I got in a bike accident. It sucked.
Yeah. Okay. I don't even know where to start on this post.
On October 16th, some friends and I rode out to Edgefield McMenamins, in Troutdale, for a birthday, her and her boyfriend were staying overnight. There was seven of us. I had three beers and three big slices of pizza, we wandered up to the hotel room they had and were being silly for a little while, before Shawn and I decided not to bike all the way home--there is a bus stop right across the street from the entrance. We realized the last bus of the night was leaving soon, so Shawn and I decided to ride down the driveway to the bus stop.
Edgefield wants you to go slow on their property, the speed limit is 5mph. Makes sense. But they put up speed bumps that are really narrow and tall. On a bike, you have to almost stop in order to get over them without jarring yourself badly.
I had my mind on the bus stop, going down their dark driveway, when I didn't see one of their speed bumps and hit it. I went over my handlebars (apparently hitting my gut on them on the way over). I hit the ground with the right side of my head and face. I mostly remember sitting up with the wind knocked out of me, trying to breathe, and then I remember realizing my glasses were broken and freaking out about it (that's always been one of my worst fears, breaking my glasses, since I only had the one pair and my astigmatism makes them expensive to replace), then I remember realizing that part of my glasses (where the part in front of your face meets the part that connects to your ear) was embedded in my face, and then looking at my hands and realizing there was blood all over them and in my eye, and looking at the ground and seeing blood all over the ground, and crying and crying. I also remember Shawn calling 911, and then that my other friends who were still there came, and that a car stopped behind me and someone handed me a bandanna, and I put it on my face, and I wasn't even sure of all the places that were bleeding. Shawn tells me I kept saying "Oh my god, oh my god."
I remember the ambulance getting there, and being put on a backboard with a neckbrace, and I remember some of the ride to the ER at Legacy Emmanuel, and Shawn telling me he was in the front seat. The EMT, who was kinda funny, cut off my shirts, but I asked him to please not cut off my bra.
At the ER, it was weird to be wheeled in and only see the ceiling, and have all these people around me doing stuff. They took the rest of my clothes off, and again I asked them to please please not cut off my bra, it was expensive and I just got it. (They didn't.) I had three different people, over the course of my time in the ER, ask to take pictures of my face, since no one there had ever seen someone with their glasses embedded in their face (just over and beside my right eyebrow, in case you're wondering). I got a CT scan, and I got dizzy watching the thing spin so I closed my eyes. I got an X-ray. I started to get really cold (shock?) and they put heated blankets on me, which at the time was the Best Thing Ever. A facial surgeon came in, and when he started injecting the local anesthetic in my face to sew me up, I started crying 'cause it hurt so much, so they gave me more morphine and Versed, and the nurse put in the Versed she said, "You probably won't remember much of the next couple hours..." The surgeon sewed up my chin and forehead and kept asking me to open my mouth so he could check my teeth, but it was difficult because, duh, I had a neck brace on still. Speaking of which, it really was starting to hurt, as I think they're one-size-fits-all. They gave me a catheter (the nurse cheerfully pointed out that I had a really full bladder), which I hated for the first hour, since it felt like having a UTI, but once it stopped hurting I didn't even feel it anymore and was very glad I didn't have to get up to pee.
The CT scan showed them that I had a lacerated liver from a blunt impact. AKA, I hit my guts on the handlebars going over them, and it tore part of my liver. Liver lacerations are graded 1-5, mine was a 3.
Shawn had to call my parents from the ER. The nurse talked to them too. We decided that they didn't need to visit that night.
I was eventually taken to the ICU (I think I finally had on a different neck brace, and I wasn't on the back board anymore), mostly so they could keep an eye on my liver. My memories of some of this are pretty fuzzy (yay Versed). Shawn had a friend pick him up and take him home via car.
The X-ray came back, my neck was fine, they (thank god) took off the brace. Then my body started to notice that my liver was injured. And because the liver doesn't have a lot of nerves of its own, it refers the pain elsewhere. Which mean my lower back and entire abdomen were aching like crazy, and I had sharper pains near the front. The night nurse must've given me morphine half a dozen times (with me waking up moaning and crying after it wore off) while he worked on getting me a Fentanyl pump. I also had the dryest mouth ever (hellooo, I'd been drinking before my accident), but because they might want to put me under general anesthesia at any moment if my liver started bleeding, I couldn't have any water. Instead, the nurse would give me a sponge thing soaked in ice water every time he came in, which felt fabulous. I did finally get the Fentanyl pump, and it was the best thing, like, ever. I had a button thing I could hold in my hand, and if I pressed it, more Fentanyl went into my IV (which was also giving me one of those saline bags with electrolytes and glucose in it, and some antibiotics). After ten minutes, it would light up, and I could press it again if I needed to. So I was in control of how much I was getting, but there was a measure in place to keep me from using too much of it. I did finally get some sleep, but damn, the ICU is a noisy place. All the machines beep, the nurse station is right outside your door, people come and go all night...and the woman in the room next to mine kept coughing so hard I thought she was going to puke or something.
My parents came by the next morning, as did Shawn. Eventually talking made me too tired (and I was in pain), so they left. At some point, a couple of doctors came in, and one told me, before telling me anything else, that I was an alcoholic, since I injured myself while drinking. WHAT. I was so dumbfounded I couldn't think of a reply. I spent all day dozing off and on and pushing the button for more Fentanyl. I was allowed to start drinking water, and I was able to eat vegan jello stuff, although anything more than a swallow of each made my stomach hurt. My brothers visited. I got a sponge bath (there was still blood on some of my face, and in my ear!) and my sheets changed and, inconveniently enough, my goddamn period started. UGH. The hospital only has pads and that weird fishnet underwear. Plus I still had a catheter in.
They didn't have to come in and check my vital signs (I had so many wires on, plus a blood pressure cuff that self-inflated once an hour and usually woke me up), but every few hours they took more blood to check my blood count and some liver stuff. I had one of those semi-permanent things in my arm, so none of it hurt. I always watched her do it, it was kinda fascinating.
At some point I took a picture of myself with my cell phone. I looked like shit, of course: scab and stitches on my chin and forehead, a huge swollen lip, a huge purple black eye.
The next day I could eat more jello stuff and drink more water and juice, and I wasn't pushing the Fentanyl button so often, although I'll admit to pressing it sometimes just so I could sleep over all the noises. Near the end of the second day, I was on "floor orders" (aka I didn't need the ICU anymore) and they were waiting for an empty bed in the ward. They took out my catheter and I peed on my own and got up and walked around the ICU while wearing two hospital gowns. Until that point, I'd been in one bed for about twenty-four hours, never leaving it, never eating or peeing. Kinda strange. Near the end of the day they put me in a wheelchair and took me to a regular hospital room.
The room was nice--almost everyone has their own tiny room. The next few days were spent craving weird foods (hospital food, btw, really truly is godawful), and having visitors, and slowly sleeping less and less every day. I didn't have an IV anymore, and I was taking ibuprofen and oxycodone pills. Not being wired, though, meant they had to come in every four hours to take my temperature and blood pressure, even in the night, and that my morning blood draw hurt. I still had in that semi-permanent IV thingie, but they weren't using it, it was only there in case I needed a transfusion or something. Shawn was there almost all day, every day, even when I was sleeping. He brought me food (so did some of my visitors) and anything else I asked for, and arranged my visitors. My first (or was it the second?) day on the ward I walked around the children's garden, which was enough to wipe me out for hours because I was still anemic. I had a nurse call button to use to get more painkillers etc. Not as nice as the pump. I always felt guilty for getting the nurse, which is really stupid, since 1. that's their job and 2. they were always cheerful about answering and bringing me stuff.
Every morning I was visited by something like three doctors, all at once--Legacy is a teaching hospital, after all. They mostly prodded me in the belly to see if it hurt. Which it did. Several times, it was the guy who told me I was alcoholic, who never mentioned it again. Again I say, what?! I did participate in a study on people who are in some kind of trauma after drinking. Got to answer a lot of questions about how much and how often I drink, that kind of thing. I really hate that kind of question, because I'm always thinking, well, what kind of average? Mean or median? It really does change the answer, dammit.
Something that makes me pissy: It wasn't until Wednesday (my accident was Saturday night, mind) that a doctor let slip that I had a hairline fracture, I assume in my face somewhere. And it wasn't until the morning I was discharged that someone told me I'd had a mild concussion. Which explained a lot, like my headaches, and my fuzzy memory of some of the stuff right after the accident, before the ambulance came. The day I got discharged, I was given a medic alert bracelet. It says: AT RISK FOR INTRA-ABDOMINAL BLEEDING DUE TO LIVER INJURY. Cheerful. I'm supposed to wear it for the next six months. I don't even take it off in the shower.
So, yeah, Thursday I came home. At first I mostly slept a lot and took my oxycodone like clockwork, because my head and liver hurt. I've been eating a lot of iron-rich foods, which as it turns out, are the foods I like anyway! Mmm...Trader Joe's Cheerios knock-off. Mmm...edamame. Mmm...greens. I've reread the His Dark Materials series and moved on to an Icelandic novel (it's in English, in case you were wondering). I'm debating dropping out of chorus. Shawn and I have discussed the trip we've been planning to take to Vancouver BC for my birthday. I'm hardly taking any painkillers at all.
The morning after my accident, Esther (whose birthday I'd ruined, and who is also a social worker) started a fund to buy me new glasses. _fool had a jar out at his party the day after my accident. The day I got home, Shawn told me the total: a little over $700. I started to cry. I know I've told people that I have some of the most awesome and generous friends in the world, but still, I was just amazed and moved. My facebook page was covered in well-wishes and offers of visits and food, too. A friend drove me out to the mall to get my glasses, and between the optometry exam (he was extra-thorough when I told him I'd been in an accident, which was reassuring) and the frames and lenses, it was $410. And that's with the frames on sale. Stupid astigmatism. And they had to special-order the lenses, so I won't get them until tomorrow or Friday. I hate going without, I really do. I've put off being properly online for days because I wanted to wait until I could see the screen easier. Well, right now it's on the kitchen table, which puts it closer to my face than when I use it on the couch, so I can see it better, although the only reason I'm not in Typo City is that I have spell check.
The extra money is going partially to a new helmet and brighter headlights, and possibly to dental bills. I got OHP a week and a half before the accident, and between that and the hospital being a non-profit, I don't think I'll have overwhelming medical bills. But OHP is shit for dental, and one of my front teeth has discolored. (It also feels like it's in the wrong place, and oh yeah, my TMJ disorder is acting up.) In addition, of course, I had to tell unemployment that no, I didn't look for work last week, and no, I wasn't capable of working, which means no money for last week, and possibly a delay on future weeks.
I hired a local lawyer who specializes in cases involving bicycles. I'm hoping to get McMenamins to pay for any medical stuff, plus possibly the dental stuff. If they say "pfft, your fault, look where you're going," I have to decide whether to sue. I'm not sure, but probably not. Of course, if I did sue, I could ask them to make those speed bumps safer/more visible, but Mark Ginsberg (the lawyer) told me that if I sue, there's no way they'll change the speed bumps until the case is settled, because that would mean acknowledging fault. Bleh.
So, yeah. LONGEST LJ POST EVER. Right now, I finish making and then eat lunch. Then I walk to a max station and go to the pharmacy and get more Wellbutrin, yay. I hope OHP pays for it. They paid for my oxycodone.
On October 16th, some friends and I rode out to Edgefield McMenamins, in Troutdale, for a birthday, her and her boyfriend were staying overnight. There was seven of us. I had three beers and three big slices of pizza, we wandered up to the hotel room they had and were being silly for a little while, before Shawn and I decided not to bike all the way home--there is a bus stop right across the street from the entrance. We realized the last bus of the night was leaving soon, so Shawn and I decided to ride down the driveway to the bus stop.
Edgefield wants you to go slow on their property, the speed limit is 5mph. Makes sense. But they put up speed bumps that are really narrow and tall. On a bike, you have to almost stop in order to get over them without jarring yourself badly.
I had my mind on the bus stop, going down their dark driveway, when I didn't see one of their speed bumps and hit it. I went over my handlebars (apparently hitting my gut on them on the way over). I hit the ground with the right side of my head and face. I mostly remember sitting up with the wind knocked out of me, trying to breathe, and then I remember realizing my glasses were broken and freaking out about it (that's always been one of my worst fears, breaking my glasses, since I only had the one pair and my astigmatism makes them expensive to replace), then I remember realizing that part of my glasses (where the part in front of your face meets the part that connects to your ear) was embedded in my face, and then looking at my hands and realizing there was blood all over them and in my eye, and looking at the ground and seeing blood all over the ground, and crying and crying. I also remember Shawn calling 911, and then that my other friends who were still there came, and that a car stopped behind me and someone handed me a bandanna, and I put it on my face, and I wasn't even sure of all the places that were bleeding. Shawn tells me I kept saying "Oh my god, oh my god."
I remember the ambulance getting there, and being put on a backboard with a neckbrace, and I remember some of the ride to the ER at Legacy Emmanuel, and Shawn telling me he was in the front seat. The EMT, who was kinda funny, cut off my shirts, but I asked him to please not cut off my bra.
At the ER, it was weird to be wheeled in and only see the ceiling, and have all these people around me doing stuff. They took the rest of my clothes off, and again I asked them to please please not cut off my bra, it was expensive and I just got it. (They didn't.) I had three different people, over the course of my time in the ER, ask to take pictures of my face, since no one there had ever seen someone with their glasses embedded in their face (just over and beside my right eyebrow, in case you're wondering). I got a CT scan, and I got dizzy watching the thing spin so I closed my eyes. I got an X-ray. I started to get really cold (shock?) and they put heated blankets on me, which at the time was the Best Thing Ever. A facial surgeon came in, and when he started injecting the local anesthetic in my face to sew me up, I started crying 'cause it hurt so much, so they gave me more morphine and Versed, and the nurse put in the Versed she said, "You probably won't remember much of the next couple hours..." The surgeon sewed up my chin and forehead and kept asking me to open my mouth so he could check my teeth, but it was difficult because, duh, I had a neck brace on still. Speaking of which, it really was starting to hurt, as I think they're one-size-fits-all. They gave me a catheter (the nurse cheerfully pointed out that I had a really full bladder), which I hated for the first hour, since it felt like having a UTI, but once it stopped hurting I didn't even feel it anymore and was very glad I didn't have to get up to pee.
The CT scan showed them that I had a lacerated liver from a blunt impact. AKA, I hit my guts on the handlebars going over them, and it tore part of my liver. Liver lacerations are graded 1-5, mine was a 3.
Shawn had to call my parents from the ER. The nurse talked to them too. We decided that they didn't need to visit that night.
I was eventually taken to the ICU (I think I finally had on a different neck brace, and I wasn't on the back board anymore), mostly so they could keep an eye on my liver. My memories of some of this are pretty fuzzy (yay Versed). Shawn had a friend pick him up and take him home via car.
The X-ray came back, my neck was fine, they (thank god) took off the brace. Then my body started to notice that my liver was injured. And because the liver doesn't have a lot of nerves of its own, it refers the pain elsewhere. Which mean my lower back and entire abdomen were aching like crazy, and I had sharper pains near the front. The night nurse must've given me morphine half a dozen times (with me waking up moaning and crying after it wore off) while he worked on getting me a Fentanyl pump. I also had the dryest mouth ever (hellooo, I'd been drinking before my accident), but because they might want to put me under general anesthesia at any moment if my liver started bleeding, I couldn't have any water. Instead, the nurse would give me a sponge thing soaked in ice water every time he came in, which felt fabulous. I did finally get the Fentanyl pump, and it was the best thing, like, ever. I had a button thing I could hold in my hand, and if I pressed it, more Fentanyl went into my IV (which was also giving me one of those saline bags with electrolytes and glucose in it, and some antibiotics). After ten minutes, it would light up, and I could press it again if I needed to. So I was in control of how much I was getting, but there was a measure in place to keep me from using too much of it. I did finally get some sleep, but damn, the ICU is a noisy place. All the machines beep, the nurse station is right outside your door, people come and go all night...and the woman in the room next to mine kept coughing so hard I thought she was going to puke or something.
My parents came by the next morning, as did Shawn. Eventually talking made me too tired (and I was in pain), so they left. At some point, a couple of doctors came in, and one told me, before telling me anything else, that I was an alcoholic, since I injured myself while drinking. WHAT. I was so dumbfounded I couldn't think of a reply. I spent all day dozing off and on and pushing the button for more Fentanyl. I was allowed to start drinking water, and I was able to eat vegan jello stuff, although anything more than a swallow of each made my stomach hurt. My brothers visited. I got a sponge bath (there was still blood on some of my face, and in my ear!) and my sheets changed and, inconveniently enough, my goddamn period started. UGH. The hospital only has pads and that weird fishnet underwear. Plus I still had a catheter in.
They didn't have to come in and check my vital signs (I had so many wires on, plus a blood pressure cuff that self-inflated once an hour and usually woke me up), but every few hours they took more blood to check my blood count and some liver stuff. I had one of those semi-permanent things in my arm, so none of it hurt. I always watched her do it, it was kinda fascinating.
At some point I took a picture of myself with my cell phone. I looked like shit, of course: scab and stitches on my chin and forehead, a huge swollen lip, a huge purple black eye.
The next day I could eat more jello stuff and drink more water and juice, and I wasn't pushing the Fentanyl button so often, although I'll admit to pressing it sometimes just so I could sleep over all the noises. Near the end of the second day, I was on "floor orders" (aka I didn't need the ICU anymore) and they were waiting for an empty bed in the ward. They took out my catheter and I peed on my own and got up and walked around the ICU while wearing two hospital gowns. Until that point, I'd been in one bed for about twenty-four hours, never leaving it, never eating or peeing. Kinda strange. Near the end of the day they put me in a wheelchair and took me to a regular hospital room.
The room was nice--almost everyone has their own tiny room. The next few days were spent craving weird foods (hospital food, btw, really truly is godawful), and having visitors, and slowly sleeping less and less every day. I didn't have an IV anymore, and I was taking ibuprofen and oxycodone pills. Not being wired, though, meant they had to come in every four hours to take my temperature and blood pressure, even in the night, and that my morning blood draw hurt. I still had in that semi-permanent IV thingie, but they weren't using it, it was only there in case I needed a transfusion or something. Shawn was there almost all day, every day, even when I was sleeping. He brought me food (so did some of my visitors) and anything else I asked for, and arranged my visitors. My first (or was it the second?) day on the ward I walked around the children's garden, which was enough to wipe me out for hours because I was still anemic. I had a nurse call button to use to get more painkillers etc. Not as nice as the pump. I always felt guilty for getting the nurse, which is really stupid, since 1. that's their job and 2. they were always cheerful about answering and bringing me stuff.
Every morning I was visited by something like three doctors, all at once--Legacy is a teaching hospital, after all. They mostly prodded me in the belly to see if it hurt. Which it did. Several times, it was the guy who told me I was alcoholic, who never mentioned it again. Again I say, what?! I did participate in a study on people who are in some kind of trauma after drinking. Got to answer a lot of questions about how much and how often I drink, that kind of thing. I really hate that kind of question, because I'm always thinking, well, what kind of average? Mean or median? It really does change the answer, dammit.
Something that makes me pissy: It wasn't until Wednesday (my accident was Saturday night, mind) that a doctor let slip that I had a hairline fracture, I assume in my face somewhere. And it wasn't until the morning I was discharged that someone told me I'd had a mild concussion. Which explained a lot, like my headaches, and my fuzzy memory of some of the stuff right after the accident, before the ambulance came. The day I got discharged, I was given a medic alert bracelet. It says: AT RISK FOR INTRA-ABDOMINAL BLEEDING DUE TO LIVER INJURY. Cheerful. I'm supposed to wear it for the next six months. I don't even take it off in the shower.
So, yeah, Thursday I came home. At first I mostly slept a lot and took my oxycodone like clockwork, because my head and liver hurt. I've been eating a lot of iron-rich foods, which as it turns out, are the foods I like anyway! Mmm...Trader Joe's Cheerios knock-off. Mmm...edamame. Mmm...greens. I've reread the His Dark Materials series and moved on to an Icelandic novel (it's in English, in case you were wondering). I'm debating dropping out of chorus. Shawn and I have discussed the trip we've been planning to take to Vancouver BC for my birthday. I'm hardly taking any painkillers at all.
The morning after my accident, Esther (whose birthday I'd ruined, and who is also a social worker) started a fund to buy me new glasses. _fool had a jar out at his party the day after my accident. The day I got home, Shawn told me the total: a little over $700. I started to cry. I know I've told people that I have some of the most awesome and generous friends in the world, but still, I was just amazed and moved. My facebook page was covered in well-wishes and offers of visits and food, too. A friend drove me out to the mall to get my glasses, and between the optometry exam (he was extra-thorough when I told him I'd been in an accident, which was reassuring) and the frames and lenses, it was $410. And that's with the frames on sale. Stupid astigmatism. And they had to special-order the lenses, so I won't get them until tomorrow or Friday. I hate going without, I really do. I've put off being properly online for days because I wanted to wait until I could see the screen easier. Well, right now it's on the kitchen table, which puts it closer to my face than when I use it on the couch, so I can see it better, although the only reason I'm not in Typo City is that I have spell check.
The extra money is going partially to a new helmet and brighter headlights, and possibly to dental bills. I got OHP a week and a half before the accident, and between that and the hospital being a non-profit, I don't think I'll have overwhelming medical bills. But OHP is shit for dental, and one of my front teeth has discolored. (It also feels like it's in the wrong place, and oh yeah, my TMJ disorder is acting up.) In addition, of course, I had to tell unemployment that no, I didn't look for work last week, and no, I wasn't capable of working, which means no money for last week, and possibly a delay on future weeks.
I hired a local lawyer who specializes in cases involving bicycles. I'm hoping to get McMenamins to pay for any medical stuff, plus possibly the dental stuff. If they say "pfft, your fault, look where you're going," I have to decide whether to sue. I'm not sure, but probably not. Of course, if I did sue, I could ask them to make those speed bumps safer/more visible, but Mark Ginsberg (the lawyer) told me that if I sue, there's no way they'll change the speed bumps until the case is settled, because that would mean acknowledging fault. Bleh.
So, yeah. LONGEST LJ POST EVER. Right now, I finish making and then eat lunch. Then I walk to a max station and go to the pharmacy and get more Wellbutrin, yay. I hope OHP pays for it. They paid for my oxycodone.