The risks we take

I've broken my toe.  Fortunately it's just my littlest toe so I can still hobble around quite merrily.  I've never broken anything before so the novelty and sympathy votes I'm getting out of it are still interesting enough to outweigh any annoyance and being stuck off-skates again.

Since I've got this injury, I thought I'd find some use for it and write a post.  

One of the major questions people have about me taking up roller derby is "But isn't that a bit dangerous?"  "Isn't it violent?"  "What if you got hurt?"  All very valid points.  As with any contact sport, like rugby for example, there is a higher risk of injury than normal.  The standard reply is that you could get injured anywhere.  You could trip over a kerb and snap your ankle.  However such theoretical responses don't seem to carry much weight.  Well now I have an excellent example, because I did not break my toe while playing roller derby.

I was at a relaxing health spa.  

It was an outing for a friend's hen party, I slipped off one of the steps in the swimming pool, kicked out harder than I meant to, and caught the wall with my toe.  Crunch.  Just like that.  Apart from the pain I realised within a few minutes that it was swelling up and going a very Not-Good colour so I went and found the first aider (who had never had anything so dramatic happen on her shift before, so at least she got a story out of it) and between us we agreed that it was probably broken, needed a lot of ice, and strapping to the next toe for a splint.  It hurt a lot, but I was too busy finding it hilarious that of all the places to finally break a bone - of all the places - who would have suspected a spa?  There's a lovely irony to it that I just find too funny.

Two days later, I'm keeping my weight off that side of my foot and trying not to accidentally flex my toe.  There's not much obviously wrong to look at, except for a ring of deep bruising that goes almost all the way under and round the base of that toe except for one small gap at the top.  I can move it a little, so it's possible that it's just a very bad sprain, but I won't know until the swelling goes down some more and I can bear to flex it.  Maybe a week.

So feel free to use me as your real-life example as to why everyday life can be as bad, if not worse, than your contact sport of choice.  Roller Derby is, arguably, quite dangerous.  But not nearly so dangerous, it turns out, as spas.