Right: “Bicycles, Byron Bay”, oil on canvas, 121 x 152 cm. Price: $12,000 AUD.

It was now five hours after I broke my neck in a slow, awkward, unspectacular fall off my bike in the forest near Byron Bay.

My riding friends, the Mullumbimby ambulance officers, the Brunswick Valley Rescue Association, and the Westpac Rescue Helicopter Service had all done a maginificent job in getting me out of the rugged mountain terrain to safety. Now I was in the hands of the doctors, therapists, nurses and staff of the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane. I was going to say “at the mercy of”, but that would be unkind, and the Mercy is actually the name of the hospital just down the road.

Inside Schanck, 1979

Next up was a lot of Tubes, and a lot of Tests. I had lost 99% of my feeling below my neck, and 99.9% of my movement, so I am not 100% sure of what was actually going on. Let’s just say that I wouldn’t be able to take care of my Normal Bodily Functions for a long, long while, and for the time being I would just have to get used to Tubes. And Bags. And Drips.

Some of the Tests were not surprising. Lots of pins, needles, and little hammers.
Poke. can you feel that? No. Prick. Can you feel that? No. Whack. Can you feel that? No.

And then there were the surprises. A doctor pulled on a rubber glove, and stuck his finger Up Where The Sun Don’t Shine.
“Can you feel that?”
“Yeah, well actually I can.”
“OK, can you squeeze down on my finger?” (Patient grunts.)
“Mmm,” says the doctor,”very good, very good!”

Now I don’t know what the doctor wrote on my file, but that would be only the first of many, many rubber gloves over the next three months. Honestly, sometimes I thought they were using me as Auxiliary Storage Space.
“Where can I keep my car-keys so I don’t lose them? I know, Norval’s bum.”
“Where can I hide my new iPod? I know, Norval’s bum.”
“Where can I keep my golf balls warm for the big game this arvo?”
OK, OK, enough frivolity, I’m sure you get the picture.

Of course, with a celebrity injury like a broken neck, there are going to be photo opportunities. I think the first were the X-rays.

This meant another transfer. When you are unable to move from bed to bed under your own steam, a transfer is required. What basically happens is that six or seven nurses or staff very carefully and expertly lift you up, slide a frame under you, and lift you across to the X-ray bench (or whatever). Transfers are a little bit exciting, because you actually get to move somewhere, but also a little bit scary, because you don’t want to damage your spinal cord any more than it is already.
Further down the track, transfers often involve a hoist, or small crane, but I digress.

My X-rays were very, very good.

“I’m happy to tell you, Mr. Watson, that there is no damage to any of the bones in your spine. No breaks, no fractures, no cracks, but possibly a slight realignment.
“Also, there is no damage to any of the other bones in your body. As you have no sensation below the neck, you would not be feeling any pain from a broken leg, for example.
“We shall have to run further Tests. I shall book you in for a CAT scan.”
The neurologist seemed pleased and walked away.

Well, that was odd. I had done something Really Bad to my neck, and there HAD been a Very Loud Crack, but it was not actually broken. Hmmm.

Rocky River, 2004

A CAT scan machine is like a tunnel, and they roll you in on a sliding bench. This big death-ray thing on a rotating collar moves up and down and all around, and after a while, they roll you out again.

The CAT scan results were also good. My organs seemed fine, they weren’t about to send me up to oncology, and I was definitely not pregnant. Despite the DRE.

The neurologist was back.
“The Tests are inconclusive. We’ll have to send you for a MRI.”

Magnetic Resonance Imaging is an acronym that I DO understand. If the CAT machine was claustrophobic, the MRI was like being buried alive. Which was a feeling I was going to have to get used to, in any case.

Before they rolled me in, the operators asked me if I would like to listen to some music, because the MRI was going to take some time.
“What have you got?”
“What do you mean?”
“Music, what sort of music have you got?”
“What would you like?”
“Metal!”
The daggy operator frowned.
“I’m afraid you can’t have any metal in the MRI. It’s like a gigantic magnet.”
The cool operator whispered in the daggy operators ear.
“Oh I see, metal MUSIC, like, er, heavy metal…?”
“Yeah – Tool, Sabbath, Metallica, Maiden – got any metal?”
“Er, I’m not sure, er, how about – The Rolling Stones?”

As it transpired, they couldn’t get the headphones over my ears due to the large, chunky neck brace I was wearing. So I had to do the MRI bareback.

Being in the MRI is like being in a concrete mixer full of rocks with 15 men using jack-hammers on the outside. That thing is LOUD. And TIGHT – the roof of the tunnel is about an inch from your nose. After about 45 minutes I’d had enough.
“How much longer?”
“It’s OK, we’ve just finished, and we’ll get you out of there right now.”

Byron Bay, 2005

“I suspected as much all along. You have a bad case of CCS.”
Well, of course, that explained everything.

CCS, or Central Cord Syndrome, can happen when your spinal cord has been squeezed, bruised or squashed.
My cord had been squished between a bony spur on one of the vertebrae in my neck, and the ligaments pulling in from behind when my spinal column was partially dislocated when I fell on my head. It’s like when you squeeze a bread stick between your thumb and your fingers.

The nerves at the center of the cord are affected more than those to the outside, so the strength and sensation of your fingers and arms are affected more than the feeling and movement in your legs.

The doctor was very pleased that there was no severing of the cord. Certainly very severe bruising, but there was the strong possibility of significant improvement over the coming months. Some patients with CCS had eventually regained limited mobility, and the virtually complete quadruplegia I was experiencing was unlikely to be permanent.

MRI, 2006

He bid me goodnight, and was gone.

After a while someone came along and wheeled me up, down, and all around, until eventually we reached the Acute Ward of the Princess Alexandra Hospital’s Spinal Unit. I lay there in semi-darkness, with machines gently whirring, patients making patient-type noises, nurses padding softly about, and wondered what would happen next.

************************************

Coming soon: Two Months and Twenty-Nine days in the Spinal Unit

And, eventually: Rehab is a Five-Letter Word

Zok

A derelict surfer gets in trouble with the Mafia

Norval Watson on iLike – Add iLike to your MySpace

My 16 minute, 16 millimetre film from 1980.

In the Shadow of the Gods

This painting depicts the artist and his dog in the foreground with Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eddie Hazel looking down over his shoulder.

This is Art.. from Norv 2001 on Vimeo.

A nine minute rollercoaster ride through the great museums of Paris.

Avalon: After the Neutron Bomb

View Avalon: After the Neutron Bomb in a larger map

Thredbo, 2005

Rock garden, 2006

We built a trail called Snakes and Ladders, and kept building it further and further down the hill. The gully we kept crossing turned into a creek, and for us that meant one thing – log ride.

Hunting up and down the creek turned up a couple of possibilities. The first log was about 200mm thick, 12 meters long and 5 or 6 meters above the rocky creek. That was just a bit TOO sketchy.

The second log was at least 20 meters long, starting out a meter thick and tapering down to 300mm on the other side of the creek. It sloped, twisted, cracked and turned, with a slimy green coat of moss. Perfect.
Maybe two meters clear of the jagged rocks in the creek, we knew this would be the gnarliest stunt in the forest.

Fast-forward a month or two. The trail was now 200 meters past the log. We had ridden it successfully a number of times, and fallen off it a number of times. Some riders refused, and no-one thought the worse of them because it was a mean, gnarly log.

One Saturday we were out practising for the South East Queensland Downhill Championship the following day. We had ridden all our favorite trails at top speed, and I remember laughing as i got a forty foot jump slightly wrong and went spearing off into the trees.

Sunshine Series, 2006

I made it all the way to within one meter of the opposite bank of the creek. Just where the log kinked left, my front tyre slipped off the right hand side. We had put some extra branches there just in case this happened, but the wheel crashed straight through them and down.

Riding the gnarly log, a few weeks before the accident

KRAAACK!!!!!!!!

There was a loud crack and a flash of rainbow lights.

I was upside down with my full-face helmet tucked into my chest. I couldn’t breathe very well and I suddenly realised that I couldn’t move. I knew then that I had broken my neck.

My first thought was an indescribable sadness for my parents, who have had to put up with a lot. My second thought was that I would never play guitar again, which would be a waste, as I had been practising so much lately.

My friends told me at first they didn’t worry about my fall, as I do this sort of thing so very often. It was only when I did not move that they realised something was wrong.

When they reached me I told them that I had broken my neck and that they had to move me coz I couldn’t breathe. They were very reluctant to move a spinal injury but I assured them I would take full responsibility, whatever happened. Luckily, they were able to gently lay me on my side before heading off in various directions to seek help.

I was basically suicidal for the next 20 minutes or so as I pondered a future life as a total quadruplegic. Then suddenly I exclaimed “Ow!” because some bastard was poking me in the ankle.
“That’s fantastic!” said Phil Morrow, who had stayed with me while Mick Mclennan and the others called for help.
“I’ve been poking you all over with a stick and I just got a reaction!”

This was a cause for great joy and jubilation all round, and much stick-poking ensued. Further tests revealed that I had the smallest flicker, a tiny twitch of movement in hands and feet. I resolved there and then to be positive and grateful for any improvement. If I recovered enough to be able to drive one of those electric wheelchairs by moving my chin, then that would be a happy day.

The ambulance officers arrived about 40 minutes after the fall, after a long hike from where they left their vehicle. At about the same time we heard the clatter of the Westpac Lifesaver Rescue Helicopter overhead.

But it would be another 2 hours before the Brunswick Valley Rescue Squad figured out a way to stretcher me out of the rugged gorge, and another hour after that until we reached a clearing where the helicopter crew could get a winch down through the trees.

It was a strange feeling rising up through the branches on the stretcher with a helicopter crewman dangling beside me. It was a very windy day and I remember being worried that if the stretcher got caught in a tree, then we were all going to die.

The chopper flew to Lismore to refuel, and then straight to the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane. I did not enjoy the flight as there was a lot of vibration and I could only think about jagged bone fragments sawing away at what was left of my spinal cord.

It was a huge relief when the helicopter touched down in Brisbane. A team of medicoes ran out with a trolley and as they wheeled me through the big glass doors I sucked some more oxygen through the mask and thought, maybe I’m going to be OK…

**************************************************

TO BE CONTINUED: Three months in Spinal…

Loss.. from Norv 2001 on Vimeo.

http://vimeo.com/4840940
Losing something on a rainy day..