The Crash and The Journey Back

It's funny how every January, just about every human decides on resolutions or goals for the upcoming year.  Like many others, I too had selected my 2018 goals.  It was to ride a century (that's riding 100 miles on bike, for the non-riding readers) and both days of the Shenandoah Fall Foliage Tour with my long ride being on Sunday and possibly as long as a Century.  I worked hard last winter riding Zwift or going outside and riding an hour per ride (on weeknights; longer rides on the weekends).  I spent a lot of time cruising the roads near my house and riding up and down hills.  I was having a good spring, setting PR's on segments on Strava and thoroughly enjoying my abilities.  I had ridden almost 1200 miles between January and April and had built a pretty good base fitness for road rides. I had previously ridden a century back in 2013 - Backroads Century - Berryville Edition .  It was a blast and beautiful roads.  There is just something abo...

I have some very good friends.  Amy K. and Sunny K. were my coworkers in the AR Dept at CRMH.  We had an absolute blast in that department.  I truly miss them!    Amy had come to see me early in my stay and brought a bag of my favorite snacks along with a gift card for my parents.  Sunny finished up her nursing shift one night then came and sat with me a while.  The 2nd night Sunny and Eric (her husband also a nurse) came by to visit I was asleep so I awoke to find Kermit and a balloon.  Kermit has become a daily part of my life.  If you've seen my Facebook page, you've seen it.  The balloon became the "blocker" for the unit of blood that I would get on Friday. The downfall of two major orthopedic surgeries in the span of three weeks plus blood thinners and blood loss in the OR was causing me to become anemic.  My H&H (red blood cell count) kept trending downward.  As a result I was feeling pretty poorly.  Friday m...

Thursday morning came, Dr C, the resident was in and checked on me. All systems were go... except peeing. What in the world?   I did not have this trouble in TN. Katrina was eager to help me and since I had permission to get up it would be my first attempt to get to the bedside commode. I was all for it. Well my mind was, my body- not so fast! Katrina and an NA came to my room and literally worked with me for a solid 30 minutes to sit, get to the side of the bed. My body wasn’t not cooperating. I kept getting light headed and nauseated. We kept trying. Up on my good foot, turn and bam. Lights out. I woke up back in the bed and had one nurse that I think wanted to beat my ass. To hear her tell it she literally threw me back in bed. Lesson: DON’T scare or piss off Katrina. Nonetheless she left me in my bed with my head down. I felt like I was going to slide right out out the top of my bed. Honestly though I love Katrina. She is a compassionate, caring and a high quality nurse, an...

Hey Jen! It’s Lisa! I’m going to shove this board under you to get your x-rays. Huh? Ooowwwwww. “Oh hey Lisa. Can we go get in your pool?” I was waking up in PACU to the sound of a friend’s voice who I knew would get good post op X-rays for me. This lady is good and I trust her work. There was a huge sense of relief to hear her voice and for once I felt reassured about things. I think she mentioned something about how “good” my X-rays looked, but in my way of knowing Lisa I think she was hinting that things actually looked good. Thank you Lisa. I have seen your films and you did a great job! It also made me feel good that you were there for me! I don’t have any sense of timing or what else went on in PACU - that’s the wonderful thing about anesthesia. I know I was trying to figure out where I was in the PACU, but soon I would be even more confused about that because I was whisked away on my ride to 9 West. I’ve walked those same halls hundreds of times, but I was lost thi...

The Tuesday night before my surgery was long and restless. I was honestly afraid. Since I was taking Eliquis as a blood thinner I had to stop it on Monday so it could flush out of my system. In order to reduce risk of more DVT or PE (clot in my lungs), J gave me a prescription for Lovenox which I would have to give myself via an injection in my belly. I didn’t have any qualms about the self-injection, but no one bothered to tell me that the shit burned! It was like 10 yellow jacket stings. Even the Lovenox takes 24 hours to clear so I would be a high risk for bleeding. Sigh. Having had general anesthesia a few weeks prior didn’t help my cause either. Nothing was going to be easy. Several times during my time at home I’d be sleeping in the recliner and if it tipped back too far back I’d scare myself awake thinking I was falling. The night before my surgery my mind kept replaying the crash, and I kept thinking about everything I had encountered since my crash. This night was anot...

This piece needs to go backwards Monday came and just like any Monday I was dreading the day. Nonetheless this was the hand I was dealt. We arrived at the clinic. Waited our turn. Soon we were in our room to wait some more. My poor stomach was in knots. My best recollection of the visit is that Jesse was an unhappy as us with what we were seeing on the CT scan.  In fact he looked mad. As he suspected the top part of my hip (femoral head and neck) was anteriorly rotated so the bone fragments indeed were not aligned. There was over 1.5cm of difference in them, and their best guess was maybe I had 20% bone to bone contact. Without more bone touching healing would be delayed tremendously and might not ever occur.  In that case, I might not ever walk again. In order for me to make the most well informed decision J sent Dr. S in to talk to me. I was truly on the fence about what to do until Dr. S came in. I’ve known of Dr. S for a really long time, I’ve seen him put some...