Bicycle vs. Car (Part 3)

I am writing these blog entries, as recommended by family and friends, to help me articulate my experiences that lead me to the present.  These accounts are true to my own memory and I've left out names, for obvious reasons.

Laying on the training table waiting for PT to move my arm and shoulder into positions neither has seen in 3 months, I allow myself to wonder what might have been.  Would I have returned to fitness as I was attempting to do?  Cyclocross season was upon us and I was targeting my return to cyclocross at the closer races in Conyers and N. Atlanta.  Could I have made the upgrade to the next category?  I should feel fortunate I wasn't hurt more severely.  Don't feel sorry for your soft, sorry self.

At that moment, I'm snapped back to the present where I'm dripping sweat down the sides of my face while PT has my arm above my head, pushing it cautiously to it's new-found limit.  

Pain makes me sweat.  I don't know what it does to other people but, for me, it makes me schvitz, as my Jewish grandmother used to say.

There are a lot of things that happen to you while you're suspended in an immobile position.  You try to focus your spidey senses to make up for the things you can't see.  You try to listen more closely to the footsteps.  Are they coming toward you?  Are the voices getting louder?  Will someone soon cover my half-naked body with a blanket?

I don't have to wait terribly long before a nurse stops and asks me if the doctors have cleared my spine and neck.  I, of course, say no since I'm still in a cervical collar, head taped to a board, body strapped down like a patient who's gone 5150.  She summons some white coats and they roll me to the right while pressing on my spine, asking me each step of the way if I feel any pain or numbness.  (Ed note - how do you feel numbness?) I promise myself now is not the time to be a smart-ass so I go along with these tests.  They roll me off the board and remove the c-collar.

Now there I lay in the hallway -- no shirt, my bib shorts cut and somewhat lowered to a semi-revealing level... still wearing my cycling shoes and gloves.  I still can't move my left arm.  They have my elbow resting on the cushion with my hand on my stomach.  I reach down and remove the glove off my left hand.  Just the smallest amount of tugging pressure sends lightning bolts through my body.  Is my shoulder dislocated or do I have some other injury? ..and why can't someone cover me with a damn sheet or something?

Dr. ER swoops in and asks me a few questions about allergies and within 10 minutes, I'm greeted by Mr. ER nurse who injects something into my hand that stings more than a hornet's fury.  Thankfully, it's short lived and a warming rush of pleasant relief comes over me.  The edge of the pain has been smoothed.  I can still feel the pressure on my left side.  I can still feel the grumpiness of my obvious shoulder deformity.  I am able to take deeper breathes though.  I start to calm down.

My next thought is that I need to call my wife because I'm sure she's freaking out.  I need to tell her that I'm ok.  I am OK.  I know she's going to immediately reflect back on the terror we all felt during the few hours after the car vs. bike accident of a good friend of mine.  The next time the white coat walks by, I ask if I can borrow a phone to call my wife.  He hands me a cordless phone and I get in touch with her.  The tenor of her voice lets me know she's scared and worried.  I let her know I'm ok and that I'm in the hallway in the Trauma unit at Grady.... she's already enroute.

It's easily 45 minutes since anyone has come by to check on me.  I've become the patient everyone looks at with curiosity as they walk by.  I have become a spectacle.

Then I hear a voice.  She sounds like she's around the corner, her heels clicking on a hospital floor getting louder.... She found me.  My wife's first look at me, important to both of us, had two different reactions.  First, she is upset because I must look hurt... then relief, partly because she's found me and I must not look that hurt.  She gingerly leans over to kiss me.  It's nice to see her.  Now I know everyone's in for it as well... the next most impatient, tenacious person I know besides myself is my wife.  Look out!  Here we come!  ... I finally get a blanket.

Soon after her arrival, we're off to get some x-rays.  Dr. ER and another white coat discuss the pictures he wants to see and, after looking at my swollen left eye socket, mumbles something about a head CT.

The x-ray attendant wheels me into a much darker, older part of the hospital.  The tile walls look like they've seen many years of service.  This is in stark contrast to the area they wheeled me from, which was bright and modern-looking.  Once in the x-ray room, I am challenged with having to transfer myself from the mobile bed I had been on to a cold, stainless slab of metal.  First, I'm STILL half naked and it's remarkably colder in this room.  Second, I can't move my left arm.  "Scoot this way.  Move that way."  All of these commands are difficult to comply with when you only have one arm to assist.

I'm now shaking uncontrollably and sweating from the pain.  The attendant says, "Take a deep breath and don't move!"  Yeah - right!  He moves the contraption and swings over a bar that looks like a pull-up bar that's slightly higher than my head.  "Stand up and grab the bar with both hands."  I just laugh.  I'm still wearing my cycling shoes.  I haven't held up my own body weight since before leaving the scene of the accident.  I've been given some joy juice to take the edge off my troubles.  ...and my left arm moves like linguini.  I have to use my right hand to raise my left hand to grab the bar.  I do it slowly because I have no idea what's going on with my shoulder and every inch of movement makes the pain and pressure increase exponentially.  "Take a deep breath and don't move!"  Dude, I'm shaking uncontrollably and my obviously deformed shoulder does not like this position.

Half way back to the modern part of the facility, my wife mentions that the doctor asked for a head CT.  Back to the dungeness, dank, old x-ray wing for another picture we go.  Same drill.  A different attendant, without some much as eye-contact, motions for me to move myself from the rolling bed to the much narrower CT scanner bed.  After some wranging, I'm in position and she says, "Breathe normally but don't move!"

We come back to the modern wing and are dumped in a room with glass walls.

X-rays - check.  Diagnosis - missing.

As we wait for Dr. ER to return, Mr. Jovial ER nurse comes in to tell us we can leave soon.  As the patience wears thin, Dr. ER finally rolls by to say that my face is not broken, my nose is fine and shoulder is not dislocated at all.  All I have is a separated shoulder.  He hands me a few prescriptions and a referral to the Grady Orthopedist office.  He takes a final look at the cut on my face, grabs a gauze pad and gives it a tug and a wipe.  He recommends not stitching it up since it's relatively superficial.  He leaves so quickly we don't have any chance of asking him questions.

My face is wet.  Why is my face wet?  My wife grabs a paper towel and gives it to me.  My facial cut is open enough to be bleeding again.  No bandage?  No bandaid?

Mr. Jovial ER Nurse returns and I ask about getting a gown or some clothes to wear so we can leave.  He says he can track down a social worker to find me some clothes.  Social worker?  I don't want be a charity case!  I just want something to cover up my naked skin while I do the barefoot walk of shame out to the circle drive patient pick-up area.  No dice.

He and the wife discuss directions to the rendezvous location and she's off to get the car.  I'm escorted out of the glass room and through the doors to the public waiting area for the ER.  I have no shirt.  I'm wearing nothing more than my cycling socks and my bib shorts, one strap cut and dangling around my waist and a new white mesh sling, where my useless left arm is finally resting.

The discharge staff does it's business and I sign, what I'm sure is the first of many billing papers in my new reality, and head out beyond the metal detector, through the sliding door and onto the sidewalk to wait for my ride.

"What the heck happened to you, buddy?"

"Bike vs. Car"

"You look like crap!"

"Thanks."

"Want to sell your prescription?"

In Part 4 - the final frontier... Meeting Dr Falcons and what it means to get ahead of the pain.