My 47th Year of Life Can Suck It...

About the only thing that is regular on this site is the irregularity in which I post.  I have been chastised recently by a couple of cycling friends that I don't post on here anymore.  Time and life has interrupted my ability to blog about the trivial shit in my life.  Besides, after the stuff we went through with The Boy, my blog seemed kind of silly.  I mean, there are a LOT more important things out there than me whining about my most recent ride or people in yoga pants walking on the bike path.  But I guess there are people that find my ramblings a way to escape or possibly make themselves feel better about their lot in life.  What ever the case may be, here we are.  I won't promise that I'll be more regular with this, but I'll try.  And no, despite today's date, this is NOT an April Fools joke.

I'll try to be as succint as I can about the crap that has transpired in the last (almost) year with me.  A lot of you know, but maybe not all the details.  Some of you have heard more about it than you want to.   Here we go:

Back at the end of May of 2018, which just happened to be my birthday, we had our BHMBA mixer.

After seeing this snake I should have gone home.

As was tradition, we had a group pre-ride planned for the trails on Skyline, with me leading the ride.  Usually these rides encompass a large variety of skills, so I had planned on a ride geared towards all levels.  When only one person showed up, my cousin A2 (which turned out to be a VERY good thing), it changed everything.  We were able to ride whatever and however we wanted, which ended up being a mistake.

Long story short, as we were coming around a corner I have ridden literally 100 times, the front of my bike washed out and I went down. HARD.  So hard in fact, I didn't know what end was up for a few moments.  I couldn't breathe very well and the right side of my chest was hurting bad. I couldn't even ride my bike out of there.  When I tried to get on to coast downhill, I almost passed out.  I tried to call my Lovely, but she was in an appointment, so I couldn't reach her.  A2 called his father, my uncle, and summoned a ride for us.  I hobbled for about a 1/2 mile uphill while A2 pushed our bikes to meet our ride.  Immediately we went to Urgent Care.

My Lovely and The Boy met us at UC and my uncle and A2 were relieved of their duties.  Some X-rays and a quick review of my condition was what the Dr. at UC needed to let me know I was far more than they could handle.  They called ahead to the ER and told me I needed to go there ASAP.  As we left I called an audible and swung by the house for a quick, albeit painful, shower and clothing change.

At the ER we had more scans, blood draws, etc. to find out that I had broken 7, yes that is SEVEN, ribs

Not the birthday present i was hoping for.

and partially collapsed my lung and that they would be keeping me at least overnight to watch my condition.  If the lung got any worse, they would have to insert a chest tube.  No thanks.  The surgeon that consulted with us told me that if I kept moving around and exercising my lung that it would probably heal itself and I wouldn't need the chest tube.  So that's what I did.  I kept walking around the halls of the hospital until I was released the next day.  Happy birthday to me!

Sleeping was a joke for the first few weeks.  Finding a comfortable way to lay down was almost impossible, but things were slowly getting better.  About 3 weeks after the crash I got back on my road bike for some super easy commuting.  It took almost 2 full months before I was back on my mountain bike in a real way.

A good autumn of riding!

Let's fast forward to November.  I got a decent autumn of riding in and was feeling pretty good.  Any pain in my chest was basically gone and it was time to start working out again.  I started my usual winter weight lifting routine, but with much lighter weights and I was easing back into it.  I only did one set the first week, two sets the second week and the third week I did three sets, which is where everything went all pear shaped.  The day after my first "3 set workout" my right arm was kind of tight.  "I didn't think I worked out that hard yesterday," I thought to myself.  The next day my arm was slightly swollen up.  "Huh.  That's weird." I mused.  By the third day, which was a Saturday, it was even more swollen and I had a tender spot in my armpit.  After the weekend was over my arm was swollen to the point of starting to look a little bit like the old Alley Oop cartoons.  Obviously I called the doctor, and I got in the next day (which ended up being more than a week after I worked out).

Looks like I could club you with this arm, doesn't it?

After a quick rundown by the doc, I was sent for an ultrasound.  Even though I might look like it, no,  I'm not having a baby.  After a kind of rough session of getting my arm mashed with that ultrasound wand, I find out I have a fucking blood clot from my elbow up past my shoulder.  And no, that's not where it moved, that's how freaking long it was! Immediately I was put on the blood thinner Eliquis (which is insanely expensive, like $600 per month without insurance) to eliminate the clot.  A couple weeks later I had a follow-up visit at the doctor's office.  We discussed that I would be on Eliquis until the first of April when we would make sure the clot was gone and then most likely do a flow test to see if a rib from the crash last May was impeding the flow from that vein.  If it is, I will have to have a little surgery to cut some rib out to make room for that vein! Also, I was given the green light to go back to working out, riding my road bike (no MTB) and doing the things I like to do in the winter,  BUT WITH EXTREME CAUTION (you can read about some of the dangers of riding on blood thinners in my letter to Lennard Zinn on VeloNews.com here, here and here).  One of the dangers of being on a blood thinner is a head injury, which is an important point for the remainder of my story.  A hard blow to the head could cause a brain bleed that could end the need for blood thinners or anything else for that matter.

But, do you think I could listen to the doctor?  Nah.  That wouldn't be my style.  Sounds like a good time to go to Terry Peak for some snowboarding! What could go wrong?  A few small crashes here and there were no big deal and after a few times of going, I was feeling good about things.  Do you note the feeling of impending doom yet?  Riding on a Monday with my snowboard buddy and long time brother in crime Cleaver, once again everything was awesome until it wasn't (as Cleaver eloquently put it).  We were flying down a run in excess of 45 mph (so says Strava), when the next thing I knew there were two ski patrollers standing over me.  Another long story short, I went down somewhere in there, again HARD (seeing a pattern here?) and was knocked unconsious long enough for Cleaver to get stopped, run back up to me, call the Terry Peak office and say we need ski patrol to come to me, and ski patrol to get to me, somewhere between 5-10 minutes.  A patrol toboggan ride to the lodge for a quick cognitive test was in order before I was released.

Cleaver then drove me back to NSS HQ, to the doctor's office, and to get more X-rays.  My head ended up being OK, although I clearly don't know what is up there to hurt anyhow.  I severely hurt my ribs, on the same side AGAIN, which is the reason for the X-rays.  Nothing was broken/rebroken, but I have massive trauma that included many torn muscles in the area to the point of having areas of numbness.  Once again laying down and sleeping was a bear and actually this injury hurt far worse than the broken ribs, although the broken ribs probably played a part in this injury, as things in that area were already weakened.

Closing day!

Finally, I am healing up from this.  I got to go up to Terry Peak for closing day yesterday, which was my first time back there in about 7 weeks.  I'm back on my road bike, and although I'm sucking wind hard right now, riding is actually making my injury feel better.  And last, but not least, I go back to the doctor tomorrow for my follow-up.  Hopefully I can get off of the Eliquis and get the rib and blood clot thing taken care of once and for all.

I am less than two months away from completing another lap around the sun, which I am looking forward to.  This 47th one can suck it.  This year has been shit and I am looking forward to the next one being FAR better.  It has to be, I have no where to go but up.