A peculiar turn of events regarding the knee

Well la ti da….I finally managed to finagle my way through the morass of the NHS and get back to the hospital to hear the results of my December MRI. Turns out that I have been unintentionally healing from a non-displaced tibial plateau fracture for the past three months. Oops on the NHS!

I am in two minds on the whole thing…

1) PRO: I am relieved that I do not need soft tissue surgery to fix a meniscus or ligament tear. Plus, I am cleared to go back to full derby, providing I ease into it a bit

2) CON: doing the normal hypochondriac shuffle on google, I read that this type of fracture usually results in a knee brace and no weight bearing during at least 2 months of healing time. Folks, I won a dance contest on December 21^st…there was definite weight bearing! So I am a bit paranoid that it didn’t get the benefit of a good diagnosis and healing that it should have had. The fracture clinic at UCH (which is admittedly run by one of the best sports ortho docs in London) didn’t seem that worried, and basically said I had the benefit of 3 months of healing, but I just wish I had known earlier, and had been able to treat it properly!

What have we learned?

• Will NEVER EVER play roller derby again without good private insurance, which I now have…no more waiting on the NHS!
• Bette Noir has joined the ranks of the “broken bone” club, and now qualifies for the ‘ol AC/DG crutch tattoo (which she will be banned from receiving by the lovely Mr Posh)

In which a change in our heroine's living situation arises.

And duh....why didn't I title all my blogs in the above manner to match the overall theme? From now on I will. :)

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So I am about to get a new flatmate. Yup, Tom (aka Mr Posh in the derby world) is moving in. He has been keen on living with me for some time, and he spends about 5 nights a week at my place as it is.

Finally my flatmates said “why doesn’t he just move in and pay some rent?”

:)

So when we get back from the states, Tom is moving over to Notting Hill…leaving southeast London behind. Eeek!

No seriously, I am cool with it, obviously. Just a bit nervous because I haven’t lived with a guy “officially” since my ex-husband – and this seems to put the final nail in the coffin of any vestiges I might be harbouring that I am still “single” or unencumbered by a relationship. I think that after the long struggle to accept divorce I had finally reached a state of enjoying singleness. And then of course I met Tom…who rather than being the kind of guy you have to pin down for some shred of commitment, is pretty much the poster man for “serious relationship”.

Anyway, I really didn’t want to leave my flat, as regular readers and friends will know that I LOVE where I live. This makes everything cool….cause now I get to live with Tom and stay in my hood. Notting Hill Carnival 2008 after party is definitely on this year!

So Courtney Goes To London moves to Phase…3? Yeah I guess Phase 3 sounds about right. Briefly proceeded by Holiday in the Sun 2008 Phase 1.

Exhibit A – where I will be sipping mai tais next Friday

Exhibit B – the house we will be staying in while in Todos Santos with my family

http://www.mexicovacations.com/mx/32731.html

LRG Update...

So the second London Rollergirls bout was absolutely amazing. It was so close after xmas that we were all a bit worried about turnout, and at one point were even thinking we would have about 50 people in the audience. HA….hardly. We were totally sold out about 2 days before the bout, and we even had ticket scalpers outside the venue on the day! You know you have arrived when someone is trying to tout your tickets.

I had a fantastic time announcing, and definitely would want to continue doing that if I ever had to retire (along with coaching). More importantly though, the gameplay was just super amazing. The difference in skating skill level between the first game and this one was truly great to see. We probably had about 10 bout rookies in the lineups and they held their own and showed potential that makes me happy for the future of LRG. And for the girls that were skating their second bout, well I may be biased, but many of them showed skills and gameply knowledge at the same level of gals that have skated more than one full season. The audience could really tell too. Our first bout had an audience that didn’t quite know what to do…but this time around people were jumping up and down and screaming their lungs out by the end of the bout. This was probably helped by the fact that the game pretty much went down to the last two jams, with Team Pink finally taking the win.

On an unfortunate note, we had a broken leg in the 1^st period from veteran skater, Ana Ki. She is sporting a titanium pole in her left lower leg as a souvenir of derby now.

And on to boot camp…

This past Saturday, LRG hosted the first ever European Roller Derby Boot Camp. We had skaters and refs from the across the UK leagues, and even a few from Stockholm, Sweden. It was pretty sweet. We had five hours of skating and training – covering the basic basics for newbies, and also hitting all the major elements of play for the more advanced girls. The session ended with a two hour pick-up scrimmage with everyone getting involved to their levels. Everyone had a fantastic time at the boot camp and the afterparty, and I really felt like for the first time here everyone understood what it was like to be a part of a roller derby community. We have the benefit at LRG of having lots of visiting gals from the states and other leagues, but many of the smaller start up leagues in the UK and Europe just don’t get that. So for them, I think it was very important to get a feel for it.