Arrogance + Segway = Injury!

I’m afraid this formula would work with anything, not just Segways, but let me tell you how it got to damage my back and left me in hospital for 5 days with instructions for complete bed rest for another 10 days. This, hopefully, will have a lesson to others so they too do injure themselves on these machines.

When my friend Sofyan sent a couple of Segways for the 24th bloggers’ meeting at my house, no one was happier to receive them than the kids and myself! They were delivered, and quick instructions were given which I duly translated to Arif who was as anxious as I was in just getting on and having fun! After the guy left, I slowly took Arif through the steps which he mastered almost immediately, so much so in fact, that he also taught his sisters as well. They were having a lot of fun in the garden that I was worried about my lawn; them crisscrossing the grass left marks then which have since disappeared, thankfully.

I didn’t of course get a chance to use one until the next morning, which you all know about and I survived that incident and never thought much of it.

Arif and I then went to the beach and into the village, to the cold store and various places near by. We were both getting quite confident in using those machines. But to me, just being confident is not enough.. I’ve got to be arrogantly confident in using this thing!

So I refused to get off it when stepping down into the garden or stepping up onto the path from the lawn, a rise/drop of about 3 inches; not much, I know, but the procedure I think is to get off the machine, put it into the climb/descent mode by lightly pressing on the mode button, and then use the steering switch to actually get the motors to assist you in dragging the Segway up or pushing it gently down. I just went haring off into the garden’s length and breadth without another thought, and as this forcible maneuver worked on several occasions, my arrogance increased.

I left both machines in Arif’s capable hands as I was side-tracked, but not before dissing him about him having to have confidence and follow in MY footsteps and not be a woos in actually doing things properly! He wouldn’t listen and told me that he’d do it his own way. Fair enough.

I got distracted from those fun machines for a while… until the time that I was informed that they were being picked up on Sunday morning around 7.30AM. As I was leaving the house, fully dressed and ready for work at 6AM, I thought I’d just take them both out of the house where they were charging, and put them at the front door so they could be easily picked up. While doing that, I decide to take one around the garden – and in my full Arab dress! – for “one last time.”

Without another thought, I got on, went haring off on it in the garden, the thobe stuck to me, the ghutra (head-dress) flapping behind me like a flag in wind and the feeling was thrilling! I went up on the path to get to the other side of the garden to have a look at my nursery and plants until at 6:15 I thought that I had had enough play and now it’s time to get to work.

I, of course, was going to force the Segway onto the path from the garden, again. But it wouldn’t do it this time. The drop distance on that side of the garden is slightly higher, and the grass wetter! I wouldn’t give up so I leaned forward a bit more, the wheels were turning but finding no purchase. I thought I had better back off before I break it, so I pulled back a bit…. and that’s when I knew that something pretty horrible was about to happen.

(all conjecture now as all of the following happening in probably less than a couple of seconds)

All I remember is that I pulled back slightly, the machine suddenly whipped back, I lost my balance, the Segway turned 180-degrees and slapped me very hard on the pavement. Actually, the smack was the small of my back meeting the edge of the raised red-bricked path. I have never experienced pain such as that in my life. Nor will I ever wish even my deadliest enemy to have such pain either.

I don’t know how long I was lying prostrate as I was, completely unable to breathe. But when I was able to draw a shallow breath, that came out as a very painful grunt which Frances thankfully heard while she was all the way back in the kitchen. She came rushing out and saw me lying like that and she freaked, but all credit to her took control of the situation rather quickly. She insisted that I do not move and that she would be calling an ambulance. I told her not to bother, even though I was in tremendous pain, something in my mind told me to test to see if my toes and legs still worked. They did, thank God, and that was enough for me (stupidly, I know and I will never do this again) to try to get up.

The pain came back in full force, but I somehow managed to use both Frances and the maid as crutches until I reached my study downstairs and laid on the sofa. I told Frances to take the kids to school, then come and attend to me.

She came back an hour later to find me completely drenched in sweat, and the pain has not diminished at all. She got me in her car and we drove to the closest hospital around which was the International Hospital in Jidd Haffs.

The emergency doctor checked me out and suggested that as I suspected, since I can move my feet, legs and toes, there doesn’t seem to be any damage to the spinal nerves. That made me extremely happy of course, but then he told me that as I can actually move and have moved off the accident site, that he doesn’t even suspect that there is a fracture anywhere, but they will have to do x-rays to make sure. In either case, due to the pain, they had to admit me for observation and further tests. I didn’t mind as long as they made the pain go away.

The x-rays showed a fracture of course. Which gave my treating doctor (Dr. Sami Gouda, neuro-surgeon and specialist in back-bone injuries) more tests to order: MRI, bone-densitometry and more specific x-rays. These had good news and bad news:

The bad news: 3 vertebrae were compressed (crushed more like, judging by my feeling) with one of them being cracked. There is also hematoma (internal bleeding) around the area. That meant that they have to decide whether to operate and how much intrusion needed to be done. In any case I have had to stay in hospital for at least 4 days, and follow that by complete bed-rest for another 10 – 14 days.

The good news: no operation necessary. But plenty of painkillers. Recovery time is 6 months at a minimum if I follow their instructions: lose a lot of weight, the backbone is designed to support 70kgs, rather than the 113kgs I’ve been subjecting it to; no gardening for the duration, no bending, no carrying of any weights during those times, and never sit for more than 20 minutes without getting up and moving and/or stretching.

The other good news is that in the fall somehow I did not hit my head on the pavement, nor did I break my arms, legs or any other bones (except the backbone that is) which was extremely surprising. A friend of mine had almost the same accident a while ago and he still has the marks of surgeries on his arm where he broke his bones from the top of the arm to the wrist in several places. He has 8 bolts in there still!

The scary news: had the vertebra moved just 3 millimeters more, it would have impinged on the nerve and I would have suffered complete paralysis.

I was lucky, very very lucky and thank God for that and my lucky stars.

The lesson to learn from all of this of course is not to be cocky, don’t get over-confident because if you do then you will be inviting bad things – of your own doing most probably – to happen to you.

Now I’m paying for this by having to stay in bed, and have to do all of my meetings, business, blogging, etc from bed, at a time which I had hoped that I would be out jumping from one electioneering tent to another to support the Just Bahraini campaign.

Would I get on a Segway again? I don’t think so. I don’t trust myself on one. Is it the Segway’s fault? I don’t know, there seems to be a lot of sites on the internet against the Segway with people sharing their Segway injury experiences, all of which are not minor.

In any case, I would urge anyone who does want to try one or own one, to get proper protection, proper training and always follow the instructions. As the label on the machine itself says: This machine can kill!

I guess this lesson learnt won’t un-learnt for a very long time to come.

To knock this lesson home, I will never forget Arif’s smirk when he visited me on the first day in hospital while he pointed at me and said matter of factly: I told you so!