As I type, my wife and daughter are in hospital. This is not super unusual for us as my daughter has a number of issues relating to a rare genetic syndrome she was born with.
So you could say we're used to doctors and hospitals. This time however, she entered not because of her usual issues but because of an accident.
She had an accident on a treadmill.
Basically, after being asked not to play in the neighbor's house, then being warned to stay off the treadmill by the same kids, they all started playing the treadmill anyway.
Personally, I can understand the attraction of the machine. A big powerful conveyor belt.
There's a problem with moving belts though isn't there. People get caught in them and that's just what happened.
After having a few turns sitting on the moving belt and being flicked off the end, she got her hand caught between the belt and the machine.
By the time they turned the belt off, the friction had worn the skin away on the inside of two fingers.
The picture doesn't really do the injury justice as the skin and flesh were removed almost down to the bone.
After dressing and some healing for a week, the third finger looked like this when checked just before surgery.
Not surprisingly, the burns surgeon said, "yes, we really have to do skin grafts".
Grafts were taken from her lower belly because the burn was "full skin thickness". Ie. 3rd degree burns that had removed all the skin. Thankfully the grafts went well and yesterday looked like this.
Now of course, we're thankful to God for very clever doctors. There's still 12 months of splints and physio to go before this is fully healed though.
There is a price here and her fingers won't be quite the same. She's also come down with a collapsed right lung and pneumonia due to other health issues she has. That extended day surgery to a hospital stay spanning over a week now. And being right handed this whole situation has negatively effected her schooling for some time.
I should say at this juncture, we don't hold the neighbors responsible for this. There was an adult only a few metres away and really the whole accident happened in just a minute or two. But it did get me thinking. This was the question I asked...
Why would we bring an industrial conveyor belt into our homes?
That is what a treadmill is these days. A powerful electric conveyor belt that can cope with a 100kg adult running on it.
In fact, powerful enough that it can spit said 100kg adult off the end if they don't pay attention.
Or in the case of our daughter, and many others, inflict a friction burn severe enough to remove the flesh down to the bone.
The chilling thing is that this is a 'first world problem'. It's a 'cultural' burn. I say this coz when I took our daughter to emergency I was told by the triage nurse the following...
"This is the second most common burn we get these days after scalds [hot water/coffee]."
In other words, these injuries are a mark of the society we live in as much as the ineptitude and accidents of children. This led me to ask another question...
What has happened in our society that means that children are exposed to powerful conveyor belts?
The last time children were allowed to play near dangerous machinery was over 150 years ago during the industrial revolution. Many children were badly injured and killed by large belts driving machinery in mills and factories.
In the end, the injuries were so great that a public outcry took children out of dangerous work and had safety equipment installed in factories across Europe.
So how it that we have similarly powerful belts in our homes now?
I think there might be three issues at play here. All of them tell us a lot about our society in 2013.
Firstly, obesity is the great epidemic in Australia. There is a sinking feeling in back of all our minds about the size of our bellies and how to manage it. I know this feeling. I'm about 10kg overweight and tried over the years to combat the issue.
Loosing weight is hard work.
Secondly, weight loss is now an industry. Crazy but true. Ten years ago it was called the "fitness industry", but as our waists have expanded, much of what we used to call "fitness" is now just weight loss.
The problem with an industry is that it wants to sell us stuff. And the stuff it wants to sell us has to be successful and easy. Weight loss is not easy really, it takes discipline and from week to week and season to season success is a long term thing. So to be sold a machine that we're told is easy and will help us succeed is very attractive. So, with all that money we worked hard to earn we buy...
"It's something you can use in the comfort of your own home".
This is the third issue. We don't really want to exercise or go out. Most of us are so tuckered out at the end of the day we just want to sit in front of the tube. But that's just part of it.
We're also slightly scared to go outside and exercise.
The TV that sells us the "weight loss solution" also sells us some other dumb ideas. Here are just some of them.
"Only skinny people look cool when they're exercising"
"Real exercise is stuff like the olympics"
"Extreme sports are the best sort of exercise"
I'm sure I've missed a few here, but all of these are garbage. However, the "Teev" has also slipped in another really nasty idea in the last few decades. It goes a little like this...
"Are you sure it's safe to go outside? In your suburb? Maybe it isn't..."
I like murder mysteries and FBI plot twist movies, but our heads now have every weird single man as a serial killer and very tattooed man as a thug. We've been lied to...
The media has made us scared of everyone around us. It's total bull! Crime rates are lower in Australia than ever before!
You might like to watch "Bowling for Colombine" to see the extent of this issue in the US, but it's real here too.
Problem is, for all of this, none of us are actually using those treadmills much at all. You know the most popular item during council junk throw outs?
Treadmills and similar equipment.
So, look after your body, your kids (and their hands) and switch off the tele. Put your credit card back in your wallet and stop looking for a quick fix.
Just open the door and go for a walk. Who knows, you might even make a new friend...
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