A submission to the Weekly Photo Challenge: Split Second Story
This photo was taken last summer in Derwent Water in the Lake District. It sums up a big story for us in the past two years.
Reading by Derwent Water
On Friday January 27 2012 Anita was cycling to work in Milton Keynes when rounding a bend she slipped on ice and fell, shattering her forearm in the process.
Sparing the gory details she broke both Radius and Ulna.
The first I heard was when the school secretary came up to my classroom to give me a message.It was unheard of, especially as this was a Year 11 exam Group, and I knew it was serious. She told me that to tell me there had been an accident and that Anita had been knocked over on her bike. Thoughts were rushing through my head as I rushed back to MK. I arrived to find her in the A&E department. She was not in a good way. Thankfully passers by had found her quickly and called the ambulance which arrived shortly. It is worth noting here that her cycle helmet saved her (remember this cyclists!) from serious injury.
She was operated on in the evening and after a nervous wait I found out at 00:30 that she was in recovery. Two day later she was released.
Initially things seem to go well but the pain persisted and got worse, more importantly movement after initially improving began to reduce again. She were referred to specialists in Oxford and it was decided that the bone was growing into the wrist and needed to be shortened. This required a controlled re-breaking of her Ulna and shortening of the bone and fitting of a plate. After a several months waiting on the NHS a date was confirmed for mid July 2013! This was going to happen just a week before my long planned trip to Vietnam/ Cambodia. We agreed I should go nonetheless. The operation would be straight-forward and after all an her parents lived near to Oxford so could look after her in recovery.
I was somewhat shocked to wake up at 6:30 one morning in Buon Ma Thuot (Vietnam) to discover on Facebook that, after the operation, her arm had broken inside the plaster!!!
Needless to say that I dispensed with concerns about roaming charges and phoned there and then.
I was about to go on Trek and would be out of phone contact for three days, during which time she would have the operation to fit a second plate.
She was now staying with her sister as her parents and our kids had gone on the long planned week in Cornwall, a holiday she was to have gone on.
I felt a little helpless, unable to do anything from half way around the globe, a long way from an airport and a flight that would not get me back before the op. So I stayed but worried and ran up more bills managing to phone from a hut in the jungles of Cambodia. The op went well and another plate was fitted. She remained in hospital for several days more, before being released.
On my return to the UK I was pleased to see that Anita was making good recovery.
We decided that because she had missed out on a holiday we would take a short break in the Lakes at the end of August. It was during that holiday I took the picture. Anita wasn’t up to walking up the hills and so decided to stay by the shoreline reading a book, whilst the children and I climbed up to get a view of the lake.
Ten months on the pain has subsided and although movement is restricted it is so much better than before.
Surprise View of Derwent Water
Tanza-Longs 
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