Dry Fly Championship Team
England Fly Fishing
Fundraising Event
I throw my arms jubilantly into the air as Klaus nets the big, broad-shouldered Arctic char that I’ve been vehemently fighting with along the edges of the river’s frothing white-water. In that same instant, I feel a piercingly sharp pain radiate from my left shoulder, and it is with consternation and panic that I realise, that my shoulder has been dislocated. It is unwaveringly locked in a semi-comic (and historically inappropriate angle) – and the pain is so unbearable that I gasp for breath.
Klaus, who still hasn’t the faintest idea about what is going on, looks at me with amazement from the water’s edge. He sees me toppling bewildered about in circles – like a headless chicken, and he hears the screechy noises of torment that my trembling fistula voice produces. He also sees how I desperately try to support my left arm with the right, and suddenly he too realises what has happened.
Gloomy thoughts storm deafeningly through my head as I stagger across the distorted boulders along the riverbank. The situation is grave! We’re at Tree River, in the middle of nowhere right on the border of the bitterly cold Arctic Ocean, several hundred kilometres from the nearest hospital and totally cut off from the outside world. Granted, there is a hydroplane coming in tomorrow, but the remainder of our North-western Canada trip is in imminent danger.
The ill fate of an old friend lingers hauntingly on the edge of my consciousness. He suddenly found himself in need of surgery, when his shoulder was dislocated and all the muscle tissue cramped and locked the shoulder unwaveringly in place. It all ended in a painful operation that had serious consequences for his mobility.
