On the 25th (Friday) I took Joe along to the clinic on my own and hadn’t seen the progress since Monday when I last photographed it and was pleased to see that everything is coming along nicely. Joe still can’t bring himself to look at ‘The Hole’, but is quite happy to see images of the impact wound and the Bone ‘Exit’ wound. The ‘Impact wound’ has still got the scab over the top of it and they’re still applying the Jelly stuff to loosen it up so that they can peel it off and have the wound the same as the other – pink and raw. This approach in the long run means a less significant scar, allowing the wounds to scab up apparently leaves a more prominent scar. The visits to the clinic are still Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so it’s difficult with regards to work, but at the minute both of us a swapping the visits and our employers are showing a great deal of understanding with this, which is a appreciated. The next big day is this coming Friday (June 1st) when a new set of Xray’s are due and the next development in the healing process. Michelle is under the impression that they’ll be doing a MRI/Cat Scan on this visit to look at the ligaments around the knee as there were initial concerns that there may have been some damage of that kind. Fingers crossed that’ll be reasonably okay and wont be that significant in the longer term?
Today Ben and I went over the paddock and had a bit of a bat
and a bowl and I said to Joe “What about you come over and umpire on the LBW
decisions”? and Joe said yes, see he came over. We had almost an hour where I
batted against some really good bowling by Ben (He bowled me 4 times) and then
I bowled at him with the side arm using Readers Wind Balls. Then a bunch of
Estate Kids came along and were watching, these are the kids that back in the day when we used to mow a
wicket on the adjacent football field in the summer used to join, so they
eventually said ‘Come on let’s have a game of quick cricket’? and I realised
that if we did that Joe could be the bowler. So we did and Joe even got to have
a bat sitting in his wheel chair having one of the Estate Kids as a runner.
More amazing still Ben bowled at him in a reasonable and humane way! In 99.99%
scenarios Ben would be looking to maim Joe or give him absolutely no chance of
hitting the ball, but it seems Ben’s able to empathise with Joe’s situation and
off Ben’s bowling with his runner Joe scored the highest ‘Innings’!
Also talking to Joe today and asking him about his leg he
was saying that with regards to his perception of what was the aspect that he
was more concerned about with regards to seriousness of the injuries his answer
was ‘The open wounds’. He said that the broken bones were now a negligible
aspect and that they didn’t concern him that much at all and he felt that he
could probably put his leg down and apply some weight on the leg. We’ve said
not to do that till at least this Friday when we visit the Fracture clinic and
I suspect that, this is what they’ll be saying to do next based on what I’ve
read about of other peoples recovery processes. But, having said that, Michelle
suggested that he tried sleeping tonight without the plastic cast on tonight
and he wasn’t up for it at all. Again he said he’d wait till Friday and see
what the consultant surgeon would say.
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| Exit wound and operation scar (Right) "The Hole" on left. |
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| Close up of "The Hole" as it was on the 25th of May. The scarring fron the split is clearly visible above and below the hole |
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| Close up of the bone exit wound and the scar from the operation. |
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| The Impact Wound. You can see this is massively different and the scab almost looks ready to come off. |
The images here below are of the Paddock this week. I'm using a heavy duty Playground Mat to bowl off of this summer to prevent ant further damage to the wicket whilst I try and maintain it and get the grass growing in the footholes created last year.
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Here's Joe and his lightweight cast on his way to the clinic on Friday. He's using the crutches a lot more now and I've fitted the hand grips with spongey hand grips.
I've not said much about my bowling recently because there still haven't been any matches. I've noticed that I'm marked as a squad member this year in the 4thXI's for Saturdays, but as yet there's been no matches that I'm aware of and there looks to only be one more lined up for the rest of the season?
My bowlings okay- up and down days, probably a lot of positives to be taken from it, but without any matches I can't see if there's any benefits of my practice. I've now developed a square turner that spins at 90 degrees to the flight direction and I can bowl this at will which is good. My accuracy despite being able to spin the ball much harder this year looks very promising and my only concern would be my bowling speed. I've been trying to improve the speed, but this leading to developing sore shoulders and I can only put this down to the 'Joe Factor' because he's not around I don't think I'm doing the same amount of running around and exercise that I would normally do and this does seem to be having some impact.
Did Joe recover? See below...
Check out my other blog here - this is all about Leg-spin bowling and nothing else. Double click on the image below.
