Me and my big mouth...

The week before last our big resident Swede Andreas suffered the misfortune of getting one of his toes trapped in someones gi and quite nastly and funnily dislocated it into a shape not too far removed from the beloved chocolate of my childhood, The Curly Wirly... Now after he had gone to hospital to get his Curly Wirly toe straightened out me and a couple of the guys started talking about injuries sustained whilst training. Now the usual stuff came up about hyperextended joints, the stubbing of toes etc etc but I then realised that apart from popping a cartilage between my ribs about 3 years ago nothing has ever happened to me and this is when the curse of the jinx struck me down... The following week I got punched and elbowed in the face more times than I care to remember and am now sporting a rather fetching black eye a tongue that nearly got bitten off and a swollen cheek! Now if I was doing my Thai boxing this is part and parcel of the training but when your training BJJ this is quite funny! Still, Not one to moan I accepted that this is part of training even without any striking and im sure i've accidently knocked people when training myself!

Now this is when it gets a bit weird... After the final sparring on Friday me and a couple of the lads stay quite late and do some skipping, Medicine ball drills and general fitness work and it was whilst skipping that I experienced one of the most bizarre feelings ever.
With 20 seconds left on the timer I gave the shout to finish with a sprint finish and after 10 seconds of sprinting I literally felt as though someone had come up behind me and punched me in the base of my skull which resulted in all my neck and base of skull going stiff and numb! Now this freaked me out and all night I was in pain and didn't know what to do so just decided to have a bath take some tablets go to bed and hope it would be ok in the morning! I suffered from a real deep painful throbbing in the base of my skull all weekend but at 1:30 in the morning of monday it got horendous and after going white, getting into a cold sweat and nearly passing out 3 times due to pain it was decided that medical treatment may be required... On arrival at the local hospital I was in agony and was lucky that all the pissheads and drug addicts had decided to have a quiet night in and was seen within 30 minutes of arrival... I told the doctor what happened and seeing my black eye he kept asking me if I had been struck to the face which I hadn't, So after some blood pressure readings and observations my diagnosis was made.
I have somehow managed to strain the ligaments at the base of my skull and due to the weight of my head the skull is pressing down on the strained ligaments which is causing all the pain and throbbing... So now this grappling addict has to do what hurts him the most and miss training for a while to give them time to heal, Which if you knew me I guarentee the prospect of training will get the better of me and I'll be back on the mats too soon...

The moral of this stroy? Keep your mouth shut when it comes to injuries or you too will suffer from the curse of the jinx...