Snowboarding madness

Snowboarding being considered an extreme sport, it's only normal to hear about people getting injured from time to time. The thing is, although you know about the risks, you would never think it would happen to you, especially after 5 years of uninterrupted enjoyment of the sport. Well, I am glad to announce that I am no exception. After all this time thinking my glorious hair provided me incredible luck, I finally got my very own injury.

It was a Saturday morning, me and my buddy Mathieu (same name, don't get confused here) agreed to go to Ski Morin-Heights, the ski resort I work at as a snowboarding instructor for 3 years now. It was one of our last "ski days": as the summer was getting closer, the snow was melting and the time had come to hand in our bright red instructor jackets (which is our uniform). Since it is quite a drive to get there, we decided to spend the morning there and leave early in the afternoon.

The conditions were decent, but the snow was hard since we didn’t get any snowfall in a while. It wasn’t the perfect day to attempt any crazy tricks, but there’s always this uncontrollable will to nail something special before the season ends. So being the freeride type of snowboarder I am, unlike those freestyle riders, my “crazy” objective was to do some 360s and maybe try a few jumps in the snowpark. I did succeed when it came to the 360° rotation. The jumps, however, were a different story.

Although the jumps at Ski Morin-Heights may sound ridiculously small for some, I find them to be quite a challenge. A new jump had been built the week before. Not only was it the biggest in the snowpark, but it was also what you would call a “step-up” jump. The particularity of these jumps reside in the fact the landing is actually higher than the launcher, with a gap between the two. Knowing that, it’s obvious that you need to take the jump with a lot of speed to get to the other side. So after doing pretty much every other jump in the snowpark, I actually thought I had what it took to take on that step-up jump of hell.

After letting my friend try it, I decided to take my chance. Picking up my speed and going downhill from at least two hundred feet away, I was preparing myself mentally, as my snowboard was taking me closer to the jump at blazing speeds. When it was finally time to takeoff, I took one last breath and flew through the air. It was an incredible feeling, until I realized I was turning sideways, now facing the landing. After this 90° rotation, I also started rotating in a way you would want to if you were trying to do a backflip. Sadly, that’s not what I was trying to do. As I was losing altitude, out of balance, my body’s natural reflex was to try and stop myself with my hands, the result being that the first part of my body hitting the ground was my wrist.

Having wiped out quite a few times before, I knew this exploding sensation in my wrist wasn’t right. The temperature being cold and the adrenaline still pumping through my veins, I still didn’t realize how serious this was. Wrist injuries being quite common, I decided to get it checked out by someone more qualified. After taking off my clove, my buddy asked me if I could move my fingers. After hearing my positive answer, he told me it probably wasn’t broken. I decided to believe him. At the resort’s clinic, they quickly checked my wrist, told me to apply ice and made me a cast out of carton boxes and ripped clothes. They also suggested I’d go to the hospital, just in case.

Since I took my car to get there, my buddy asked me if I would let him drive. Excellent idea. As we drove back home, the heat of the car made the trip quite painful, as the cold weather would rather freeze my wrist. He dropped me home and I called my girlfriend so that she could drive me to the hospital.

I ended up spending a total of 6 hours sitting on a somewhat uncomfortable chair with other sick people, kids throwing up and old ladies complaining about everything. Luckily, when I got there, I found a ticket with a smaller number than mine, on the floor, it allowed me to pass in front of a few people hehe…After 4 hours, I finally got to see a doctor, who took a whole second and a half to look at my wrist, tell me “Oh, that’s broken, no doubt about that!” and send me to radiology, to take X-rays. 2 hours later, I’m being called again: “Mathieu Lavoie, Cubicule 3”. As I enter the room, I can see the doctor enjoying her sandwich as a nurse quickly closes the back door. The doctor comes back, 25 minutes later, and tells me “So, like I told you, it’s broken, right here (points on her wrist), your radius and also your cubitus.” “…both?” I ask doubtful? Her positive answer left me and my girlfriend speechless, as the doctor gave me a little paper, filled with something a 4 year old hyper kid could’ve come up with. She also told me my bones had to be repositioned, which could require surgery. Great…

The thing is, the specialist, who would reposition the bones to their original emplacement, wasn’t there until Monday. So I go to the secretary to get a rendez-vous. Some painful times in perspective… I still got this semi-cast though, which was so uncomfortable, my fingers ended up hurting more than my wrist, but that might have been my loose bones messing with my finger nerves/muscles.

So after two nights of unsuccessfully trying every position/pillow combination to make my arm stop hurting, it was finally time to get that thing back into condition. Back at the hospital, I present myself at the counter, give my hospital card, and say my name, only to be told that she doesn’t have any rendez-vous for me. Tabarnak… I reach for the little piece of paper filled with gibberish the doctor gave me and hand it to the secretary, who finally decides to put my name at the end of the list.

After a decent amount of time passes, I finally get called. I go in the room and a doctor with a strong accent starts asking me questions. After I answer them all, I go sit back in the corridor, as I can also get a peak of what is going on in the room. The doctor seems to be a bone repositioning specialist, as I see a number of kids get in, scream, cry and get out with a freshly made cast. It’s finally my turn, I’m being asked to lie down in the chair as the nurse cuts my semi-cast. At last, liberty! Not for long.

After the nurse cleaned my arm, the doctor came back and pokes me 3 or 4 times, injecting me some kind of anesthetic liquid into my now double-sized wrist. Then came the time to reposition the bones. The nurse’s job was to hold my arm down, as well as pulling my hand so that the bone would have some space to move. The doctor then secured his grip by putting his fingers behind my wrist and pushed with his two thumbs to put the whole thing in its original position. The feeling was similar to having a tooth removes with poorly done anesthesia, except 10 times worse, since the bones are obviously bigger. I couldn’t help but to let go a huge nervous laughter, making the doc say the anesthesia did its job. 3 nurses then gathered around, making me a nice cast going from my elbow to my fingers.

So here I am, typing with one hand, I can’t play guitar anymore, I can’t play video games, it takes me forever to type things on my laptop (I don’t count in hours, but rather days now, for this entry). The doc said my wrist will never be the same, because it broke too close to the articulation. It will deteriorate with time and I’ll probably feel the temperature change. Hopefully I’ll be able to regain those guitar skills in 4 to 6 weeks…

I'm going back to the hospital next week to see if I need surgery.