It appears the saga of my bike acci­dent wasn’t quite over. I had had two days off work and decided I was well enough to go back in work on Thursday. My wrist was pretty much OK and my hip was sore but not really pain­ful. There was only my knee which would stiffen when I sat for long peri­ods of time, but soon loosened whenever I got up and walked.

So I set off for work on Thursday. Not on the bike: I’m not up to that yet, but I caught a bus to the town centre. I did notice as I walked up to the train sta­tion that whilst I was walk­ing my knee really wasn’t pain­ful at all. How­ever, as soon as I stopped walk­ing the pain became very severe! I thought it a bit strange but car­ried on. Work was fine. I’m sat down at a desk all day any­way so there wasn’t a prob­lem with my knee. Same pain when get­ting up from my chair which eased quickly. But then that strange extra pain when I stopped walking.

On Fri­day morn­ing in the shower I decided to have a good look at my knee. I remembered that on Monday, I had noticed a black area in the would. I’d asked the doc­tor if it might be a piece of grit. She looked and decided that it wasn’t. Fri­day morn­ing in the shower I real­ised it was indeed a piece of grit or gravel. I got a pair of tweez­ers and had a poke around! As soon as I put the metal tweez­ers to it, I knew it was a piece of stone! The grat­ing sound was a give-away! I tried for quite a while but couldn’t shift it. I could get a grip but it wouldn’t come out. It seemed like the hole was too small. It was also quite pussy and get­ting pain­ful.
I decided to go back up to the hos­pital and have it looked at. I rang work to let them know and took a bus up to the hospital.

Des­pite the A&E depart­ment being almost empty I was told it would be a 1 hour wait. By this time my knee was extremely pain­ful in any pos­i­tion but walk­ing. So I paced up and down for what turned out to be about 40 minutes.
An aside: I had to go out­side the wait­ing room for a while to get away from the blar­ing TVs posi­tioned so that wherever you sat one was in your line of site. I knew day­time tele­vi­sion had got­ten bad but I hadn’t real­ised just quite how bad. Mind­less, mor­onic, ant­ag­on­istic, sen­sa­tion­al­istic, offens­ive even, with bad gram­mar galore, and infant­ile buzz words, all served up at high volume! The half a dozen people in there were all sat star­ing at the TVs. I’m sure if I’d waited long enough, I’d have seen a couple of them drooling.

Any­way, even­tu­ally my name was called, and I went through to see the doc­tor. After a quick exam­in­a­tion she agreed there was some­thing in there and explained that I needed to have two X-Rays. One so they could see where the FB (For­eign Body!) was posi­tioned, and another after it had been removed to check it was all gone.

So after my first X-Ray I went back to the doc­tor. She expressed sur­prise at the size of the gravel, I asked for my knee to be numbed: I’m a bit of a wimp really. I learned that they no longer use a freez­ing spray and four injec­tions and a 5 minute wait later she was able to dig about in my knee. And dig about she did. It took sev­eral attempts with a couple of dif­fer­ent instru­ments to try to get it out before she even­tu­ally had to get a scalpel and cut into my knee to make the hole big enough.

I should explain that this piece of gravel turned out to be no more than about 6 or 7 mm in dia­meter at it’s widest, but at the time felt like it must have a been an inch wide!
After it was out I went back for my second X-Ray. This time I had a much longer wait: around 20 minutes. Finally it was back to the wait­ing area to wait to be seen again, this time by a senior nurse who applied a dress­ing and huge amounts of band­age. I was advised to rest my leg and so took the rest of the day off work.

I was back in work today and my knee has not been bad at all. Up to now this acci­dent has cost me three days off work and prob­ably two weeks off my bike. All because of some fool!

Ouch! After I blogged about how well I was doing on my bike the other day, I had an acci­dent last night and won’t be cyc­ling for a few days!

I was about three quar­ters of way home, mak­ing good time after the week­end break. I’d reached a down­hill stretch and was going about 25 miles per hour when a car pulled out on me.

The uphill traffic was at a stand­still and he had been wait­ing to turn right into into it. He had nowhere to go, but decided to pull out any­way. Either he hadn’t see me or had mis­judged my speed — I think the former because had he seen me he would not have mis­taken just how fast I was approach­ing. He pulled out across my lane and then stopped! If he hadn’t stopped I would prob­ably have made it round the back of him. But because he had nowhere to go he had to stop.

I man­aged to yell a choice word or two (!) before I had to con­cen­trate on try­ing to stop before I hit him and stay upright. I man­aged to get into a side­ways slide which slowed me pretty fast, but then I must have hit a pothole or ridge. The next thing I knew I was sail­ing through the air with my legs some­where above my head. Not where they should be at all!

This was a first for me; I’ve fallen off my bike sev­eral times before but I’ve never flipped over the top. Thank­fully I had the where­withal — and the time — to choose to stretch out and roll side­ways when I hit the ground. I’m really glad I didn’t hit my head at all. That’s the most scary thing about cyc­ling: even though I wear a hel­met, I don’t expect it to help in the worst of cir­cum­stances.
Sev­eral people stopped and offered help which was great. The guy who pulled out on me was nowhere to be seen. He’d driven off (pre­sum­ably up the wrong side of the road) and no one had been able to get his regis­tra­tion num­ber. I must thank the lady who gave me a pack of tis­sues, and the nearby secur­ity guard who let me use his first aid kit to clean myself up, and the three other people who stopped to check I was OK.

I had a deep graze on my left knee, a pain­ful bruise on my left hip and a twinge in my right wrist. Still, the bike was OK and I man­aged to cycle the rest of the way home.

By the time I got home though my wrist was quite pain­ful. I decided I needed it checked. Jan drove me up to the local A&E depart­ment but had to leave me there: Jamie needed pick­ing up from Brownies. It wasn’t too busy; I think I only waited about 10 minutes for my first con­sulta­tion then about 15 minutes to see a doc­tor. I had three X-Rays dur­ing which the radi­olo­gist man­aged to find the most pain­ful pos­i­tion for my wrist! I really whimpered like a baby! Luck­ily noth­ing was broken, though it did feel like it. They patched me up, fit­ted a tubu­lar band­age to sup­port my wrist, and sent me on my way. Steve picked me up and took me back home.

When I woke this morn­ing my knee and hip were both stiff and my right hand was pretty much unus­able. I decided to take a day or two off work. Right now, I’m glad I’m left handed — I can at least man­age some things though I’m reduced to peck­ing at the key­board with one hand ever-so-slow-ly.

I was lucky really, it could have been a lot worse. I don’t expect to be off my bike too long.

Update: 21/04/2005 I uploaded a quick photo of my wounded knee