David Gillon

 I'm doing slightly better with sleeping this week, but still sleep-deprived to the point of being a shambling bundle of "SLEEP NOW!" when it catches up with me. So I'm not quite sure if this happened on going to bed (9PM-ish), in the middle of the night, or when I woke up at c4AM.

Whenever it was, I needed to go to the bathroom. My bed to the door of the bedroom is two to three paces, as I got to the door, my right knee collapsed under me. Not went a bit floppy, there was zero support from that leg, so I went down sideways like I'd tried to put weight on a leg that wasn't there anymore. I grabbed the doorpost with my right arm, and I must have been falling backwards, which turned it into a swing around through a whole 180 degrees towards the bookcase that's just inside the doorway.

I had time to think "This is going to hurt", and I was right, I took the edge of a bookshelf across both kidneys, I won't be surprised to find a bruise there, and I hit hard enough I was worried I was going to bring the whole thing down atop of me. Fortunately/unfortunately the thing is incredibly heavy, so didn't move, but nor was there any give in it.

Let's just say I sat there for several minutes before I could think of moving. I vaguely remember crawling through to the bathroom, I presume I crawled back to bed.

And this morning my bloody right knee is working fine. "Wot? Who? Me, guv? You got the wrong fella!".

I've paced it out, I have to have taken at least one pace on my right leg before it collapsed on the second one. Why?!?

I leant back in my desk chair last night, there was a sudden crack,  and I kept on going backwards and to the right -  which probably wouldn't have stopped until my head hit the bookcase. I managed to stop myself with a frantic grab onto the left arm of the chair, but had to lunge so hard I hurt my neck/left shoulder and wrist. Weirdly the neck and shoulder felt like I compressed something, but the wrist like I'd over-extended it.

Climbing out without going over backwards again was somewhat of an adventure, I basically had to climb out of the left corner of the chair, which necessitated a death-grip on the edge of my desk to get sufficient leverage.

On looking at the chair it's tilted about 15 degrees right and 20+ back. And on getting under it, it's obvious why. The stamped plate that links the hydraulic cylinder to the base was stamped into a dome around the hole the cylinder fits into, and it's fatigue-cracked around about 180 degrees of the base of the dome and would undoubtedly have gone further if I hadn't stopped myself.

I felt pretty sore and shaky afterwards and ended up going to bed and sleeping for the better part of six hours, waking up for about three hours, then sleeping for six more. And I feel okay this morning, my hips and low back aren't happy, but that's probably because I was due to change my butec patch last night and it didn't happen.

I have another chair base lying around and I suppose there's an off-chance the bolt holes might be compatible, but realistically it's probably for the tip.

Bugger!