annathepiper | A bike trip more exciting than planned

"This sucks more than anything has ever sucked before." -- Butthead

solarbird has already posted about this but I wanted to make a post myself while I am alert enough to type.

So the plan for yesterday was to be a biking excursion for Dar and me and a guy named Steve Hastings who Dar knows from exrvl-l. We were going to bike from our house to Lake Forest Park, and go to the Great Harvest Bakery for lunch, and then come back.

Phases 1 and 2 of this plan went great. Dar and Steve are better bikers so I lagged behind them a lot, but not much. And I'd biked to Bothell before of course, so I did not think it would be a problem to go only as far as Lake Forest Park. It wasn't. We got there okay, and Steve, noting that I looked a little winded, observed that I had had my bike's gears set too high and suggested that I try a lower gear on the way home. Since he is a bike geek I was quite willing to defer to him on that. And his recommendation for a little frob to measure my 'cadence' -- how fast I'm pedalling -- sounded good too.

So we got to the bakery and had food. My cinnamon roll was pretty good, but the sample slice of spinach feta bread and Dar's creamy broccoli soup were way better. We chatted about Steve's various interesting gagdets and about biking and about, of all things, my and Dar's Nethack-themed costumes from last Halloween. Then we got on the bikes and started heading back.

I had my bike in the lower gear as Steve recommended, and that did make for easier going. But it also meant that I kept lagging behind more, since I wasn't making the same speeds that Dar and Steve were. Finally I tried to catch up with them, but I got going too fast. And I hit Dar's back wheel.

And I went flying sideways off my bike into the gravel by the path. My arm took the impact.

Dar and Steve were on top of the situation immediately, though I heard Dar ask for confirmation that she wasn't panicking. She got me onto my back and held my arm immobile in what definitely felt like an unhappy angle, but that was the only way it was bearable. Steve called for help.

A couple of guys from the fire department, apparently a volunteer emergency response team of some sort, showed up pretty quickly and checked me out. Random bikers and hikers kept stopping as well, volunteering help, though the fire department guys said that they were the help. I heard one guy call out well-wishes though, and call me 'sister'.

Another guy that stopped turned out to be an actual doctor, who introduced himself as Todd and did various basic checks before deeming it okay to leave me in the hands of the fire department guys.

Once the ambulance arrived (and as Dar noted, it took a bit), they had to cut through my sweatshirt and my helmet in order to get a brace onto my neck and to get me onto something called a "clam", which seemed to be a stretcher with two halves that they slid under me and snapped together, before strapping me to it. Once they got me onto that they were able to lift me into the ambulance, and that was disconcerting, being moved horizontally by some other power than me.

Dar got into the ambulance as well, and Steve parted company with us at that point. The tech in the back, whose name was apparently Ben (though I don't remember if he introduced himself or if I just happened to notice his name tag), did another round of checking my vitals. This was not alarming. What was alarming was the driver seeming to have trouble starting up the durned vehicle. O.O Dar and I made lame jokes at one another about the ambulance breaking down, and I asked Dar if she was okay. I wound up asking her that a lot during the course of the evening, but I think it was right then that she said she thought she was supposed to be asking me that.

But they got the vehicle going after a couple of tries, and after a minute or two the driver said that she had hit two full lanes of traffic. So then she kicked on the lights and the sirens, which got us a clear short shot over to the U-dub Medical Center.

Out of the ambulance, then, and into the ER. I heard a woman saying, "I'm thinking she's really brave." I didn't feel particularly brave, mostly suspected I was too out of it to be anything besides dazed.

In the corridor, I remember looking up and seeing my reflection in what might have been a light fixture... it was round and metallic. And I really didn't like the angle of my arm. Dar had already said something about how it looked like I had a second elbow, but I was scared to get a closer look to see if I could tell. I remember seeing a scrape on my actual elbow though.

The first place they took me was the ER, and a nurse named Travis did the thing with taking my vitals again, as well as the question "On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the worst you have ever experienced, about where are you right now?" Definite 10. They gave me Demerol, which dropped me down around a 6.

An orthopedic doctor who must surely have introduced herself -- everybody kept introducing themselves, but I only caught some of their names, and I don't remember hers -- asked me about the bump on my ankle when they got my socks and shoes off. That was amusing just because her speciality was orthopedic tumors, so she seemed rather interested in it aside from my arm.

She was also notable in that she seemed to recognize our friend

jiapa at least by description if not by name. So that was kind of cool.

The not cool part involved having to go ahead and destroy my shirt along with my sweatshirt so they could get my arm into something resembling a saner position. Because when they started doing that, it started hurting like hell. I heard these mewling, keening noises coming out of me, and whimpers coming out of Dar as well. And they kept apologizing for hurting me, but it had to be done.

Next was attempt #1 to do x-rays, and they wanted a whole bunch to make sure I hadn't injured more than my arm. That involved wheeling me off to another room entirely. And at least at first things went okay, but in the course of trying to slide me around they twisted my hips. Then they slid this pad of some sort -- presumably it was for purposes of getting a shot of my arm -- underneath my arm. And something in the way they did it made my arm hurt all over again. The pain burned right through the stuff in my system and made my arm start to spasm.

Which was scary. The more it spasmed the more it hurt, so they backed off quickly from trying to do anything else and called the ER to come get me. I don't know how long it actually took. From my perspective there seemed to be several minutes where I was lying there just thinking 'help me' and even praying. I am not normally the praying type, but lately I have found that Brighid, Celtic goddess of smithing and poetry and music and healing, seems to be right up my alley. Especially right then. Especially the healing part. I am fairly sure I called on Brighid; whether or not I actually got any divine intervention, I couldn't say. But my arm did settle down a little before they finally took me back to the ER.

En route another person apparently authorized to hand out painkillers gave me something. She had dark hair and a vaguely Mexican sort of look about her, I think. But she wasn't as liberal with the painkillers as Nurse Travis had been; I could still feel my arm when we reached the ER room I had been in before.

There, they worked finally on getting my arm into a splint and a sling. About here was when I remember

mamishka and

risu showing up; all I registered of Mimi was her voice and the doctor telling her that they were about to do something painful and she probably didn't want to be there for that. Mimi obligingly withdrew; Rebecca did not. Dar grabbed my left hand and kept urging me to transfer my tension over to her. That helped.

More painkillers, and Nurse Travis came back. I think this might also have been the first time Dr. Jared Strote, who seemed to be the attending doctor on duty, showed up. I got more questions about my pain level; I'd gone right back up to 10 Goddammit Give Me Morphine (though what I actually said was a weakly mumbled '10'). They did in fact give me morphine, it turned out, though Dar made a joke about refusing to identify it in case I started craving it.

My hand got poked by the orthopedic doctor, who had this little thing with two prongs on it. She alternated between 1 and 2 pronged pokes and asked me to tell her without looking how many points I felt. I got all of those right, though I did not do as well on the next round of having to do various shapes with my hand: a thumbs up sign and an O.K. sign and a couple of other things. Before I'd gone down to the X-ray room I could do them; when I got back, I couldn't. They told me my radial nerve had gotten stretched or aggravated, and that it was a miracle that hadn't happened during the actual injury.

Once my arm was stabilized in splint and sling, they sent me back to the X-ray room. I got found by Dr. Todd, who told me he was going to be looking over my x-rays and just wanted to make sure I was alright. This was awfully nice of Dr. Todd, I thought. He was kind of cute, too. ;)

The second trip through x-ray taking went a lot smoother. I remember that the primary person who seemed to be in charge of moving me about this time was a black guy named Ernest, and he was really brisk and efficient. They got me through and as they were wheeling me back, it seemed to take a bit for Dar and Rebecca to catch up.

After that was a lot more waiting for the X-ray results, a lot of just lying around with an IV in my arm -- which actually ran out, and Dar went to go make sure that was alright. I can't remember if it was Nurse Travis who asked me what I was studying at the U, or whether it was during this stint of waiting, but I remember being amused and flattered by that.

I don't have context for when this happened either, but I remember someone asking Rebecca if she was alright because she was looking a little green.

I asked Dr. Strote whether I would still make it to the Great Big Sea concert on the 29th... and that didn't seem to bother him as a concept once we assured him it would be a Celtic concert and not all that vigorous an audience. He looked a bit more dubious about the Thailand trip; we'll have to see how I am by that point.

I got up for the first time to go to the bathroom, with the assistance of Travis and Dar, and got pretty queasy. I'm told this is because of all the drugs that were in my system. But I made it there and back without incident.

Dar has already written about the first abortive attempt to get home. I made it out to the lobby all right and managed to sit okay while waiting for Rebecca to get her car, but when Dar offered me one small sip of lemonade that was enough to undo me. I had enough time to think about how SWEET it was, overwhelmingly so, before I hurled all over my sling, my hand, and the floor.

They took me back to where I'd been before, got me cleaned up, and gave me a new sling and pillow to suuport it. And another doctor who must have been the one coming in on the night shift came in with Dr. Strote so they could decide whether it was okay to send me home. Mimi called from home while they were discussing the matter, and I mumbled blurrily into the phone at her.

We decided to try it again, and Dar got the prescription for ibuprofin and percocet filled, and Rebecca got her car, and I made it back out to the lobby okay. I was stripped down to my sports bta from the waist up, but that was okay for getting me to the car and then home.

I fell very carefully into bed with Dar's help.

Ow.

Current Mood: groggy

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From:

kathrynt.livejournal.com

I think there's some missing here.

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And it's all your state of mind

A bike trip more exciting than planned

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