In my 18 years of serious budo practice, I've been lucky enough to be spared most of the usual serious injuries like torn achilles tendons and such, aside from a cut finger shortly after acquiring my first shinken. Although this did require a visit to the hospital, I was still able to compete in next day's taikai (albeit with a bokuto) and the EJC a few weeks later. This was until last Monday's keiko.
I'd started training around 20:00 by running through the seitei forms once each, then moving on to the standing okuden. I spent about five minutes on each form, focusing on refreshing my memory of the main points of each one and making sure to cover the kaewaza as well and, by the time Kancho arrived shortly after 21:00, I was most of the way through. Around 21:35, I was just starting Itomagoi sono san when, just after the draw, I heard the sound of cloth being cut and the kissaki caught on something: my forearm. As it turns out, I hadn't waited until I'd completely lifted the kissaki before bringing my left hand forward to try to take the tsuka, impaling my arm on the kissaki.
Thinking back, I don't remember any pain or what I did with the sword immediately after. I do remember a lot of blood, though, and clapping my hand over the wound to try and keep it in but it was no use: my formerly white summer keikogi and hakama were now adorned with dashes of a bright shade of red called "soup of Aurélien". Everyone else in the dojo immediately stopped practice and rushed over with tissues and tenugui while Kancho called for an ambulance. I think I ended up with about five tenugui wrapped as tightly as possible around my arm, the vast majority of which were soon soaked through, and Fujikawa s. gripping my left bicep as tightly as he could and keeping it raised (given that I'm quite a bit taller than him, this required me to kneel and eventually lie down when I started getting light-headed). The ambulance took around 10mins to arrive and, after taking my details, asking a couple of questions and having a bit of a look, I was taken with Fuku-Kancho to Daiichi Hospital nearby at the usual leisurely pace of ambulances in Japan.
I waited in the ER for I reckon about 15-20mins until the one doctor and nurse on duty finished tending to another patient and turned to me. While the doctor had that grizzled veteran look, the nurse seemed quite new and unsure of a lot of things, so much so that another senior nurse was called on to assist. The whole process of anaesthetising part of my arm and sewing me up took a good couple of hours and I was sent on my way with three days' worth of antibiotics and painkillers and orders to report to the Daiichi Clinic the next morning to have the wound cleaned and the dressing changed. Kancho very kindly came to pick us up and drove me home.
I'll need to visit the clinic every few days, the threads should be taken out in a couple of weeks and it'll take another two weeks or so to heal completely. Luckily, because it was a stab rather than a cut, the actual muscle damage is minimal and, even right after the injury, I was still able to move all of my fingers, if with some difficulty. Now, five days on, I've regained a lot of mobility, although I'm still trying to use it as little as possible, and I just feel lucky that I'll be able to get back to full strength and training eventually.
Apologies for the lacks of photos but I didn't have my phone on me when all this was happening. Also, although I wasn't really expecting it to do any good, I washed my keikogi/hakama a couple of days later and they are now spotless!
I'd started training around 20:00 by running through the seitei forms once each, then moving on to the standing okuden. I spent about five minutes on each form, focusing on refreshing my memory of the main points of each one and making sure to cover the kaewaza as well and, by the time Kancho arrived shortly after 21:00, I was most of the way through. Around 21:35, I was just starting Itomagoi sono san when, just after the draw, I heard the sound of cloth being cut and the kissaki caught on something: my forearm. As it turns out, I hadn't waited until I'd completely lifted the kissaki before bringing my left hand forward to try to take the tsuka, impaling my arm on the kissaki.
Thinking back, I don't remember any pain or what I did with the sword immediately after. I do remember a lot of blood, though, and clapping my hand over the wound to try and keep it in but it was no use: my formerly white summer keikogi and hakama were now adorned with dashes of a bright shade of red called "soup of Aurélien". Everyone else in the dojo immediately stopped practice and rushed over with tissues and tenugui while Kancho called for an ambulance. I think I ended up with about five tenugui wrapped as tightly as possible around my arm, the vast majority of which were soon soaked through, and Fujikawa s. gripping my left bicep as tightly as he could and keeping it raised (given that I'm quite a bit taller than him, this required me to kneel and eventually lie down when I started getting light-headed). The ambulance took around 10mins to arrive and, after taking my details, asking a couple of questions and having a bit of a look, I was taken with Fuku-Kancho to Daiichi Hospital nearby at the usual leisurely pace of ambulances in Japan.
I waited in the ER for I reckon about 15-20mins until the one doctor and nurse on duty finished tending to another patient and turned to me. While the doctor had that grizzled veteran look, the nurse seemed quite new and unsure of a lot of things, so much so that another senior nurse was called on to assist. The whole process of anaesthetising part of my arm and sewing me up took a good couple of hours and I was sent on my way with three days' worth of antibiotics and painkillers and orders to report to the Daiichi Clinic the next morning to have the wound cleaned and the dressing changed. Kancho very kindly came to pick us up and drove me home.
I'll need to visit the clinic every few days, the threads should be taken out in a couple of weeks and it'll take another two weeks or so to heal completely. Luckily, because it was a stab rather than a cut, the actual muscle damage is minimal and, even right after the injury, I was still able to move all of my fingers, if with some difficulty. Now, five days on, I've regained a lot of mobility, although I'm still trying to use it as little as possible, and I just feel lucky that I'll be able to get back to full strength and training eventually.
Apologies for the lacks of photos but I didn't have my phone on me when all this was happening. Also, although I wasn't really expecting it to do any good, I washed my keikogi/hakama a couple of days later and they are now spotless!
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