BROKEN LEG, in Vietnam! (Story w/ Past Continuous + 3rd Conditional)

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Transcript

Well, well, well, do I have a story for you. Do I have a story for your beautiful, sweet little ears.  I broke my leg. That's right.  I'll tell you all about how I broke my leg and tore my ACL ligament.  All in pre intermediate English. It's a great story. So, some storytelling today. I'll tell you all about the wonderful, and of course very humbling, life lessons I've learned.

And we'll practice some grammar, some third conditional sentences. For example, If I hadn't gone in for the ball, I wouldn't have broken my leg. Had  I not broken my leg, I would not have made a website in my free time. This third conditional, using if, is to talk about events in the past that cannot be changed.

So, people use it to talk about regret. Regret! Oh, had I not married him!  I'd still be happy. That's the thing. My favorite way to help you naturally pick up grammar is just to give you lots of examples of it, to expose you to it. Just like,  for example, my leg. My leg being exposed to my own teammate. On the football pitch.

My own teammate at the wrong time. That's right. The funny thing is, my leg was broken by a man on my own team. How, how ridiculous. 

Welcome back, everyone. Remember, we have worksheets and all Podcasts. All podcasts and all worksheets are all on one place.  www.simpleenglishlistening.com.  Visit simpleenglishlistening.com for free. Online Google quizzes of reading, writing vocabulary. Grammar exercises related to the podcasts that we do. 

And, if possible, in return for all these so many hours it takes me to create this free content for you, please, if you can, Interact, interact, subscribe, follow, review, leave a comment. You can review on Spotify, on Apple, give us out of five stars. And this helps the podcast grow,  which gives me a sense of reward.

A feeling of reward for helping everyone improve their English. On the website, you can even donate, if you like. Donate. No pressure, of course. A few pennies wouldn't help me pay for the podcast hosting and the website costs. Okay,  on with the story.  I broke my leg.  And I now have a new job.  I'm designing and running the website, making a new website for a hiking and travel company here in Vietnam.

And  I go to Canada and San Francisco.  For three, in three weeks. In three weeks to visit my family  with a broken leg. A broken leg! So I have no idea what to do about that.  I can't get my money back for the flights because I got the cheapest tickets that were like 2,000.  Down the toilet! 2,000. If I do not go  Or maybe I just go with my broken leg that turns red if I stand up for too long and looks like it's gonna explode. 

My flight is about, about eight weeks from the break.  Eight weeks from the injury. So maybe I'll be able to walk again.  But I mean, I'm going straight to San Francisco, the city of hills and hiking and bicycling.  But anyway, I have a plan. I have a really hilarious plan, actually. Uh, I'll tell you towards the end  of the podcast.

Okay, right, how did I break my leg? Here's the story.  So, I started playing football here in Hanoi in Vietnam.  Football. And I was loving it. It was the perfect form of exercise, because I like exercises where my mind can be kept busy, right? In football, there's strategy, there's technique that you can continuously improve at.

You can watch YouTube videos of how to pass, how to shoot better. I was enjoying my new exercise passion,  so I joined a team. My school team. I joined the team at my Korean school here in Vietnam.  All my students are Korean. I work at a Korean school, but in Vietnam. Uh, so,  yes, everyone's from South Korea.

There are many Koreans here, actually. Lots of Korean businesses and industry here in Vietnam. Samsung. KG, car manufacturers like Hyundai,  I am the teacher of their kids, basically.  So anyway, on my Korean school team in Vietnam, there are other 30 to 50 year old teachers. You know, some of them with grey hair, some of them with no hair,  some of them with bellies, like big stomachs, some of them with glasses.

Some of them smoking cigarettes at half time.  None of them taking the game seriously. You know, well, besides this one English guy who shouts at everyone, who's always red in the face, he's like, Come on, lads! Come on! He takes it seriously,  but he's the only one.  And if you miss the shot, he's like, Mate! Right at the goalie!

Yeah. Why'd you, why'd you do that? You know, but anyway, everyone else doesn't take it seriously. None of us professional athletes. We had played a few games, but this week, we were up against the fire fighters. Against the fire fighters. People who can, you know, carry oxygen tanks, 20 kilograms of gear. Up ladders, people who are trained to walk around burning buildings, in the fire for hours on end, searching for survivors, people who are trained to do that, us.

against them.  Uh, before I continue this story, before I continue it. Yeah. So if you could smash the like button, subscribe, leave a review, blah, blah, blah, help us grow. Right. Okay. So we were playing, we were playing and it was one, one somehow.  My teammate took another shot. The ball bounced off the goalie.

The ball was at the edge of the box. What a great chance to make it 2 1. There were no defenders. And I was about to make it 2 1, and I pulled my leg back, about to hammer the ball into the back of the net.  But  My teammate had the same idea.  I screamed,  MINE! And that's what we do in football, right? You shout for the ball, MINE!

And then suddenly,  Boom! I don't remember anything.  Suddenly, I was on the floor. Rolling around on the floor, holding my knee. Just like when you see football players rolling around on the floor in the World Cup.  But,  they pretend half the time. I was not pretending. Rolling around on the floor, arm over my face, in my pain.

And my pain was real, but it was a strange kind of pain. Like I hit my funny bone. You know the funny bone? Uh, so it's just like a weird kind of elastic kind of feeling. I hit, it's like hitting that, but times ten. Yeah, like times ten, the intensity. What happened is that my teammate kicked my knee.  Instead of the ball.

While I was balancing on one leg, I was balancing on one leg, And my teammate kicked that leg. Okay?  And, uh,  Well, had he not kicked my leg, I wouldn't have broken it.  Had I not screamed, MINE! And jumped in for the shot,  He wouldn't have accidentally kicked my leg. Oh, the regret.  The third conditional grammar point there.

Had I not screamed MINE and jumped in for the shot, acting like I had a 16 year old's body instead of a 37 year old's body. I wouldn't have broken my leg.  Anyways, also, guys, I'm using the past continuous verb tense so much telling this story. So also listen to the story again and notice how I'm using the past continuous tense.

We use the past continuous and the past simple together  to talk about actions that happen in the middle of doing a longer action.  For example, my teammate kicked my knee while I was balancing on one leg.  So, one action happening inside the time a longer action is happening. So in the time I was balancing on one leg, my knee was kicked. 

This is how we use the past continuous. We'll come back. To this grammar point in a future episode. So anyways, my team mate who kicked me,  he's a lovely man, a super sweet elementary school teacher, a Korean guy, he looked more shocked and surprised than I was.  The Vietnamese people we were playing with,  they ran over and they started massaging my knee, rubbing it, pulling it,  and by the looks of it trying to do some kind of Reiki or voodoo magic.

So my shocked,  PTSD shocked, Korean friend teacher, who kicked my leg,  helped me off the pitch. I remember I couldn't put any pressure on my foot. My foot was just floppy, uh, had no strength, zero strength, and it was dragging behind me. I could not stand on it. I  sat down on the bench. Then the adrenaline kicks in.

Yeah? Adrenaline injected into my veins. And I, a sudden crazy energy. Suddenly, I thought I was okay. I thought I could walk again. Yes, I could walk again. So I, I thought I could jog again. So I started to lightly jog. But then suddenly my knee felt like it went to the bottom of my leg. My kneecap felt like it bounced down and up, down and up my leg, like boing, boing, my kneecap.

And I fell down onto the floor, again.  Quickly, now, it started to swell up, to swell up. Means that it started to get bigger and bigger, my knee, like a balloon. Soon, it looked like an elephant's knee.  I went upstairs, hobbling on one leg.  Uh, I went upstairs to my office, using the elevator, of course, and I got ice from the freezer. 

Now it was getting big.  But, but, I had a meeting about this podcast  with some company in Mexico on Skype.  So, I did the meeting for 20 minutes. We laughed about my leg. I thought it was, it can't be that bad. I've never broken a bone before. Well, before that day.  After the meeting, I noticed I could hardly move my leg. 

I could barely move it. Now I went downstairs to get dinner, which is served at our school.  I had dinner, and I was hobbling. Hobbling means like, dragging one leg. Hobbling is like, verb. Like, walking like a zombie, yeah?  I was hobbling like a zombie, dragging a leg.  I  got to my bike, to my scooter,  to drive home.

And at this point, my leg was completely stiff.  Stiff. Adjective. I could not move it. At all. It was completely stiff. And I could not even put my leg onto the bottom part of my scooter. So it just, I just hung my leg off the side of my scooter.  I rode to the nearest hospital and drove my bike to the front,  but the man shouted at me to park my bike across the road.

So I was like, oh. So I parked my bike across the road in the parking, and I had to hop, hop, hop, hop on one leg. To hop means to jump on one leg. I had to hop across the road.  Busy road, there's a huge bus coming and I was hopping on one leg across the road, bikes everywhere  to get to the front door of the hospital. 

And finally, the same man who shouted at me to park my bike across, he runs outside with a wheelchair.  I get in, I get in the wheelchair. This hospital is a private hospital.  And the problem in Vietnam is that many private hospitals will tell you, you need Everything. X rays, CT scans, MRI scans, surgery.

Surgery, even if it's swollen.  Swollen means when it's very big and full of water and blood. So my knee was swollen, very much so.  Normally, you should not do surgery when something is too swollen. Because it can get infected. Infected. But at this Vietnamese private hospital, did they give a damn?  Because I had money. 

And that's what they wanted.  So maybe they don't care if my leg gets infected. Also, you can't do an MRI scan if it's too swollen. But they tried to make me do one anyways.  I refused, after doing research online, after talking to some friends. They said, Sir, you need surgery, ASAP, because you have a grade 3 ACL ligament tear.

This is the kind of injury that ends footballers careers.  They told me, I must have surgery tomorrow, they said.  I replied. Uh, okay, uh, give me the x ray result now, I think I'll go somewhere else now and get a second opinion.  In Vietnam, the best doctors work at the big, famous government hospitals. At these places you can become, you know, like a legendary doctor, and patients will pay you lots if you fix them.

And they're known for giving more honest advice, because they don't need your money, and they won't make money from x rays and CT scans. So, the second opinion, at the government hospital, was an old guy, with grey hair, with red eyes. And he looked like he had seen this a million times before. And it's good to have an older doctor.

If you have a doctor, yeah, for something important, make sure there's a few grey hairs on their head.  The classic saying, young doctors fill graveyards.  Anyway, at the government hospital, the older doctor said I only had a grade one ACL tear and that I don't need surgery. Surprise, surprise. And also that my leg was broken. 

They didn't, they didn't highlight that at the previous place. The previous hospital seemed to downplay the fact that My tibia bone was broken at the top.  So yay! Uh,  eight weeks before I have to fly to the USA in Canada. That's right, in eight weeks I have to fly.  Three weeks from this recording.  Well, I'll tell you about my plan for this trip to at the end of the podcast. 

So they put me in a plaster cast. My whole leg a plaster cast.  Well, sorry, I say cast. I'm from the south of England. A cast,  a plaster cast.  It's a pla God. What's wrong with my accent? I've been living abroad. A plaster cast is a big white hard cast they put on your leg, so you cannot move it.  This is another word from the worksheet.

Go on www.simpleenglishlistening.com and do the worksheet to learn these vocabulary words.  So, before they put me in the plaster cast, they had to drain the swelling because my leg was very, very, very big.  And so much blood came out. Actually, my, I couldn't look, but my girlfriend just looked at me and she was just like 'there's so much blood'.

There's so much blood is coming out and I was like, okay, okay stop, you know, no need to tell me  Tell me later, at least.  Anyway, so this government hospital is like a factory of fixing people. It's the main place people come in the north of Vietnam for serious things. For bike crashes, for big accidents. It has the most trusted surgeons and doctors for these big, important surgeries. 

I saw someone who looked like their genitals, like their dick and balls was just like, oh, maybe gone. Maybe, honestly, like it's just a big bloody bandage there and like watery blood coming out in like a, like a, I can't go into too much detail. I saw someone with half of their head. Uh, caved in, so their skull had like, uh, cracked, I guess, and their head was like, significantly pressed in. 

Looked like they had half a head, but they were alive, but uh,  yeah, they, not in good condition. Their wife was like, feeding them.  I saw someone, I think, with a bit of their brain, maybe, coming out.  It was like a big bandage. Like coming outwards on the side of their head. And they had like a kind of scar.

Kind of like Frankenstein kind of scar like on their forehead. It was an intense place because in Vietnam there's lots of accidents right accidents on the road really intense. This is a Viet Duc Hospital for those from Hanoi who are listening. Maybe you know, it would be a very difficult place to work to see that suffering every day. So my, honestly, my hat's off, my deep respect for the people who work there. 

Busy every day with these kinds of patients. I think you have to have a certain kind of personality to work at these places.  Uh, I mean, I think I would be too sensitive. I'm sure many people are, right?  My aunt is a nurse at these kinds of places. Yeah, I mean, she, I think it affected her. Permanently. I had to do an X-ray there, at a later day, and it took three hours.

Three hours of waiting in a super busy corridor, with no seats. Anyways, so they gave me two crutches. Crutches are the two metal things that help you walk. Yeah, when you've hurt your legs. Uh, you know, when someone's got a plaster cast, they've got two big metal  Instruments, in the metal things on the sides that they use to help them walk, crutches.

And there I was, the all new me,  uh, transformed. Optimus Prime would be proud. I'd stand next to Bumblebee, the new Transformer, half man, half metal machine, a big white plaster cast on my leg, two shiny new crutches to help me walk,  and at first, they were so difficult.  But you do quickly adjust to them. You quickly get used to these crutches.

Now I can go forwards on the crutches, I can go backwards on them. But I, I can do a few dance moves, but I can't quite do parkour, or do tricks on them. But some people can. I've seen it online. A man who does parkour on crutches. Amazing.  At the beginning, I could not get down the two flights of stairs at my apartment. 

I was running short of water. I had no food. I was trapped upstairs. I couldn't work.  I couldn't go to school, and my girlfriend lives a two hour flight away in Ho Chi Minh City. And I'm in Hanoi, stuck  at the top of my stairs.  But, luckily, luckily, she flew up. By surprise, she flew up from where she lives, in Ho Chi Minh City, two hours flight, and she helped me, for the first two weeks.

Something I deeply appreciate.  Made the, those two weeks much easier. Uh, the next thing, from recovering from a broken bone, the next thing is the physiotherapy.  Physiotherapy.  Physiotherapy. Means the exercises that you do To strengthen the muscles in that leg, so you can make a full recovery.  After six weeks in a cast, your, uh, your leg looks,  um, My leg started to look like an old man's leg.

It was skinny like a stick. Yeah,  it was like a stick leg, and much skinnier than my other leg, and the top, the, the muscle, my thigh muscle, it just turned into like, kind of a fatty, a fatty kind of tissue,  skin, oh, I didn't get much advice, I didn't get any advice for physiotherapy, because at the Vietnamese government hospital, it's, it's so busy.

That it's like a factory, yeah? Next, next, next. When I saw the doctor, there were four other people in the room with me. He saw my leg. Next, looks at the next person's wrist. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Next, looks at the next person's knee. Blah, blah, blah. Zero advice about  physiotherapy.  So this was something I had to learn about alone.

Online, I joined a community on Facebook with other sufferers of my kind of leg break. The leg break is a tibial plateau break, which is basically, you have two big bones in your leg, yes?  Put simply, your thigh bone.  The top one, and your calf bone, which goes from your knee to your foot.  It's the top of the calf bone that was cracked.

So I found a Facebook group of other sufferers of this specific kind of leg break, and I fully suggest it. Yeah, there's a great support network on Facebook for things like this. If you're suffering something alone,  know that with the internet And especially, of course, if you can speak English, because 55 percent of all of the internet is in English.

There are communities out there for every kind of problem, and you are never alone.  I've found lots of advice there, on YouTube videos of patients, as well as doctors and physiotherapists, sharing their best exercises to do.  The purpose of physiotherapy is to strengthen the leg, to strengthen it, to make it stronger so it is ready to walk again with your other leg without getting hurt once again.

So you strengthen the hurt leg. Luckily, by fortune, By the grace  of the Lord,  or whatever powers that be, my dear friend from Canada put me in touch with her relative, who is a knee specialist in Boston, in the USA. A well educated city, right?  You have Harvard and MIT there. Anyway, so he also gave me lots of advice, and he helped me through the recovery,  uh, anytime I had a question.

So now I'm doing the exercises that he suggested that I got from the internet, and from last week, I'm back at work! I had to stop working for about four weeks, but now I'm back.  I'm just sat in the corner of one class. They put me in, like, a Tristan's class. I have a microphone, because I can't stand up, right, to deal with the kids. 

And I have a little bell, ding ding ding a ling ding, to make the students shut the hell up  when they need to.  And I have a wheelchair, so now I'm the demon in the wheelchair, going around my school.  All that's missing is a red eyes and white hair  in my wheelchair for the, for the perfect look.  Well, my hair's turning grey,  but not white quite yet. 

When it is white, I'll give you an episode about that. Okay, so the lessons learned. What did I learn in this experience? I have a whole new respect for people who have to live with one leg or one arm.  That's for sure. It's so hard to adjust at first. The first two weeks with my crutches was so difficult that honestly,  I nearly cried.

I nearly cried once on the second day, because I just couldn't do anything. Couldn't shower, couldn't go to the toile couldn't go to the toilet, without  taking off all of my clothes.  But you do get used to, uh, to this new lifestyle. But of course, life is never the same. And I was thinking, you know, it's a mental game.

I was thinking, what if I never recover?  What if I can never play football again?  What if I can never do this again? Never do that again?  I mean, there are so many things you can do in life that, you know, there's always opportunities. New doors are opening every time others are closing. I mean, it's a small break, so to be honest, like, I will get better.

I will, I, I mean, statistically, I should. Be completely alright again. And of course, thank the universe, thank God. Whatever it is you believe, I'm so lucky that I will recover again. What about those young boys from, you know, Ukraine and Russia  who just have their legs blown off forever, or no legs? I mean, with everything, it can, it can be worse, of course, right? 

It's a humbling experience, and actually, I would say it's an important experience.  It's an important experience  to really get hurt  at some point  and recover, of course. Well, they say, right, there's the classic idiom, not really an idiom, the classic saying,  uh, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger in the end. 

I'm sure many of you have experienced that in your lives.  Next, I have a new job. I'm making a website for a hiking and travel company.  My first ever go, try, at making a website. Yeah, for an, like, e commerce website. So that's exciting, because maybe this is my new career direction. So, I did have plans of doing two podcasts per month.

Remember two months ago I said, Everyone, there'll be two podcasts a month. But, that's on hold. You must remember this is a passion project of mine. It's like a hobby, right? And it's a rewarding one. I'm receiving quite a lot of comments and fan mail and people saying to me How much this podcast has helped them learn English.

It's really inspiring to receive these kinds of messages But anyway, my point is it will still be one podcast one podcast per month and one worksheet A month. Okay on the website. So that's the plan for I don't know how long for. But yeah, on the first day of every month, you'll get both of those things.

And remember, the worksheet's got reading, writing, vocabulary, and grammar practice. Okay? That is linked to the podcast topic. So the crazy thing is that I'm going to San Francisco, yeah? And Canada in three weeks with a broken leg. What? I was planning to see the great, big, majestic redwood trees. Well, some of the biggest trees in the world.

The Golden Gate Bridge.  What am I going to do with a broken leg? These are really expensive flights from Hanoi. It's not often I'm able to see my family in Montreal and Toronto on the other side of the world, because obviously it's too pricey and the time difference messes you up. It's exactly 12 hours in the past.

So it's like the, it's the, it's the worst time difference that exists, basically.  It takes me, like, two weeks to adjust both ways. Anyway, I can't get the money back for my flights, because I got the cheapest flights. Typical of me. So,  will I go with two crutches and a broken leg?  Maybe they'll give me an upgrade.

Mmm, an upgrade to business class. Mm mm, don't mind if I do.  Or I'll postpone it to fly a bit later.  That costs eight hundred and ten dollars, American, to postpone the flight to a later date. So,  I don't know.  What do I do?  And then, I had an idea. I had an amazing idea. America is the land of the free. But also, of the very, very, very big, gigantic people.

Some people there,  slightly smaller than a house. Right? That's the truth, unfortunately. So I rented a mobility scooter for my time in San Francisco, a mobility scooter, which is a small scooter for a disabled person, and you don't need a license  because it counts as a pedestrian. I rang them first and I asked, yeah, I got the idea because I watched a show and one of the characters, his whole family.

Is, uh, is on these mobility scooters, like American Family. It's like a thing over there. So I rang them, and I, and I asked, Can the mobility scooter go across the Golden Gate Bridge, uh, to the Redwood Trees? And back to Pacific Heights, which will be my neighborhood. Can it do this trip? And they were like, yeah, if it's fully charged, you know, you can do it.

So, there we go. I'll try and take some pictures and show them on one of the social media platforms. Third conditional. Had I not broken my leg. I would not be able to enjoy the mobility scooter. So, there we go. If anyone out there lives in San Francisco, I'll be there from the 7th of July to the 12th of July. 

And, uh, I know many listeners are actually American. People who live in America learning English. Uh, feel free to get in contact, and we can have a coffee, see something, might be fun.  Still, when I stand up, the the foot on my injured leg turns red.  Turns red because of all the blood going down into it. Oh, imagine flying with that. 

What happens if my foot just explodes on the airplane.  Or opens like a sausage being barbecued. We'll soon see, eh? Anyways, lots of love, guys.  As always, this has been a real pleasure. See you next time. I'll let you know how my traveling goes. In, uh, the episode after the next one. The next episode is already recorded.

It's an interview with a dear friend of mine, here in Hanoi. He is like an explorer, and he goes to small villages, and, uh, ethnic communities in Vietnam, and learns about their culture, and all of this. And he's very much into ancient mysteries, and UFOs and these kinds of things. So I'll chat a bit about that, which is something that excites me.

There's a small chance I won't be able to do an episode next month if I don't have time. Because I'm leaving my microphone and all of my stuff here. In Vietnam. I'm not going to take it with me to San Francisco. So yeah, so, if I, if, forgive me, forgive me, if I'm unable to do an episode on the 1st of August. 

See you guys, take care, and have an amazing month full of joy and blessings, and I hope you all make the most of it.