AS entertainment choices go, selecting television show Walking Dead to kill time while stuck in hospital is somewhat apt given Graeme Armstrong’s fragile condition after sustaining a serious abdominal injury.

The Darlington striker has spent just over two weeks at the Freeman in Newcastle waiting for an operation after sustaining an injury which left him in excruciating pain and unable to breathe following a heavy challenge in the dying seconds of a 2-0 play-off final win.

He’d been flattened by the Bamber Bridge goalkeeper, against whom he’d earlier scored his 26th goal of a terrific season for the former Whitby Town forward.

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But he left the pitch in agony, unable to take part in the celebrations that followed after coming off second best when colliding head on with Lee Dovey. An innocuous challenge, says Quakers’ magnanimous forward, though Dovey was sent off.

After initial x-rays failed to detect the cause of his pain, Armstrong returned to hospital three days later – “I hadn’t been able to eat, I’d been vomiting and I’d not slept well” – and today he will undergo an eight-hour operation to repair his split pancreas.

Half of the organ will be removed, he’ll be anaesthetised throughout and a possible implication is that he could become diabetic.

Yet Armstrong has no doubts about continuing to play football or curbing his physical style of play and aims to return in time for next season.

“The thought of not playing again has never even crossed my mind,” says Armstrong, speaking from his ward at the Freeman where some of his team-mates have visited this week, and manager Martin Gray also made the trip north a fortnight ago.

“It’s my nature, it’s the way I play. Every time it goes through my mind I ask myself why did I go in for that challenge, but I wasn’t going to pull out. I’ve watched it back and it looks innocuous, a freak incident.

“The amount of times I’ve clashed with goalkeepers, but this time he happened to hit me at a certain angle and pushed my pancreas into my spine and split it in two.”

An injury not regularly sustained by footballers, Armstrong can consider himself unfortunate.

He had to miss Darlington’s end of season awards evening, while pupils at Queen Elizabeth High School in Hexham are missing their PE teacher.

“It’s a common injury when people fall off bikes because the handlebars go into that part of the body. Apparently the pancreas is very spongy so it doesn’t take much to split,” added Armstrong, who is wired up to an infusion machine which stops enzymes being released into his body.

“I’ve learned a lot about it from speaking to the doctors. The biggest worry I’ve had is the chance of becoming diabetic, but I’ve been told that the risk of that happening is low. Obviously that’s good and I shouldn’t have any long-term implications on my health.

“Once I’ve had the operation I’ll be in for another seven to ten days, and hopefully the recovery can begin after that.

“I’ll be able to start training again in mid to late June, some light jogging and then playing football by the middle of July the doctor reckons, so I’ll be playing in the pre-season friendlies. That’s as long as the operation goes well on Thursday.

“It’s going to be a long operation, but a lot of the time I won’t actually be operated on.

“For part of it they’ll take half of the pancreas away and operate on it at the Centre for Life in Newcastle and take out these things called islets which produce insulin, they’ll harness those and then bring them back to me while I’m still under general anaesthetic and inject them into my liver which will produce insulin for the rest of my body.

“So I’ll be under anaesthetic for eight hours, but for three of the hours nothing will be getting done to me.”

Armstrong says his employers have been supportive, while he’s appreciative of the well wishes he’s received from Quakers fans.

“I’ve been getting more apprehensive as the day’s drawn closer,” added the 31-year-old, whose partner Alison visits him every day from their home in Newcastle.

“I’ve never had an operation before, I’ve never even needed to be in a hospital, so it’s all quite new to me. But it’s got to be done, and the doctors and nurses at the hospital are fantastic.

“I’m watching films on my laptop or reading, that’s basically it. I’m working through season five of the Walking Dead. I started on four and then downloaded series five to watch this week.

“It’s difficult because of my lifestyle, being a PE teacher and playing football, now having to sit and do nothing. It’s frustrating and boredom sets in. I had a few lads come in on Tuesday and Martin’s been in. The club’s been fantastic, really supportive and so have the fans.

“I’ve not had the chance to say thank you to them, but I’ve had so many good luck messages and I’d like to apologise to them because I can’t message them all back, but it’s massively appreciated how supportive they’ve been so I want to say thank you.”

He remains upbeat, focused on returning to action, and compares himself to stricken team-mate Amar Purewal, who suffered a cruciate knee injury in December.

“You could drive yourself crazy thinking that I should’ve pulled out of the challenge. But it’s done now, just got to get the operation done and get sorted.

“If you look at Amar, he’s going to be out for something like eight-nine months, so doing something like that would’ve made it hard to get back.

“If this had to happen then it’s happened at the best time possible, right at the end of the season so hopefully I won’t miss any games.”

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