shakedown: injury #2
This would be my first tour since 2008 (excluding one RAGBRAI), and I trained hard for it, which was part of the fun. I also did a lot of planning, and bought a lot of fun new toys to take. Patrick and I, one of the three of us who would be going, decided to do a shakedown ride a couple of weeks before leaving and took off one bright Saturday morning.
Forty four miles into the first day’s ride of fifty one miles, I came upon a 180-degree very sharp turn. It wasn’t problematic in itself, but I didn’t realize that there was a 15% grade around the corner. I started pedaling as hard as I could, but my efforts were woefully inadequate, and I started going from my baseline speed of slow… to slower… to standing still. I got my feet out of the clipless pedals, but not soon enough to prevent the chainring from slashing the inside of my right ankle. It bled some, but didn’t look too bad so I continued riding.
Eventually, we made it to the Taylor’s house in Cedar Falls where we’d be camping for the night. (If you read my 2021 journal, know that they’re the parents of Cherpumple Mike) My tent pole had snapped a couple of days before and because the replacement was still in the mail I thought I'd just borrow a tent from them.The Taylors had raised three hardy outdoors-y Iowa boys so I assumed they’d have one stashed away someplace. I was surprised to find that they didn’t, but that wasn’t a problem because, even better than a tent, they had a treehouse!
After carrying all of my gear up the ladder I settled in and took a closer look at my wound. I cleaned it up and found that, under all the grease and grime, it really DID need sutures.
At this point, you’re probably thinking, justifiably so, “What is WRONG with this guy?? Is he that clumsy?!? He just had his thigh sewn up.”
It’s a legitimate question. In my defense, I’ll say that aside from a fractured collarbone when I was about six, I’ve never had a broken bone or had any other serious injury that would warrant a trip to the hospital. That includes any lacerations. I’ve been hospitalized once, in 1998, for the flu (the only time I ever missed a flu shot), and have missed one day from work in the past 25 years, about ten years ago from a stomach virus. I’ve been remarkably healthy. Or remarkably lucky.
Something else to be aware of is that this was 2020, when COVID was burning through the world like grease through a McDonald's. I wanted to be completely self-sufficient and, to me, that meant carrying everything I needed, even to the point of preventing a trip to the Emergency Department if possible. I was carrying enough medical supplies to supply a medic for a squadron of troops, including antibiotics (3 classes), gauze, lidocaine, syringes, alcohol and betadine swabs, three kinds of suture material, two kinds of needles, and dressing (a partial list).
So, I decided to suture it myself.
“But Mark,” you may ask, as did my wife when I told her about it, “why not just go to the Emergency Department like a normal person?” Perhaps you’d give me the look my wife gave me during our video call, that same look she gave me when I asked her if she thought my thigh laceration needed sutures. Perhaps you might even quote the aphorism I previously mentioned about a fool for a patient.
Again, it's legitimate question. There were a number of reasons:
(1) I’d been carrying that stuff around for weeks during training. Why not use it?
(2) We were in the middle of a pandemic. Although the risk of being around people in the ER was minimal, did I really need to go there at all?
(3) If you’re a carpenter and have all the tools and skills to make a cabinet, would you go to a furniture store to buy one? If you’re a house painter, would you hire someone to paint your house? If you’re a bike mechanic, would you take your bike to a bike shop for repair?
So, I pulled out a syringe, attached a needle, drew up a few cc’s of lidocaine, and numbed up my wound. It only needed three stitches, and even if I have a fool for a patient, I think it turned out well.
I’ll tell you one more thing… If I’m really honest with myself, part of the reason I did it is that someday in the not-so-distant future, when I’m in my nineties and sitting in front of a fireplace with a blanket draped across my lap and no longer able to ride, I’ll be able to say in the gravelly, wheezy voice, of a nonagenarian,
“That reminds me of the time I was in a treehouse and sewed up my ankle.”
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So far, this tour has the makings of a real adventure, and it hasn't even started yet. I hope I make it without another injury! (spoiler alert: I don't) There's only one way to find out what happens....
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1 year ago