Sidenote: Entirely for my own purposes, I imagined discomfort and pain as two separate, but conjoined scales. First is discomfort, which ranges from 1 to 10. After a level 10 discomfort, it graduates to level 1 pain, ramping up to the worst possible level 10 pain. To those who wonder why I don't just collapse the scales in to the industry accepted chart, I answer "This one goes to eleven."
Pain Level: 6-8, but tempered by Norco 5/325.Discomfort Level: 10
Attire: Workout shorts and a sling.
Sleeping: Recliner
Nutrition: Very little
Mobility: Very low
Physical Therapy: None
I don't remember Sunday. I imagine that day was spent (by my wife) arranging the living room for an extended stay, including getting power out to the recliner for my phone, a TV tray set up nearby and within reach for my meals, books, remote control, and various flotsam.
It may have been on Sunday, or it may have been Saturday night, but my 5 year old decided to run his bike into the garage door and fall over. He got up and proclaimed to my wife that he'd broken his collar bone, too. He did not, he just wanted to be just like Daddy...
On Monday following The Event, we got in to see an Orthopedic surgeon.
First, however, we had to drive all the way back to the hospital ER I was originally admitted to. It was about a 45 minute drive which isn't too bad in the grand scheme of things, but when your Ortho is 10 minutes from home, and you have to spend 2 hours or more in the car to get there and back including traffic and wait time, it's a problem. So, the lesson is, get the X-Rays on CD before you leave the ER, just in case your Ortho and the ER can't electronically communicate like mine couldn't.
So, we made the drive. He reviewed the X-Rays and determined that I wasn't a candidate for surgery. There wasn't enough displacement between the two halves of the bone, and his opinion was that I had a 95% chance to heal naturally if I took care of it properly. Surgery would have been unnecessary and would introduce risks that just weren't worth it.
It's difficult to express the level of disappointment I felt. I'd been training very hard for months in order to take part in my "A" event in Colorado - The Copper Triangle, and I had to come to terms with the fact that I wouldn't be riding that, or anything, anytime soon. I left his office committed to getting a second opinion that led to surgery, but by the next morning, had come around to his way of thinking. The risks just weren't worth it, and there'd be no guarantee that surgery would have gotten me back on the bike too much sooner anyway. Well... it probably would have, but again with the risks. Honestly, I think I was just too uncomfortable and exhausted physically to mentally deal with the effort of getting that second opinion. I really did not want to leave the house again unless I absolutely had to. I was full on Protect The Shoulder mode.
I lived in a recliner for the entire week, and basically had assistance with everything, aside from bathroom visits. Fortunately, I was able to accomplish that on my own. Showering was ridiculously painful and difficult because we didn't have an extra sling. I self-supported the arm, and didn't to a great job of it.
Throughout the week, when I moved my right arm in a very specific way I experienced a stabbing pain in my right side, right at the bottom tip of the latissimus dorsi. This was weird b/c it was my left side that took the hit.
Now and again, a small vertical strip in my left deltoid would seize and cramp painfully. Unfortunately, I just had to wait it out because I couldn't move my arm to relieve it.
We changed the bandages above my elbow daily, and it was a bit of an ordeal because I had to raise my arm to get the bandage underneath. That felt far less than stellar. The old bandages were pretty stained every day, and we were on high alert for infection. It was a filthy dirty wound.
My wife, by the way, was a superstar through all this.
I ate very little because I was still motivated to get down to my mountain climbing weight (~77kg), and because eating was uncomfortable and inconvenient.
A highlight of the week was receiving a package in the mail. In the package was a set of training wheels that my Brother and Father ordered for me. That gave me a very much needed laugh.
<-- The Event | Series | Week Two -->
No comments:
Post a Comment