Trouble comes knocking when you’re not expecting company.
It’s never welcome anyway, so why would it wait for an invitation?
As I cruise down Laurel Street on my road bike en-route to the grocery store, I’m scarcely aware that I’m about to tango with hard Newtonian principles of gravity and deceleration. I’ve done this ride a lot. The fine mist is on my face as I sail past the parked cars at 15 miles an hour or so. The mist is important because it indicates wet surfaces with a lower coefficient of friction that are less likely to provide grip at a critical moment.
I stand up in the pedals to get into a more dynamic (trying to be cool) stance like the mountain bikers who melt over bumpy terrain.
And then the punchline: My right foot just slides right off the slippery pedal.* The foot continues down to the asphalt where there’s a sudden and vicious exchange of inertia. Down I go. A cry of outrage and anguish leaves my lips right before I hit the road like a sack of potatoes.
My face mashes into the pavement. A shockwave bounces through my skull.
There’s blood of course. I can taste it in my mouth. Pretty sure I’ve split my lip wide open. I let out another cry. I’m probably going to the hospital. Whatever happens, a lot of things are going to suck for a while.
I stagger to my feet with my bike. I can feel the blood coming down my face and feel self conscious about people seeing me this way. Should I call for help? Can I pedal to the hospital? There is no cell phone on me. And for once, I don’t have my med supplies in my backpack. More space for the fruit and vegetables I was going to buy.
The fact that there is no way I’m going to buy the groceries now is already annoying to me.
“Do you need help?”
Thank God. A middle aged woman is walking toward me. Man, I hate to ruin somebody’s day like this.
“Are you all right?”
“Ughh. I’m not really sure.”
“Do you want me to call 911?”
The way I feel, I’m positive I need stitches, but I’ve never wanted to be that guy who wastes people’s time at the ER, when there are people with actual life threatening problems waiting.
“Are you squeamish?” I ask. “Would you mind telling me what I look like?”
“I’m not squeamish,” the woman says. “It looks like you’ve got a cut on your nose that’s bleeding a lot, but it’s not that big.”
“What about my lip?” I ask.
“You’re lip looks OK,” she says.
I decide not to go to the hospital. The woman has Kleenex, and I crush a big wad of it against the bridge of my nose to stanch the bleeding. She offers me a ride, but I wave it off. I thank her profusely for her help, and start walking uphill toward my apartment, one hand holding the bike, the other clenched onto the blood-soaked tissues. There is also a growing damp patches around my knee and elbow.
No headache, no nausea, or other concussion signs are emerging that I can tell. Wear your helmet kids.
Another car offers a ride, which I almost accept, but I can’t bring myself to bleed over some do-gooder’s upholstery because of my clumsiness. After about 20 minutes walking uphill and crossing two busy interchanges, I stumble back into my home, and lie down on the bed. I can’t do anything until I stop the nose bleed.
I know that cleaning wounds is important and that cleaning wounds is going to be horrendously painful.
As soon as I take my clothes off, I can appreciate the bloody hockey puck-sized abrasions on my elbow and on my knee. My upper lip has swollen up to twice its size. It is cut on the inside and out. I spit some blood from my mouth.
I tentatively spill some water over the wounds, cringing at the pain. I can allow myself to take half a shower in a bid to wash away bacteria. I employ an irrigating syringe to get water to the hard to reach cut behind my mustache. It will be harder to take care of the cut in my mouth. I know I should brush my teeth to create a cleaner environment, but even the thought hurts.
I open up gauze bandages and treat them with antibiotic ointment, taping them onto the abrasions. Then, I dab ointment onto the cut behind my mustache.
My shoulder is wrenched, and sensitive to sudden movements. I think of skiing and kayaking, two activities I enjoy that this will affect.
I look at my battered reflection in the mirror and let out a huge sigh. It’s time to get to work.
Answering questions about what the hell happened become a part time job for the next couple of days. I field medical advice, some of it helpful. I feel like I have become my injury. Any other aspects of my personality are secondary.
Some suggest that I should go into a clinic and get everything checked out. It’s the lip that’s most worrisome. In two days, it seems as bad as ever, still swollen to a grotesque size. I can feel an angry lima bean of puffed up flesh in front of my teeth, imagine a tiny Battle of Helm’s Deep raging as my immune system locks sabers with the grotesque orc hoards of infection. Will the wall hold?
If a fever comes on, or the boil gets worse, then to the clinic I’ll go.
Yet there are victories in the midst of the suckitude. It is gratifying to heal. I change bandages frequently after showers, watching the wounds on my knee and elbow diminish. while little pink rafts of new flesh launch out over the morass of red and ooze. I think of stem cell cultures grown in petri-dishes, or the even more remarkable achievement of scientists who recently grew heart tissue on a cellulose matrix — the veins of a spinach leaf. This march of healing flesh is a cheaper miracle, but it is still extraordinary to watch the slimy pink blobs morph into my new skin. Cells are organizing themselves in a masterful production. These diligent workers just ask that I don’t throw dirt in the machinery, split the wounds back open or do anything else to screw them up, thank you very much.
I think about stories I’ve read about restored ecosystems, where nature surges back into poisoned rivers or clearcut forests. Humans still have a vital role to play in undoing their own follies, but life itself is still the most formidable driver in reclaiming a wasted landscape.
I let days go by without running or other strenuous activity. Flipping through the morass of daily news articles, I see a picture of a child’s bloody face after a bombing in Syria, and it looks worse than what I suffered. I feel a pang of empathy, imagining the horror and the uncertainty that the child must have experienced — and continues to experience with so many others. The fact that I have basic medical supplies like gauze and antibiotic ointment makes me lucky compared to many — never mind the fact that living in a good community in a stable country puts me within reach of emergency medical care.
As the battle for my upper lip rages, I brush my teeth and mouthwash multiple times a day, doing what I can to aid the cause. It doesn’t seem to be getting much better, and I begin to worry — until things take a sudden turn.
The boil pops, and a couple hours later, I spit out the dead flesh.
There is sun shining outside. I step out and feel immense gratitude to the cells that knew how to heal back together, who kept the ugliness of infection at bay. I no longer feel like a walking talking bicycle injury. All this is good, because I had told a friend I’d be down to go hiking in an hour.
“I feel damn good right now,” I announce.
* The foot that slipped taught me an important lesson about my bike design, which is that there is only one grippy side to the pedals. I never bothered putting in pedal straps in part because there is a lot of stop and go biking where I live. However, I now realize that if the pedal flips upside down, there is a greater risk that my foot will slide off and cause an accident. Oh well. Live and learn.