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• Break a Leg!
  ( 繁 | 简 )

  Saturday, Jun 23, 2007 5:55AM / Standard Entry / Members only
  130 comments

  I'm not quite sure where this term originated and I really don't understand why you would tell someone that before going out to do a show. Does anyone know the history?
  OK here is some serious news that I have been holding back on until everything was under control. Remember my blog entry on June 22nd about my skateboard crash? I should have taken that as a sign and stopped right there but it really was so relaxing and fun pushing through the streets. Well on Tueday June 12th I was skateboarding to school early in the morning. My trucks were a bit loose and I had been meaning to fix them for a long time but I didn’t have the proper tool. On a perfectly straight and flat bit of road I got a speed wobble while pushing and lost balance. I put my right foot down to catch myself but my left foot was still on the board and unfortunately it twisted outwards as I fell. Usually when one rolls their ankle, they roll it inwards and this in called inversion. Not much happens, you get a sprain or tear some ligaments. Eversion is when the ankle rolls outwards and this is what I did. When you evert your ankle you not only tear ligaments but it puts an extreme amount of pressure on the fibula (the small bone next to the Tibia) and it breaks. So to make a long story short…I broke my ankle. I knew it the second it happened because like when I injured my knee several years ago, I actually saw it flip outwards. Very nasty.
  I think that probably had to be the most painful thing I have experienced in my life. I laid on the ground for a minute and then managed to drag myself out of the street in between two parked cars while I figured out what to do. I was lucky there were no cars around but also unlucky because no one saw my fall. Normally in HK or SF I would know where the closest hospital was and which doctor to contact but NY isn’t my home. When the pain subsided a little I decided to call Lisa. It was probably a very rude awakening for her. I remember I calmed myself down for a few minutes first and spoke to her very calmly so as not to alarm her too much. She then got up and ran 8 blocks to get me up in a cab and to the hospital. Thank God she was here otherwise I wouldn’t have known what to do. People walking by just looked at me and kept walking, they probably thought because I wasn’t crying or anything, that I fell and was going to get back up. Also it wasn’t obvious that the leg was broken, only I could see the bone bulging out beneath the skin.
  So we got to the hospital and proceeded to spend the next six or seven hours there, while I got examined, x-rayed etc. I have to say, I have finally experienced the American medical system now and I can confirm that it has some serious problems. I appreciate the HK system so much more now. If our next president chooses to ignore this issue like Bush, the US is seriously screwed.
  Anyway, in the end they set the bone back into place as best as possible, also very painful but not too bad, put me in a splint and told me that I needed to have an operation as soon as the swelling went down. In the next week I went to several other doctors that were referred by friends and finally found a good one to do the operation for me. I had the operation this past Tuesday, the 19th. They put in a couple of metal plates, a couple pins and one big screw to hold it all together. Most of the stuff will be removed a few months down the road so I won’t be setting off airport alarms in the future.
  The doctor says I will probably be in a cast and on crutches for at least 6-8 weeks. I guess I am going to have to extend my hiatus from work a little longer. All in all, I am doing fine. The only thing I am really upset about is that I was not able to attend my last week of class. I talked to my teachers and will be making it up privately but I really liked my classmates. There were a lot of great, talented people there that I enjoyed hanging out with and watching them growing together with as actors. I’m going to miss them all.
  I am only going to include one picture, even though I have taken quite a few, for two reasons. #1 I don’t want to gross anyone out and #2 some HK newspaper printed the photo from my last fall without Alive Not Dead permission and we want to avoid that here. The photo is the x-ray of my left foot looking at it straight on. The big bone is the tibia and the small bone is the fibula. You can see the break inside the red circle. The blue line shows the way my ankle went. If you notice the x-ray technician can't spell. "Weight beiring" should be spelled "weight bearing"
  
  So looks like I’ll be here a bit longer to allow things to heal up before getting on a plane. I’m sad that I can’t walk and take the subway around New York like before. It’s all taxi’s from here on out. But for now it’s all about resting on the sofa watching DVD’s and reading. It also helps a lot that I’ve got Lisa here to watch over and take care of me. I'm not sure what I'd do if she wasn't here.
  Oh yeah...an I think I might have to officially retire from skateboarding. What a shame.(Although my doctor has a 64 year old patient who came in twice fro a broken wrist and broken collar bone both from skateboarding!) I have to say I have done much more dangerous things on movie sets.
  I'll blog more about life on crutshes later.
  Peace!