My mind traces back to a football encounter against Marcellin College in the winter of 1975. It was a sunny, but chilly morning, and a strong wind kept all of the play at one end of the oval.
In the midst of a scrambling pack of players, a teammate reared sharply backwards with the ball. It caught me totally by surprise and the back of his skull crashed into my right eyebrow. I knew immediately that it was a decent whack, and I expected a swollen and blackened eye. But before I had even lost my dizziness, my eye was almost completely closed over.
I had only played for ten minutes and I had to sit out the rest of the game on the bench. It had been a long bus trip for two touches of the football.

Again the bruising was excessive and extraordinarily long lasting. This would suggest that the leukaemic cells were already present, and in high numbers. Under their dominance, the number of platelets in my blood had dwindled significantly. They were no longer effective.
I sat in silence on the bus trip home.
"How'd you go?" was the question my brother Dale asked, before his view was focussed on my face.
"Didn't last long!" I muttered, as I dodged past his fits of laughter, towards any mirror I could find, and a couple of aspirins.
The lounge room mirror shocked me. Sometimes a black eye can add a bit of character, but this one definitely did not. Throughout the afternoon, a stream of blood meandered across the white of my eye, and it was several weeks before the last yellowish remnants drained away.
Injuries which occur in such a sport have to be accepted and overcome.

A bruised eye is a relatively minor injury and under normal circumstances is readily forgotten. Get on with it.

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