Dad's Injury

On our holiday to France, that you may have read about in the previous post, we took our bikes. Cycling in France is amazing, I suggest you all do it at least once in a lifetime. All through the holiday it was great, for every one but my dad, that is. About a week and a half through the holiday, my dad fell off. He had gone out on ride in the Sion sur L'Ocean direction while we were at the beach. After a few our at the beach we returned to our 'hut'. About twenty minutes later, my dad returned. The first thing he said to us as he stood at the steps to our decking was, 'Please don't be angry, it was only a little scrape.' See what you think.

Disgusting, Isn't It?

       He had picked up a puncture or dodgy valve while riding and as he leaned into a sharp corner on the dusty cycle paths he had lost all grip, causing him to collapsed in a heap as he slid to a halt, still attached to his bike. He had torn all the skin of his arm, leaving a bloody, raw patch of flesh revealed beneath. He had also torn the skin of his knee, which later formed a chunky scab.
       We gave it a clean and bandaged it up with the first aid kit we'd brought with us. From then on Dad wasn't allowed in the sea with us, which for him was probably a plus. The next day we had to change the bandage , although when we had but the bandage on the wound was still wet and raw, leaking with plasma, which meant when dried the bandage had form part of the scab. Because of this we couldn't just rip the bandage off (can you imagine that? Ow!) , we had to soak it in the sink for about five minutes, as if you were soaking a stamp off an envelope. We continued to do this every day until we ran out of medical supplies.
       We were, however, planning to go back to Saint Gilles Croix du Vie to buy some presents for family and for our last meal of the holiday. They had a couple of pharmacies in Saint Gilles. The first one we went into was in the centre of town and didn't have quit what we wanted, it had allot of natural cosmetics, botanical stuff and tubigrips, you know, the general. The one thing I had started to notice was that they didn't sell medicine items like stretch bandage on the shelves, you had to ask for it at the counter. A bit further out of town, across the river, we came across another pharmacy with a bit more of what we wanted. As we walked in the first thing we saw was a stall with various first aid items, and a 'bobo box'. The deal was, if you buy four items you get the bobo box free.

Epic!

     
      So we did. But what Dad really wanted was a sort of elasticated nett tube thing, to keep your bandage on. Apparently, they use them in the Tour de France. We had to use hand signals to get what we wanted at the counter as the man spoke no English, but we got what we wanted. And if you see my Dads arm now, it's completely healed.