JBJ Hospital Diary part 1

Wednesday 29/7/09

In the Annandale Hotel, Sydney, Australia, during the 2nd song of our set (The Greater than symbol and the hash), I cleared a space in the crowd with my hands before stepping off the 3 foot stage, as far a I can remember both my feet cleared the stage then one was caught on either a photographer’s tripod (of which there were 10 in the small venue) or on a cable running along the stage, I’m pretty sure it was the former.
I hit the floor with my entire body weight on my out stretched elbow, forcing it the wrong way (“hyper-extended” I’ve since learned) I heard a ‘click’ and felt immediate pain, at this point I was only aware of how long I had to go to get back to the drums for the next section of the song, thinking as the pain got worse that as long as I got back for the section where I cue the band into the fast part, I’d be fine. When I stood up, my arm flopped lifeless (and as it turned out, elbow-less) and I realised I probably wasn’t making it back on stage any time soon. I hobbled through the crowd, found our manager Colin and said something along the lines of “my arm just fucking snapped, get me the fuck out of here!” (something he said played over and over in his head for days). The show was stopped and I was taken outside to wait for the ambulance, the muscles started to seize up and as my adrenaline wore off I quickly became a bubbling wreck. I’ve never felt pain like it, nothing else existed but blinding white torture, I would have done literally anything to stop it. By the time the paramedics arrived, I couldn’t stand up, they injected me with morphine on the street and some fans tried to take photos (which was met with proper rage from manager/band/label types), Ryan [McGinness, Bass] came with me in the ambulance where my 2nd or 3rd shot of morphine kicked in, I cant remember much of the journey except Ryan laughing as I (apparently) told the male paramedic that the Doctor who was in attendance at the show had done “fuck all but give me ice” and asked where “sally jesse” was (the other female paramedic with red glasses). As I was being checked in I got given more and more morphine (200mg in total I think), I was completely fucking wasted, I cant even imagine what pish I was talking to Paul (Dew Process) and Colin (our manager) who had since joined us. I waited around for hours for my first x-ray which would turn out inconclusive, while hearing a little boy hallucinating, a girl who had apparently faked her insurance but had swine flu and other miserable screaming noises that make hospitals such joyous places to be.

to be continued. . .