RSS
Friday, June 25, 2010
Bike Accident
We’ve been riding bikes on and off since late March when we got a false early spring (temps dropped into the low 40′s a couple of weeks later and lasted into May), and so far, things have been okay. I whacked my shin on my bike pedal once, which didn’t feel awesome, but otherwise there haven’t been any major disasters. Neither of us has fallen off yet, nor have we crashed into anything or anyone.
Until Sunday.
Sunday, we decided we wanted to go to Panera for an early dinner. We also wanted to go for a bike ride, but wouldn’t really have time because we wasted the morning away sleeping, and our day didn’t really get going until about 3PM. I suggested that we combine the two endeavors, and Johnathan thought that was a pretty good idea. We’ve never ridden our bikes in town before. Whenever we’ve wanted a bike ride, we’ve gone to the metroparks and ridden on the trails there, which is fine, but those aren’t very flat, and well, we’ve seen all the close ones enough before that it’s boring to ride the short lengths. Four or five miles of trail really isn’t much, and the one to Oberlin isn’t very feasible for a weeknight or a short ride. So, this was a nice change, sort of.
It’s about 2.25 miles to Panera from our house. There are sidewalks the whole way, which is nice because there’s a lot of traffic on the streets between our apartment and the restaurant. No problem, right? Most of the way there was okay. We almost had to wait two light cycles because a bunch of cars decided that, despite the fact that we had a “walk” signal, they were more important and had to turn first. I don’t know about anyone else, but I didn’t feel like risking my life just to be able to cross the street. We did go across, but we had to run to make it before the light turned red. I have to say, that really annoyed me. If they had let us get going, they all would have been able to go, and we wouldn’t have had to run the bikes across the street.
We ran into more trouble when we got to another fairly busy intersection. People have a habit of ignoring crosswalks and limit lines alike. There were four cars in the crosswalk to go across a street. We could probably have crossed in front of them all, but the point of the crosswalk is that it’s the safe place for pedestrians (and cyclists, hi!) to cross. If I got hit outside of the crosswalk, even if it’s because I couldn’t walk in the crosswalk because someone was a jerk, it’s ultimately my fault as much as the car’s. The crosswalk is my safe haven as long as I’m crossing when I’m supposed to (walk sign). Cleveland drivers don’t seem to think that the limit line is the first warning to stop, the first line of the crosswalk is the second, and the second line of the crosswalk is the third. And then there are the really big jerks who continue to creep into the intersection on red lights, as if that will cause the light to turn green faster. I’ve seen cars get totally out into the intersection, the whole vehicle past the crosswalk. I mean, really. Don’t be a jerk.
Anyway, once we got past the perils of cars and safely back onto the relatively safe sidewalk, we rode up behind the restaurant. I decided to ride up the tiny grassy hill and coast into the parking lot next to the Panera. It would have been okay if the grass were the same height as the curb, but there was a little dip. It happened really fast, so I’m not 100% on what happened, but I suspect one of my pedals bottomed out, and then my heel did, too, and my bike kind of shuddered and I came to a stop. In the process, I banged up my left index finger. I usually keep the finger on the handle while the other three fingers hover over the brake handle, so when my hand jerked off the handle, it jammed into the mechanism that holds the brake handle up onto the handle. I nicked my knuckle (good gash on it), and I really jammed my finger. I think something hit the muscle in my finger pretty hard, too, because it swelled up and it looked ready to bruise up right away.
An injury on one finger is relatively minor as far as injuries go. I mean, it was the index finger of my dominant hand, but ultimately, it wasn’t broken or anything, and it certainly wasn’t as if I broke my wrist or something. I had some range of movement, and it wasn’t excruciating to try to use it, but any pressure caused pain. So that was fun. I had to figure out how to eat my early dinner without using my left index finger. It was… interesting! I had a feeling of inner instability afterward, as if everything would go wrong if I didn’t stay very, very still and try to do as little as possible. It was a very strange reaction to have to something so simple as jamming a finger. Somehow that simple injury influenced the rest of my day, however.
We did ride our bikes home, but I did everything I could to avoid actively using that finger. It wasn’t as hard as I expected, at least as far as riding home. Typing was interesting, because it hurt to use the finger very actively, and I learned quickly that I had to pay close attention when I was picking things up, because otherwise I would tweak my finger by trying to use it too much. It’s true that you never realize how much you use a part of your body until you can’t anymore. Johnathan was worried that I didn’t just bounce back from the injury and that the swelling didn’t go down much, even after taking ibuprofen. He said that if I hurt enough the next day, we needed to go to the urgent care to get my finger looked at and possibly x-rayed. I agreed. I’ve never been to an urgent care, or at least not in a very long time, so it’s not something I think of doing right away.
Well, I woke up on Monday morning and my finger did not feel at all better. I loaded up with painkillers and it took the edge off, but it certainly wasn’t better. I decided, since it wasn’t feelinf even a tiny bit better, that a trip to ugent care was, after all, necessary. After I got home from work, we headed up to the nearest urgent care center, which also happens to be the facility where my GP’s office is. But that has absolutely nothing to do with this story. I checked in, and probably waited about 20 minutes before they were able to see me. The very nice nurse took me to an examination room and started to get the dtails of what was wrong and what happened. He joked with me a bit, which I appreciated.
We established that my finger was now turning a lovely shade of reddish-bluish-purplish-blackish. In other words, I was developing one major bruise. And it was a beauty. He checked my pulse-ox… stuff, and my blood pressure (better than it was at my last physical, whoo!), and then did a pregnancy test – just in case – before I went off to get some x-rays done. The good news is that I am not pregnant and that I did get some x-rays done.
I went back to my exam room and waited for the doctor. This is the part that amazes me most. The doctor poked and prodded my hand a bit and told me that, thankfully, the x-rays didn’t show any broken bones in my finger. Since I hadn’t fallen, my wrist was given the all-clear, too. He told me it didn’t look like I had torn any ligaments or muscles and that I didn’t appear to have punctured anything. Just a bad bruise. He told me he’d have the nurse come in and put a splint on my finger, and I was to wear that for three to four days, just to help the finger heal, and keep it elevated whenever possible to help with the swelling. And that was that. Then he left. He touched my finger and poked at my wrist, and that’s what he gets paid the big bucks for. Oh well. That’s the system.
The nurse came back, put a splint on my finger and I was free to go. No pain killers – I’ll just use OTC stuff as necessary – and just a splint to help immobilize it. It’s helping with the pain already. Although, I have to say, I kind of look like a dweeb.
So, this has been my adventure this week. Do you know how hard it is to type when your dominant index finger is in a splint? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s really hard. I can’t wait until my finger is healed. You can bet I won’t be haphazardly riding off any curbs, however short, in the future.
Share
