My Christmas Break

Long time, no post… and I have quite a few photos from the Christmas Holidays, so I thought I would share, at last! (yes I do realize this is three months late).

My Break

First off, as Ben explained in the previous post, I broke my elbow the Monday before Christmas. Technically, I fractured my left coronoid process (that’s the ‘cup’ at the tip of my ulna that stops my upper arm bone from dislocating). I also had a ‘subluxed elbow,’ which means that I had a ‘minor’ dislocation, such that the two dislocated bones were still touching.

My surgeon, Mr. De Boer, originally told me they would have to put an internal pin in, which would have stayed in permanently holding my elbow together. However, when they moved my arm around while I was under a general anesthetic, Mr. De Boer decided that I didn’t need one. However, my elbow wasn’t stable enough for a cast, which still allows some internal movement. Therefore, I woke up feeling very groggy and was completely taken a back to find an aluminium brace on my arm and four pins going into the bones from outside!

This is what it looked like the day I got out of hospital (Thursday).

And this is what it looked like around Christmas day. I was informed by Mr. De Boer that the contraption on my arm was worth £3000!

Our Christmas

We spent Christmas with a wonderful, generous ex-Melbournite, Mel Thomson. She has lived here for 10 years or so and is married to a policeman, Simon. They live in a place about an hour’s drive from York, called Goole. It is, by her own admission, out in the sticks! But they have a beautiful old house with multiple rooms. Mel says she couldn’t give up her Australian dream of having a decent-sized house! And because she has the room, she likes having extras over for Christmas. This year she had us, Simon’s parents, and Lindsay, a post-doc from her lab who is originally from Perth.

This is Mel’s living room, real pine Christmas tree and all! The window looks out onto the reinforced banks of the River Ouse.

Mel in her kitchen with her turkey.

Me on Christmas morning. I am wearing Mel’s kimono which we discovered was one of the few things that fit around my arm brace! The little purple magnetic man was one of my Chirstmas presents to Ben. The other one was a magnetic board game called Polarity, which is really cool. Lindsay and Ben played it pacing around the table like it was a pool table that was about to explode so they didn’t disturb the magnets! Highly amusing!

Christmas lunch! Yummy food!

And then on Boxing day, it snowed! Yay, our first real snow!

I was so excited I went and danced in the snow. Ben went and laughed at me and took photos. Note that I am actually dancing on gravel, substantially less slippery than the nearby pavement! I was excited, but I wasn’t so excited as to want to slip on ice again!

On the Wednesday after Christmas we went home, having had a fantastic, relaxing time with everyone.

Snow

Soon after, it snowed again, and I got a bit trigger happy with my camera:

Its snowing outside our window!

The view from our flat after snow.

A frozen spiderweb.

Snow clouds!