Update 10-27-05. Today, 8 days after my surgery, I rode my bike into town. What a great feeling! I still have some pain, and a lot of recovering yet to go through, but the results so far are fantastic. On my first therapy visit the day after the surgery, I was bending my knee 90 degrees. By my second therapy visit 4 days later, I had 90% of my normal range-of-motion back and they put me on the bicycle trainer for 5 minutes. After doing 7 minutes yesterday, I didn’t see any harm in getting on my real bike and riding the mile into town. It was cold and it started raining on me and it was wonderful. !!!!
Update 10-19-05. My surgery was quick and apparently very successful. I’m still on painkillers, but the few steps I’ve taken have felt really good and the pain that I am experiencing is minor and seems to be more in the area of the access holes than inside the knee. Dr. Martin said the lateral meniscus tear was bigger than the MRI showed, but that everything went well and he was able take care of both of the tears. I happy with it and looking forward to a quick recovery (with crossed-fingers knocking on wood!)
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Well, I waited five weeks and saw the doctor again today. The knee has been getting slowly better, but it’s not good. I’m still limping, which other people notice even when I don’t anymore and that’s not something I want to get used to.
The knee is still unstable enough and painful enough that, after a quite long discussion with Dr. Martin about the merits of waiting and the risks of surgery, we decided to go ahead. The meniscus tears for sure won’t heal themselves, and there is a certain amount of risk that the tears are damaging cartilage. More importantly, I can’t do what for me are normal activities, like hiking and volleyball, and even cycling is limited compared to what I was doing pre-accident.
The surgery is next Wednesday, Oct. 19. It takes about an hour and I’ll walk out and start physical therapy the next day. I’m not looking forward to it, but at the same time, I want to get back to “normal” soon. Stay tuned. 😉
I was thinking back on another of my crashes. I was lying on the manhole cover I landed on — the only hard thing on the wide grass median where I had fallen — looking up at the stars — listening to the indifference of the drivers in the cars passing by — assessing the extent of my (superficial but still painful) injuries, and I remember thinking, “Are you going be doing this when you’re 80?” I also remember the answer was emphatically, “I hope so.”
I had the great opportunity to meet the author of “Need for the Bike.” Paul Fournel was at Penn State visiting his friend and translator Allan Stoekl, and he gave a talk on the Tour de France at the local bookstore/cafe. I had heard of this book a couple of years ago and it’s been on my “books to read” list for way too long, so this was an chance not to be missed. I bought the book and have been transfixed at his insights into the minds of cyclists. If you want to better try to understand why I got back on the bike to finish my trip after tearing apart my knee, this book would be a good start. An excerpt from the section called “The Violent Bike:”
“I was so far out of it that the doctor they called had me repeat my name and count my fingers. He closed my wounds and hurried me into a howling ambulance that hurried me to the hospital.
From that point on my financial problems were paramount, and my health was secondary…
And still I ride.
Not one of these accidents turned me off or made me regret riding. As soon as I’m on the ground I do an inventory of the the damage in order to figure out how long it’ll be before I can get back on the bike.”
Exactly. 😉
Powder River Pass Wyoming July 7
