I may not have mentioned that I had been riding my bike or walking to work (during inclimate weather - read fucking BLIZZARDS) since I got the job back in November of '07. Mind you that work is only 4.5 km (2.75 miles) from home and took 20 minutes by bike on days without snow drifts.
Snow drifts = evil fucking city doesn't clear the side walks because sane people don't use them when it snows! On those days depending on the depth of said snow drift (with the added pleasure of heaping snow on the sidewalk from plowing the roads) it could take anywhere from 1.5 hours to 3 hours to walk there. And yes I did this 3 times that first year.
I'm sure you're sitting there wondering why I would do such a thing. Well techniclly the city I live in and the city I work in are 2 different cities and the line ends abruptly in the middle of a very steep "V" shaped bridge therefore the bus from my home city to my work city does not run across said line. A cab would cost me $12 one way (here's another pickle for you - the cab company from my home city will drop me off in my work city but will not pick me up there!)
Now I make a petty sum and my shifts run anywhere from 4 hours to 8 hours normally, it would take me 3 hours of work to make the round trip cab fair (you do the math). It really wasn't that bad even during the blizzards, I only cried during the last half hour of the last one.
Any-who back to my accident. I had just left work for the day a Sunday no less on the weekend Dash is away so he's just started his 4 hour trek back from Ottawa at the same time I head home. It was of him I was thinking as I got to the verge of that steep "V" shaped hill, crossing the last residential street for the next 10 minutes. The sidewalk that takes up on the other side has a nice 90 degree curve before the hill actually begins, on a busy thoroughfare.
The front tire goes off the sidewalk into the grass and along the curb, my body continues on a straight if airborne line. I'm not clear on the blow-by-blow but I think the back tire kicked up behind me launching my flight. What I do remember is that I became entangled in the bike at some point before stopping my forward momentum with my face. When I try to reconcile the physics with the aftermath I still don't understand how I ended up with the injury that debilitated me.
I felt my nose go up towards my forehead and my lip go down towards my chin and feeling the sand paper like cement along my right eye. The same sensation traveling through both palms of my hands and the pressure of my weight upon my knees. Eyes closed I begin to take stock in my mind of possible breaks and hurts, but I really can't feel much - adrenaline is a curious thing.
I start thinking about getting up slowly and it felt...
...you won't believe and I doubt I'll do it justice with words but ...
...it felt like my soul got up a full 10 seconds before the rest of me, like I was standing there with my hands on my knees looking at my body and yet unable to see it because I was standing there not laying there. Without actually feeling it my body did what my soul had done 10 seconds before. I remember thinking "I know I hit my head but it wasn't a solid blow and nothing hard enough to kill me so I'm not dead".
Once I'm up I start to notice that 2 vehicles have pulled over and 3 women have spewed out onto the roadside. I believe they were asking after my well-being but it was strangely silent, even the passing cars made no shoosh as they drove on by. I'm to busy taking inventory once more and still feeling nothing as I watch blood drip off my face and onto the sidewalk. I was sort of transfixed by those droplets and the pattern they made as they splattered to earth. And noticing that before I got up my head was even with the curb. Another 5 feet and I'd have been in traffic.
I remember telling the nice blonde lady that it looked worse than it felt while the other 2 women got Kleenex out of their car and one of them handing me a phone. Having left my own at home that day. The one day I forgot it, stupid how shit always seems to happen like that. I don't need my phone often nor use it often but the one time you need it you don't have it.
These women are asking if I need a ride to the hospital and I'm picking up the blasted bike and telling them I think I'll just walk home. That must not have been the case though because I hand the bike to the blonde lady who puts it in her jeep and I got into the passenger side and start to laugh.
Mumbling alll the way home and thanking her for her kindness. The blonde lady telling me her frantic story about having to drive to far until she could turn around because of the recently installed median. Saying she's scared because it'll take to long and I start to wonder how bad this little accident really looked because to tell by her voice and nervousness she thought I was dead or dying while she tried to get back to me.
In this day where most people are happily self-centered and willfully blind it is nice to know that there are still kind people in the world!
So I put the bike away, climb the stairs to the couch and lie down because the shakes have started. My daughter bless her has climbed the rest of the stairs and come back with alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, q-tips and band-aids and is cleaning me up (she's 13). Amazing creature I don't think I had a lot to do with the absolute wonderfulness that is my little Ladybug, but I love her! I lie there for an hour and the pain that wasn't has become mild throbbing, so I decide I'm hungry and get up to make it and something gives in my right knee. It felt like a fracture losing it's tenuous hold.
The pain is agonizing so I try to do that mind over matter thing as I watch (and this is no exaggeration) my knee slowly bloom into a cantaloupe sized ball just off to the left of the knee cap. I'm groaning and crying, my dad calls and is talking to my daughter who begin to joke that I'm being dramatic and causing my own pain while I search in vain for a position that doesn't hurt. At this point I deign it necessary to call Dash and request he hurry along. I don't know how he did it but he made a 3 hour trip into 1.5 hours.
I managed to find the place with no pain once we make it to the ER the Triage nurse asks me on a scale of 1 - 10 how bad the pain is and when I say zero she calls me a liar. This after giving me a lecture on the example I'm setting for my daughter by not wearing a helmet and it's always the second question everyone asks when I tell this story the first being, was a riding a motorcycle or a a bicycle?
I've come to believe the X-ray room was devised as a torture chamber for anyone stupid enough to be doing anything that might break a bone. Nothing broken so they wrap it and prescribe percocet for the pain. I'm happy and scared all at the same time, knee injuries are serious business aside from the fact that the Doc says no work for 2 weeks. This is a big problem in more ways than one - money first and at the time I was the only one with open availability so the boss had no one to cover and I'm blubbering about how I'm going to fix that, while my 2 dearly loved ones keep telling me now is not the time to think of others. Might as well ask me not to breath.
I spent the next 10 day sleeping on a mattress on my living room floor which was central to the bathroom, kitchen and TV. High on percs and bored as hell, daytime TV sucks. There are 4 staircases in my townhouse and I couldn't possibly negotiate those.
I did manage to go back to work after that but there were certain things I couldn't do and some I had to do sitting on the floor. After 4 days I went to see my family doctor who informed me that the Bursa (bag of fluid behind the knee) was filled with blood and he could A.) stick a needle in it and drain the fluid - which if not wrapped tightly and always for the next 30 days refill or B.) leave it alone and let it reabsorb naturally.
What kind of choices are these? I opted for natural and he prescribed more percs. How do people work on these? I put those on my nightstand and took Tylenol 1 with codine to get through the day and the percs so I could sleep. I am a stomach sleeper so imagine not being able to do that.
Now came the new problem - I can't ride my bike because my knee is sort of stuck at a 90 degree angle if I want no pain and a cab will cost $24 round trip everyday for 20 day that's @ $480 almost more than the measly bi-weekly paycheck.
Pictures to frighten and amaze - these were taken after the 10 days
And that would be the beginning of story 2 - Blubell
