Outdoor adventure

Went for a walk with Swill, Mini-me, and Seamus today. I'd call it a hike, but the pace was pretty mellow. It was still nice to get out and about. I had a much better day today. Yesterday I was pretty fatigued all and canceled my trip to Boulder. This whole breaking my arm thing and recovery from surgery is taking a little longer for me to feel normal and healthy than I thought, but I did pretty good today and even did some vacuuming and one-handed mopping. So all in all a good day.
Back to work tomorrow. I really enjoyed having an extra day off this weekend. Apparently I needed it.

Hot compress

Seems that I have a slight infection from all the deer poop I ground in to my arm in the crash, so I am doing warm compresses to drive the infection out. Not to worry, I don't think my arm will fall off, it might just leave an uglier scar.

Weekend Update

Today marks a milestone in my post-surgery recovery. I got on the trainer for the first time.
20 minutes, 103 avg watts, 125 kilojoules, but who's counting. I devised a system with propping Robo-Arm up on the back of a chair and that worked pretty well. It's a little bit too much extension to reach the bars, and I can't put any weight on my hand, but this seemed to work OK. In fact, I'd say it went really well. I stopped at 20 minutes because my upper back started to tighten up. That's been giving me more problems than the broken elbow the last several days, so I decided not to push my luck and leave this progression on a positive note.

One good thing I can say about riding the trainer now that summer has arrived in Colorado and that's Air Conditioning.

I did take a little rest afterward for some ice on the elbow and heating pad on the upper back. You know you likes all this Renee down time? The kitty cats. They think it's fantastic that I'm home more and napping a lot.

getting kind of cocky

I had a really good day today.
- I made it through a whole day at work, first time this week
- My arm still felt really good at the end of the day
- I had so much energy at the end of the day, I went for a walk, and I didn't need a nap afterward.

But then I got taken down a notch. I was chatting on the phone when I knocked something off the table. I had the phone in my right hand so my natural instinct was to reach and try to catch it with my left. Owwwiee!

The funny thing is I just got off the phone with my friend who broke his hand in February. I was going on and on about my breakthrough day and how good I felt and he said I might have a bad day tomorrow following this really good day. You know, good days, bad days.... Anyway, hope it doesn't hurt too much in the morning. I'm going to grab an ice pack and head to bed.

Rick to the rescue

I should have nice straight hair for the next 48 to 72 hours after a visit to Rick today. I'm going to have to bugdet for weekly visits until I can get my left arm high enough to do a pony tail. Either that or a buzz cut for the summer.

Week 1 review

I wanted to write a little review of my first week after surgery. Really, there's not too much to write about because there just a lot of napping and sleeping.

And not just the cats. I slept a lot, and I was really surprised at how much surgery wiped me out. The first day I left the house was Wednesday. I was out for about 2 hours and only went to get my hair done and stop by the office, but I came home and had to go to sleep immediately. By Saturday I ventured out for a walk to Walgreens 1/2 mile away. Again, complete exhaustion and nap once I got home. It's getting better, but I'm still not able to make it through a whole day at work yet, so I'm not even really thinking about training at this point.

I think the most awesome thing about last week was how much support I got from family and friends. I didn't know I had so many awesome friends! I don't want risk leaving anyone out so I don't want to name names, but to give you some examples of my friends' awesomeness, I had people driving me around (because I couldn't drive), bringing me dinner, baking me cookies, sending me flowers, and coming over to clean out the cat box and help me tie back my hair.

Which brings me to the inconveniences of having a broken arm. For me I think the biggest one is not being able to tie back my hair. I have naturally curly (more like frizzy) hair. It takes a lot of product and time with the blow dryer and flat iron for me not to look like a crazy cat lady. At this point hats are not even containing the mess on top of my head. I have an appointment with Rick today for disaster control.

I've had to be creative too with some other things like opening jars. I feel like some kind of monkey, which is also what I look like when I shave my right arm pit. Go ahead and try shaving your right arm pit with your right arm. I think I've got a mohawk going on under there now, but I'm doing the best I can. Makes me really appreciate the challenges that some of my Paralympic friends face every day.
On Monday, the week after surgery I went to ortho to get the cast off and get fitted with a new cast. Looks pretty gross still. I am going to have an awesome scar.

Instead of getting a hard cast they fitted me with "robo-arm." It's just a brace with a movable joint. So far I like the name robo-arm the best, but others have named it "bionic arm", "star wars arm", and "go, go, gadget arm". I will be taking a poll of best names to appropriately name my new best friend of the next 6 weeks.

So with robo-arm, the doc wants me moving it already and has me starting PT already which is great. The brace is so much better than a hard cast because I can take it off and shower and move my hand around. I can even type with both hands. He's got me on a pretty good range of motion in it too. Not that I have any strength to move my arm but it's still so much better than having it in a hard cast.

So that was pretty much week 1. Thanks for stopping by, and stay classy.

Update

I wanted to make a week 1 review update, but today was such a good day I had to post. First, I think I have figured out why I haven't been sleeping well... someone's been using my brace as a pillow.

So I haven't been sleeping well the last few nights, not because of the cat company, but just because my muscles are so jacked up. It's not my elbow that's been hurting so much the last two days, but my upper back from wearing the sling for the last week and guarding so much.

Yesterday I went for my first PT appointment, and it didn't go well. They set me up with a hand therapist...uhm, it's not my hand that's broken, duh! She had me do some piddly ROM exercises and when I told her that my back was what was really bugging me that day, she said that wasn't part of my therapy and I'd have to get another script from the doctor and see someone else to take care of that. What? Are you f'ing kidding me? Anyway, I did not make a follow up appointment.

I called my friend Jessica Lehman who's a PT and she recommended another therapist. I went to him today and he's great. Peter deJong, which coincidentally I have worked with before. Way back in the day I was an exercise tech at a PT clinic and he used to work there. So he poked around, looked at my back, and has come up with a good plan for my therapy. I feel really good about it.

I also feel really good because I got a massage today to work out those muscles in my upper back. We conveniently have a massage therapist that works out of our office. She's really great, Jennifer Chee. I highly recommend. I feel 10 times better than yesterday. I'm hoping I can fit one in at least once a week til this gets better.

The Crash

Here recounts the story of my big crash in the Deer Trail road race. Deer Trail is a classic Colorado road race. It's flat, windy, and my kind of race.
(not actually Deer Trail, but you get the idea, basically looks like Kansas)

I usually do pretty well in these kinds of races. I've finished on the podium in Deer Trail a few times, so I was pretty psyched for this race. Plus I was getting to race with my good buds Sharon and Beth. They're not racing crits this year because they're too dangerous with a high risk of crashing. Ironic.

So we raced around for a couple hours, blah, blah, blah. It was pretty much a race of attrition with the wind out there. By the time we came in to the final kilometer there were only 5 of us left. Me, my teammate Beth, two DFT gals, and one other person I didn't know. Going in to the sprint, Beth gave me the nod and told me she was going to lead me out. That put a lot of pressure on me because I'm convinced Beth can win any race she wants to (because she usually does.) So if she's leading you out, you better not screw it up.

Beth start going with about 3 or 400 meters to go, basically way far out. She went pretty hard but I was able to stay tucked right in on her left hip. There was a pretty strong cross wind, so staying in the draft was key. She turned to look back at the gap we had and we just got tangled up. I didn't expect her to look back and she didn't expect I was so close. It's nobody's fault, it's just one of those things that happens. I hit her back wheel with my front wheel pretty hard just couldn't save it. I hit the deck, and as I was going down I knew it was going to be bad. Plus I was pretty pissed because I was soooo going to win that sprint!

The good news is Beth didn't go down too; she actually won. Perhaps it was because I was sprawled in the middle of the road providing a good road block for the rest of the group, but hey a win's a win.

Stock photo of Beth winning, although to note, she said she didn't raise her hands in victory out of respect for her wounded teammate. She actually said that she contemplated stopping to see if I was ok, but kept sprinting because she knew I'd be more pissed if one of us didn't win. What a good teammate.

So I laid on the ground knowing I broke something. I knew other groups were coming in to the sprint, but I just couldn't get myself off the ground. The EMT helped me up eventually, and he asked if I wanted to go in the ambulance. Having been transported in the ambulance from a race before, I know how pricey that can be. Plus we were in the middle of BFE eastern Colorado and I wasn't actually dying, so we decided to drive me to the hospital in the Springs, 2 hours away.

I have to give a big thank you to Christina Moore. We drove out to the race together and she did a great job of taking care of me on the drive and making sure I got checked in to the hospital ok. I usually travel to races alone, so it was just good luck that she asked me to carpool to the race, and even better luck that she was willing to help me out so much.I don't really know how I survived the 2 hour drive or the 2+ hour wait in the ER before I saw a doctor and got good pain meds because this is what my elbow looked like. I broke off the olecranon process (tip of the elbow) when I hit the ground. Then as I was skidding across the pavement the olecranon got pushed out of the way and I just kept scraping down my ulna (lower arm bone) on the road. The doctor said the end of the ulna was real smooth after all that sanding down so the pins he put in to fix it all together fit in really flush to the bone. That's a bonus, I guess.

I also took some hunks of flesh out of my knee. You could see my inner fat from under the skin. It was kind of gross but didn't bother me at all because the pain in my elbow pain almost made me pass out a couple times.

Because it was an open fracture (broken bone through the skin) they had to do surgery right away. So I had surgery to screw it all together that night. I stayed in the hospital overnight to make sure everything was ok and to get plenty of IV antibiotics to flush out all the cow poop from the road in Deer Trail.
I got out of the hospital on Monday and went straight for an ice cream milk shake. Makes sense since with all this I'm not so worried about rehab and permanent damage to my arm, I'm just worried about becoming a big fattie with the time off the bike. So what better way to get a head start than a milk shake at Cy's.

Back to the Blog

I've decided to start blogging again because my blog fan (note singular) suggested it would be good to chronicle my comeback from my recent injury. Plus most of my family is not on the book of faces so it saves me from actually having to talk to them... just kidding Mom!

So what recent injury? I broke my elbow in a bike crash in the Deer Trail Road Race on May 16th.
I had surgery to repair it. They put pins in to fix the bones back together, and it's estimated it'll be 6 weeks before I can hit the road again on my bike. I can, however, ride the trainer. I can't tell you how awesome that is to be faced with riding the trainer in May and June after trainering through a bad winter and spring.

After considering blogging all this, I thought it could be therapeutic and help me work through all the ups and downs of coming back from injury especially at this point in my life. The last time I had a major injury was when I broke my collar bone in 2000 or 2001 at the Solano race in California. Back then I was still an enthusiastic bike racer, working my way up the ranks and that was one of my first NRC races so I was super motivated to work my way back that year. I think I raced my bike 4 weeks after that and won my first race by week number 6. But now I'm old, semi-retired (if you can retire from something you don't do professionally), and just hanging on to old glory in the sport. I've done this bike racing thing for 20 years. I'm not trying to get any better at this point; I'm just trying not to get too fat or too slow.

To tell you the truth, before the crash at Deer Trail I was really struggling with motivation for 2010. The weather this spring has been so crummy and I just don't have the drive to ride in crappy weather or trainer like I did 5 or 10 years ago when I was coming up in the sport and "trying to go pro." I was contemplating taking a break in training after Hugo to try to get myself back on track... I got a little more of a "break" than I wanted, and now I need to decide what to do.

Do I work hard, trainer my ass off, and come back strong for the late season races and masters' track nationals? I had planned on defending my title in the pursuit in Frisco in September. I even bought a new track bike this year.The other option is to bow out gracefully for the season. No one would begrudge me that. I could spend the summer doing other things that regular people do like hike, go on vacation, and do beer and barbecue on the weekends. Shit, I haven't taken a summer off racing since 1996-97 when I broke my back, and that was no "vacation". I don't know if my inner bike racer will let me do that, but it does sound like fun, more fun than riding the trainer for the next 6 weeks.

I have cried just twice since I broke my elbow. I didn't cry when I hit the ground, I didn't cry on the 2 hour car drive to the hospital or in the 2.5 hours waiting in the ER to get to see the doctor and get my first dose of morphine. I didn't cry in recovery after surgery or in the hospital alone overnight. I cried once a couple days after surgery when I woke up because it hurt so f'ing much after sleeping through taking my pain medicine. Then I cried tonight because the reality of it all hit me. A week after surgery I'm off the Percocet euphoria of the last week and I've determined this just sucks. I've been playing it off as no big deal, and in the big picture it isn't. I've been hurt worse than this and come back from bigger things, and certainly lots of people have worse problems to deal with, but I still think I'll rate this an 8 out of 10 on the suck meter.

So here we go. Tonight was a lot of words and philosophy, sorry for that. I promise in my future posts there will be a lot more pictures and amusing quips just like my old blog posts. Maybe even a few cat pictures. Next post, I'll tell you all about the crash since a lot of people have asked how it happened.