French Injuries.
One evening, during a particularly eventful autumn surf trip, Me, Craig, Rup, and Dugs found ourselves at Le Penon, about 12kms north of Hossegor. A relatively quiet spot, and generally the first place to get a wave in this spot of the coast. This particular evening, a really nice, hollow, 6-8ft glassy peak was peeling off a beaut, backing off, and then dumping with quite spiteful ferocity on to the beach; in other words, a perfect French beachy.
We were extremely up for it. We weren't tremendously familiar with serious beach dumps, and they took us a bit of nerve to get past. You see, in the UK, the tidal range is pretty bloody big, so you don't often get real shorebreaks. What you get is a 10 mile paddle out, 30+ duckdives, and a real swim to get to the peak. In France, it's the opposite: you have a beast shory to get past, and then a easy, short, dry hair paddle to the peak. Get it wrong, and you get pile-drived into the sand.
One of those sessions unfolded where you just feel like you are invincible and you go for it. Taking off dropknee into ridiculous close outs. Whacking the lip with no thought of going over the falls. A wonderful session. The type that you remember and play back in your head when you're thinking of better days. I pulled into the longest, biggest, and best barrel of my life, and it seemed no big deal. That kind of session. The sun went down, and the white water turned that particular shade of gold, and the water the deepest oily blue. Perfect.
As always, it got dark far too soon, and I was the first to call time and get out. The tide had come in slightly, onto a steeper shelving part of the beach, and the shorebreak was throwing sheets of thick water onto the hard packed sand. Getting out of the water was proving a little tricky. Timing it on a small one, I rode my sponge up the beach, and then legged it clear of the backwash, struggling as my finned feet sank into the soggy sand. I ran clear, desperate not to trip over my leash or my fins as the next wave chased me up the beach. Safe, I walked over the dunes back to the van and got dressed.
10 mins later, Rup came in, and wandered over the carpark towards me. Something was not quite right.
"I've hurt my hand" said Rup.
Blood was all over the place.
"Oh shit" I said and we took a closer look. Urrr. Rup had lost his board coming in through the shorey, and had gone over the falls. Automatically putting out his hand to stop himself as he headed sandwards, he had somehow managed to get the gap between his 2nd and 3rd fingers of his hand between one of the fins of his board. As he got pushed into the beach, the fin had sliced the skin between his fingers a good inch deep, only stopping when it hit the bones of his palm.
"Hey Rup, I can see your finger bones."
I had seen parts of Rups skeleton before, notably his skull, following other accidents, so this wasn't as freaky as you might think.
"ooh, and I can see your tendons, too."
That was a new one. Blood was going all over the place, the seawater in the wound magnifying the amount sploshing around, and we were wondering what to do.
"What we need" said Rup, " is a good first aid kit."
"Yeah, but we don't have one."
Now, normally this would have been true. If you have read any of the other stories on this site regarding us in France, you'll know that we generally take only the bare minimum. A first aid kit, along with other luxuries like soap, or deodorant, would have been left behind. But this time we were with Dugs. In Dugs' van. Now Dugs is Mr. Organised. If anyone was likely to have what you needed in an emergency at any given time, it would be Dugs. And we were standing by his van.
"Hang on, I bet Dugs has got one."
Now, Dugs is so organised, that not only would he have a first aid kit that would probably automatically unfold into a fully-functioning ER, complete with George Clooney, he is so organised that it would be extremely easy to find in an emergency. If we couldn't find it within 15 seconds, he probably didn't have one.
"Ooh look, there it is"
It was lashed to the step of the side door of the van. Couldn't miss it. That's how organised Dugs is.
Unfortunately, I was exaggerating about the George Clooney thing. We; or rather I, as rup had only one working hand, had to fix him up ourselves. It was impossible to dress; it needed stitches. But, if Rup held his fingers together, the wound closed and it stopped bleeding. The only thing we could do was tape his fingers together, and, as it was getting dark, worry about it in the morning.
After an uncomfortable night for Rup, next morning we headed into Hossegor to find some sort of medical facilities. We asked at a pharmacy, and amazingly, Hossegor doesn't have a hospital, or even a clinic. The chap in the pharmacy told us to go to Bayonne, and to the hospital there. We piled in the van and headed off south.
We got to Bayonne, and, after a few minutes of aimless driving, we found the hospital and piled in, Rup was waving his E111 form to anyone within range, (to all you foreign types, an E111 is a government form that lets UK citizens get free medical care in the rest of Europe.) and we sought out medical assistance. We didn't know how much this was going to cost, or even if we'd have to pay at all, and although we knew we would get a least most of the money back if we did when we got back to England, we didn't know if you were gonna get cleaned out in the here and now. We had no choice though, we had to fix up Rups hand.
After a bit of vague French, some hand waving and a bit of miming, we got the nurse to understand what the hell these smelly rosbifs wanted, and Rup disappeared off to get himself repaired, while the rest of us took turns to take advantage of the clean hospital toilets.. Rup hand was only going to cost about 17 pounds, and so we were happy.
20 mins or so later, he returned, hand neatly dressed, and smelling of disinfective. Apparently, cos the wound was damp when we bodged it up, the skin was too soft to take stitches, so the nurse was forced to to a better job of what we'd already done. Even worse, Rup was under strict instructions not to allow it to get wet again. This was not too good, considering we were on a surf trip.
We knew what we had to do. Our first stop after the hospital, was the supermarket. We went straight to where the washing up gloves were for sale, and bought Rup some big pink Marigolds. Then we went to the hardware section, and bought a big roll of Duck Tape. We were set. Next stop was the beach, and we went to work. Rup put on his wettie, and then covered his injured hand with a Marigold. We wound off a big strip of duck tape, and wrapped it around his wrist, hopefully sealing the hand in it's own little waterproof world.
Rup looked like he had a big artificial hand now, and attracted quite a few stares as we walked across the beach. It worked fairly well, his hand got a little damp, and even a bit of sand had worked it's way into the glove, but no worse than a day on the beach would have done. Ideal.
Next day, we went back to the hospital, as arranged, so that Rup could have his dressing changed. The Nurse wasn't fooled, and there was a lot of sand in the wound. Rup got told off.
We tried again next day, with two marigolds on his bad hand and a bit more duck tape. This worked a bit better, but cut off the circulation to Rups hand. It didn't make much difference. Next visit to the hospital, Rupe got told off again.
This continued until the end of our trip, we'd do our best to keep his hand waterproof, fail, and be told off by the French nurses. But it was either that, or not go surfing: so there was no decision necessary. Rups hand healed up ok in the end, a couple of weeks after our return, with no damage. Everyone was happy.
By Jon.
