Follow-up on the arm…

I went to the hospital yesterday for a follow-up visit and xrays. After a near two hour wait (yay hospitals), the surgeon’s assistant came in and said that I would need to be in a cast for two more months. When I refused to accept this, she came back with the surgeon who checked my wrist and said that they’d put me in a removable splint, which I could take off for washing my hand, but I have to have it on at all other times, including while sleeping. I will still need to have this one for two more months though, because that’s the healing time the scaphoid needs. :| I cannot lift anything heavier than a fork during this period.

The surgeon was very cool and we went through my xrays and CT scans together where he explained all the breaks, and the diagnoses they made. The metal plates in my forearm are nearly 5″ long, one of which is sub-cutaneous and I can feel it through my skin. He said that they would take the plate our if it really bothered me, but it’d have to be in 18 months, which apparently is the actual time it takes for the bone to be fully healed. He asked me to work on range of motion withint he limits of the splint over the next few weeks.

I’m going to go see him again in a month, after which he said that they would start “weaning me off of the splint”.

I have a slightly bad update. I crashed a couple of hours ago a little distance from Destruction Bay in Canada. The front end of my bike started wobbling violently and I went down. Something was apparently wrong with the forks and they broke off. It was 100% not rider error and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

The bad news – I have a compound fracture in my left forearm where I broke two bones. The good news – that’s all that is wrong, and I was nearing the end of my adventure anyway. We were going to ride to Haines today and hang out for a couple of days to catch the ferry home.

As of now, we are waiting for a ride to a hospital in Whitehorse for xrays. If they can fix the arm there, that’d be good news. If I need surgery, I might need to fly to WA.

Anyway, please don’t freak out. Sarah and a few other riders are taking care of me and we will figure this out. Since I am in Canada, you cannot call me. I will try to send another update from Whitehorse when we know more.

Thanks for following this journey. It’s been a heck of an adventure so far. :)

I stayed home sick today because I felt like crap when I woke up. Amd going to stay home and rest up in the hopes that it goes away. Am welcoming the downtime in the wake of all the stress of the past few weeks. I also find myself able to relax in a way I never do during a vacation or weekend, seeing as I feel just sick enough that I don’t feel guilty about lying and doing nothing productive.

I got my bike back yesterday evening. The radiator leak is still a problem, but I reckon I should be okay to ride it five miles to work and back before I fix it. I bought a cheap pair of FirstGear gloves in men’s medium size, to wear the right one over my splint. I had to tape down the ends of the fingers with electrical tape to get them to fit somewhat okay.

I’m a little curious to see what it will feel like to ride after a two month hiatus and a high speed crash.

Surgeries…

The word is in. I tore the LCL in my right knee and need to get surgery. My right hand will likely need surgery too.

The damage…

I seem to have a boxers thumb, oh a boxer’s fracture on one hand and a skiers thumb on the other hand, neither of which are very painful but a little…seem to get in the way when I’m typing. Other than that, hobbling into work with a really badly injured knee and two bandaged hands, I looked like the poster child of why your mum told you never to ride a motorcycle ever.

I’m coping – The weekend wasn’t that good. I did get my hair done on Saturday which was nice – life never feels too bad when you’re having a good hair day. Went out to a barbecue at my manager’s manager’s house which was really nice. Made me wish I was a Microsoft millionaire too, although I’m glad I have simple needs so it wasn’t too bad.

Sunday was just pretty much sit around, try to watch all the TV shows I could. Didn’t do a whole lot, didn’t change out of my jammies. Glad that day was over! Today I’m back to work, looking forward to another gruelling week of pretending to be OK when I’m not. But just gettting through, it beats staying at home and getting bored to death.

I got the MRI done on Saturday so the doctor should probably get back to me about it this week. I’m really hoping it’s good news. as the knee’s still swollen, the swelling doesn’t seem to have gone down at all and it seems to be hurting more than it did last week. So, good to see what comes of it. I’d like to say this crash was an educational experience but I don’t know, I just want it to be over and want to get back on my bike. Bike’s going to cost less than 60 dollars to fix which is, I guess, a little bit of good news. So the bikes going to be fixed a lot earlier than I am. I wish it were the other way round. The weather’s good which sucks because I don’t want it to be good, I want it to be rainy and gloomy and really crappy to match my mood but that’s never how it works out, is it? Hope I don’t sound like too much of an idiot on this voice post. Most of you, I hope, can understand what I’m saying and hopefully someone will transcribe it. That’s all I got. I better go now.

My first crash…

So it appears that I had my first “track incident”. Yesterday I did my first trackday of the year with NESBA at Pacific Raceways. I had this whole LJ entry composed in my head about how I started off a bit slow, but steadily improved throughout the day until I was flying through the laps towards the latter sessions. Until the last session, which found me following a control rider through turn 9. I was following a bit closer than usual, as I’d  been told repeatedly in previous sessions that I needed to get my speed up and the control riders would never take you into a turn “too hot”.

Turns out that the red flag  went up mid-turn because of another incident on the track, the control rider saw it before me, and he abruptly slowed down and started toward the exit. Suddenly i found myself right on him and I braked instead of swerving to avoid a collission and went down. I’m not aure how fast I was going, but the bike was on me, and I remember sliding with it for a few seconds. I had the wind knocked out of me, like I’d been punched in the stomach and and my right leg really hurt.

The medics got my helmet, jacket and gloves off, and later my leather pants. I had massive bruising on my right knee and it hurt to even touch it or walk. They said that they didn’t see any immediate need to call for an ambulance, although I should certainly go to a hospital to get my leg looked at.

One other girl there followed me to the hospital and got me to the emergency room, which was a huge ordeal of rude, uncaring people, long waits, and cold rooms which had me shivering violently. They took xrays to determine the damage. The verdict was that the little finger on my left hand is fractured and would take about six weeks to heal. It’s in a splint now to prevent movement and although it doesn’t really hurt, is really restrictive. My right leg has no fracture, but I have massive bruisng and swelling, which I need to keep icing, and they say that it should be better in a few days. They said that the xray doesn’t reveal torn cartilages and if my leg is still hurting after a week, I might need to get surgery for the cartilages. I am really hoping that doesn’t happen. :(

So there it is – after 2 years of inicident free riding, it finally happened. I feel like a right idiot and am inevitably replaying the scene in my head a million times, thinking of “what-if”s. Mostly I feel like such an invalid. I’m not in pain when I’m stationary but it hurts like blazes to move, and I realize how every tiny action, like shutting a window, picking up a dropped fork, fetching an ice pack from the fridge require excruciating movement. I’m hoping and praying that it is over soon, and all worst case scenarios never come to pass. I hate being alone at times like this when it’s so hard to be independent.

Anyone want to come over and give me TLC? :(

(Oh, and this entire entry was typed with one hand.)