{"id":823,"date":"2010-03-23T21:55:16","date_gmt":"2010-03-24T04:55:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/?p=823"},"modified":"2010-03-24T07:39:53","modified_gmt":"2010-03-24T14:39:53","slug":"six-month-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/2010\/03\/23\/six-month-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Six Month Report"},"content":{"rendered":"

I missed the 6-month anniversary of my little get-off<\/a> back in September. It was a week and a half ago, and I forgot it because I was busy celebrating my daughter\u2019s birthday. Considering the way things could have gone, I feel fortunate to have been playing games at Laser Tag instead of taking a dirt nap or being spoon-fed at a long-term rehab facility. So let\u2019s recap where I\u2019m at today.<\/p>\n

When I came home from the hospital on October 2 my left lower leg was in a cast, I was weak as a kitten, I was in constant pain from my broken ribs, and I needed a walker to get around at all \u2013 and very slowly at that. I was 17 kinds of messed up.<\/p>\n

I went back to work on October 26, still in a lot of pain, but strong enough and mobile enough to get around on crutches \u2013 very slowly. The very first thing I did my first day back was to trip while coming up the steps into the building and go down like a sack of bricks. I think I re-broke one of my semi-healed ribs when I did that. Vicodin was definitely my friend on that day.<\/p>\n

Somewhere around Thanksgiving they took my cast off, took the pins out of my foot, and put me in a \u201cwalking boot\u201d \u2013 basically, a splint with a sole on it. I still needed the crutches to walk in it, but I could put weight on my left foot and start using a more normal walking range of motion.<\/p>\n

By December 6 I had dumped the crutches and was walking with a cane. More importantly, I started riding again. I rigged up a cane-holder on the bike<\/a>, used the cane to get the kickstand up and down, and got my knees in the breeze. I felt like a rookie rider all over again the first time I tried to lane-split. I was riding in medium-heavy traffic on the freeway and dove into the gap between two cars to start splitting \u2013 and my sphincter puckered right up like a bible thumper at a gay pride parade. It scared the crap out of me and made me realize that I had to heal my mind as well as my body if I was going to get back to riding like I used to.<\/p>\n

On New Year\u2019s Eve I went for a ride along the coast with the P of my club. I was still easing my way back into riding again and had a nice, safe, sedate, girlie-man ride in mind, but he talked me into taking the canyons on the way back instead, which meant facing the kind of twisties I had crashed in, the kind that I still wasn\u2019t comfortable riding yet. But he went slow for me, and I went slower \u2013 so slowly at one point that I might as well have had training wheels — and it was a good ride. I appreciated the push. I needed it.<\/p>\n

On January 7 I got clearance from the doctors to dump the cane and walking boot and start walking normally. That turned out to be easier said than done \u2013 my ankle still hurt, it wouldn\u2019t really bend, and my version of walking looked more like a drunken peg-legged pirate in heavy seas. But I kept on keeping on and called it \u201cwalking\u201d anyway.<\/p>\n

On January 10 my job sent me to Guatemala for two weeks, so the weekend of the 16th I rented a dirtbike from an adventure riding tour operator in Antigua and went on a back roads\/dirt roads tour of some of the local villages. I could barely walk on the village cobblestones and had to ride an electric-start bike because I couldn\u2019t kick the kick-start, but dammit I was going on that tour. My biggest fear was that I\u2019d have to put my left foot down during a slide and re-tweak my ankle, but I managed to keep it upright and in the tracks the whole time, so it was a good time. Everyone — EVERYone — thought I was crazy for doing it.<\/p>\n

By mid-February I finally had to admit that my ankle wasn\u2019t doing what it\u2019s supposed to be doing, so I started going to physical therapy. Go figure: it\u2019s actually helping \u2013 my ankle is getting much stronger, I\u2019m regaining range of motion, I can almost mostly walk without a limp now, and I\u2019m getting to where I can shift gears on the bike now with my heel AND toe. I\u2019m still not 100% but I\u2019m closer than I was. And I can\u2019t get enough of the electrical stimulation \u2013 it\u2019s my favorite thing about it. They put contacts on my foot and ankle and basically start electrocuting it and it\u2019s AWESOME. I keep telling them to turn it up; my therapist says he\u2019s never seen anyone ask for as much juice as I do. He says it\u2019s maxed out and I\u2019m going to start glowing in the dark. I don\u2019t know why I like it so much, I just do.<\/p>\n

As for the rest of my injuries, well, they\u2019re pretty much in the past. My shoulder blade has completely healed (it never really bothered me that much in the first place, ) my lung is totally healed and I can breathe normally now, losing my spleen hasn\u2019t had any effect on me at all (unless not being as big of a dick as I used to be can be attributed to that), all the scars are healing and are pain-free except for still being a little ache-y where one of my chest tubes was. My voice is still raspy from the intubations, but I didn’t have a future as a singer anyway. The ankle is the worst of it, and it’s getting better.<\/p>\n

Riding-wise, I\u2019m on the way back to my former self. I\u2019m lane splitting again with close to the same confidence that I had before, but I\u2019m still twitchy in the canyons. I still can\u2019t really push it if I can\u2019t see all the way through the turn, and even when I can see I\u2019m still nowhere close to scraping my floorboards with the same abandon as before. But I keep telling myself that it\u2019ll come in time, that I just need to log the miles and build the saddle time and I’ll get back to where I was.<\/p>\n

The worst of it is that while I have no memory of the accident, I can still \u201cfeel\u201d it. Even though I don\u2019t actually remember going down, I can somehow remember how it felt slamming into the pavement, the sensation of bones breaking, the out-of-body detachment of going into shock. Imagination? Muscle memory? Vaginitis? I dunno, all I know is that the crash is still in my head and it\u2019s affecting my riding. It\u2019s going to take time to shake it.<\/p>\n

And the weirdest, strangest, most obtusely wonderful thing of it all is that, in a way, that accident is one of the best things that has happened to me in a long time. It woke me up somehow, snapped me out of the life I was living. I’m a nicer guy now. I’m not as angry anymore. I’m a better friend. I appreciate my club brothers more. And things are better at home than they’ve been in years. I’m closer with my daughter now. I have a newfound respect and affection for my wife. In a very real sense, I feel like this saved my marriage. I don’t think it’s the cliche of a near-death experience making you appreciate life more, but whatever it is, it’s real. I’m in a much better place now than I would have been if I hadn’t gone down that day.<\/p>\n

To paraphrase Hunter Thompson: I hate to advocate crashing, pain, injury, and near death to anyone, but it worked for me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I missed the 6-month anniversary of my little get-off back in September. It was a week and a half ago, and I forgot it because I was busy celebrating my daughter\u2019s birthday. Considering the way things could have gone, I feel fortunate to have been playing games at Laser Tag instead of taking a dirt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-neutral"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=823"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":829,"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823\/revisions\/829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deadpan.net\/ridereport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}