Vietnam Injury report 12 days later: Doc says things are improving

After what is the 2nd worst injury I have ever had in my life I had to really sit down and think about how I am living. It isn't easy ya know, being told that you can't go and do anything and need to sit still and rest.

I am one of those people that doesn't generally take medical advice at face value because I believe there is no such things as a "one size fits all" approach so when the doctors told me I needed to lie down most of the time I did that for a while, but as soon as the pain started to subside a bit, I started pressing my luck.

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I was concerned about going from doing a bunch of exercise every day to doing less than none. Not only was I not getting my 10,000 steps in a day but I was getting almost zero steps in by design. The only steps I was taking was to meed the delivery guys downstairs to get my food.

So one day I decided to head out for a slow walk on the beach. How much harm can that do, right? I was feeling fine, no pain in my shoulder or broken ribs so I head out and was feeling fine until about a kilometer into it. This is when my rib, the one that is properly broken and not just cracked, started to yell at me a big. Try as I may to deaden the impact of my leg hitting the ground and shaking my entire torso in the process, that is exactly what was happening. It is what happens to all of us every time we walk we just don't notice it a great deal because most of us aren't wandering around with broken ribs.

So after a km or so each step started out with a yell at me like "hey, this isn't lying down!" but we had a problem. I was 1km away from my house and i had to go back. let's just say that the last 200 meters or so was kind of agonizing and my face looked like someone that was in extreme pain because I was. I was also holding my arm with the broken shoulder at the only level that I could discover that hurt the least. By the time I made it back home I went to the fridge for the ice pack and went to lie down, defeated.

Since that day I have not attempted any exercise and instead am just going to focus a bit on not eating garbage food in the hopes that I don't gain a bunch of weight like I did years ago when I broke my ankle. That injury was a lot worse than this one because it was 3 months of me not being able to walk properly. At least with this current injury I can walk, I just have to be careful and limit the amount of distance that I attempt to travel.

I don't know how long it takes for ribs to heal up, but I would imagine it is more than 11 days and that is how long it has been since the crash.

I've been spending a lot of time with Nadi and because I will lose my mind if I am cooped up indoors all day long I have found a coffeeshop nearby that she is allowed into and we go there and the staff play with her and she also just chills.

Nadi doesn't need a great deal of entertainment and unlike other doggos she doesn't lose her shit if you go over there to pet her. She will be nice but once she figures out that you do not have any food she is going to lose interest in you rather rapidly. In a way I wish she was more enthusiastic about meeting people but i'm afraid she is too old to really care anymore. Fine by me!

On to the doctor checkup.

I went and got another X-ray and i'm not going to bother posting it because to my eyes, and I can only imagine a vast majority of non-medical people, this one and the one from nearly 2 weeks ago look the same.

This time they did do an extra focus on my ribs though and I could see that the one rib that is truly broken is seriously broken - like you can see the gap broken. The doctors are kind of surprised that I am not in constant pain because of this and other than the walk I described above I am not in pain at all. They docs say that I am extremely lucky because normally a broken ribs injury is two weeks or more of simple movement being agony.

They prescribed me a bunch of pills and I always find this process a bit amusing since prescriptions are basically completely unnecessary here in Vietnam. I can walk into most pharmacies and acquire medication that is MUCH more potent than what the doctor writes on his little piece of paper. They didn't prescribe any pain killers because I said I am not in pain - which is true. But much of that is likely because I am on Tramadol that I got from a pharmacy nearby and have been on it since the day of the accident. I didn't lie to the doc about this but he did warn me that "just because you can't feel the pain doesn't mean damage isn't being done, so don't start doing exercise just because you can't feel it... you could be making recovery take even longer." Sage advice doc, and well noted.

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I do have to continue to wear this thing which is called a "figure 8" for the next two weeks minimum. I am supposed to wear it all the time and I actually am complying with this. While it is a pain to put on and feels like a straight jacket when you first get it on ya, you forget it there. The purpose is to keep your shoulder where it is supposed to be so that the bones don't grow back all wonky.

It's just a language barrier thing but I did find this part of my medical report rather amusing.

Thanks doc.

If you get hurt or need a doctor in Vietnam, I highly suggest going to Vinmec International Hospital. The cost is (relatively) low and everyone is very polite and helpful.