days give some extra flavor to the wheat crop.  After having a good breakfast at our Airbnb apartment we took the road.  The plan was to drop the young man at the ski slope and the other three to go to the hot springs.  But at the Bláfjöll ski resort I got busy making video of the young man coming down on the slope, on a snowboard.  After two runs he needed to use the toilet so he put the snowboard in front of me.  As I saw him walking to the toilet, I put my right foot in the snowboard--the snowboard started moving...I panicked.  I was determined to not let my right foot go too far so I put my left foot firmly on the ground.  That was a big mistake.  When things move, you move with them, you don't resist.  Pretty soon all my weight was on my left leg and the right leg wanted to keep moving.  The snowboard moved and then rotated and that made my left leg twist.  I fell down and as I was falling down I heard a crack; I knew something serious had happened.  I was in pain, excruciating pain.  I asked for help.  A ski resort attendant came to see what was going on.  He asked if I could move left foot.  I could not.  Was it a dislocated ankle joint?  Was it a broken bone?  I didn't know.  I was in pain and I was feeling very cold, even when I had one jacket on top of another.  The staff decided to take me inside the building.  They brought an inflatable board and slid me on top of it.  Four strong men lifted the board and took me inside the building.  Going inside, they had to go down a short flight of stairs.  I was afraid the board will slip out of their hands and I will fall.  Luckily, that did not happen.  Inside the building, they took me to their small clinic.  The building was kept warm but I was still feeling very cold.  They put a blanket on me and I felt better.  But the pain was another story.  The pain was killing me.  I had never felt anything like that before.  They had called the hospital and an ambulance was on its way to the resort.  The ambulance finally arrived.  I was moved on to a stretcher and taken inside the ambulance.  I was given a sedative to inhale.  The ambulance drove slowly on the uneven surface, in order to avoid any jerks.  It still was a painful ride to the Landspitali Hospital in Reykjavik.  I was taken to the emergency.  They took my passport and noted my information.  Was it a dislocated joint?  No, they were sure it was a broken bone.  The shoes were taken off.  I felt a lot of pain when the left shoe was being taken off.  Now the socks had to be removed.  They decided to cut open the left sock.  After using scissors on my left sock they wanted to cut open my jeans too.  I stopped them from doing it.  I told them it was my only pair of pants.  With a lot of pain the jeans was slowly slid down.  They talked to each other in Icelandic, but talked to me in English.  A nurse asked me why I was so tense. If I relaxed my body they would be better able to help me.  But I did not know how to relax.  The sedative I was inhaling was helping and the pain was slowly becoming bearable.  Now I was in my underwear with a blanket on top.  They put the left leg between forms and took me for an X-ray.  The X-ray showed both tibia and fibula in my left leg were broken. That was the first time I learned the names of these two bones.  The tibia bears the weight whereas the fibula has the muscles wrapped around it, I was told.  Once the diagnosis was done my left leg was put in a cast.  Herbert Amarsson, the young orthopedic surgeon on duty in the emergency room, told me I had a window of 10 days to go through a surgery.  In the surgery,  a rod will be put in my tibia and it will be secured by screws.  Why a rod?  Why not let the bone heal itself?  No, a rod was needed because of there was some displacement.  The rod will make sure the bone heals correctly.  I could get the surgery done in Iceland, or go back to the US and get the surgery done there.  By the time I was released it was after midnight.  My family brought me back to the Airbnb apartment.  It was now April 7.