Staples to Stitches

After tediously surfing my heats all last week with 8 staples in my head I arrived on the North shore in time to finally take them out. After two days of surfing really fun waves over here, I paddled out at pipe yesterday morning. It was solid 8-10 feet. Everyone was going left, so I dodged wash-through sets and picked up a few backdoor waves. I had two fun ones as well as a few pretty meager lefts. It started to rain and I decided to get one in. A big peaky backdoor one came and I was right in the spot for it. As I bottom turned around the white water the wave caught my inside rail and I belly flopped half way up the face. The wave proceeded to suck me up to the lip and then toss me out into the flats. Instead of landing on water, I went through what felt like 1 foot of water and slammed straight onto reef catching my fall with my left foot. My ankle and knee went semi numb while I was at victim to the wave dragging me across the reef. I hurried to make sure my ankle wasn't broken, but noticed a few pretty nice gashes in it. Sure enough I went to the ER and got 4 stitches in one of them and left looking like a mummy. I was planning on wrapping it with duct tape today and surfing but I could barely walk this morning due to hitting my ankle so hard...