Back to Square One
I went for a bike ride this past Sunday, it was my first real ride with the gang since I got my cast off, and it was set to be a great day. We met up at a coffee shop around 9 or so, and headed South-East out of town along the bike paths, riding up into the foothills towards Honey Run Road, the very road I crashed coming down on ten weeks ago.
My leg was feeling pretty good. I’d spent a large portion of my morning preparing, stretching and massaging my knee, and it wasn’t that stiff once I got on the saddle. Though I was trailing a bit behind the pack as we made our way through the gentle foothills, it was still fantastic to be back on the road together.
Feeling perhaps a bit overconfident, I decided to try heading up Centerville Road, a milder climb that begins just as Honey Run Road starts to get steep. It was slow going climbing with such a weakened leg, but it felt good. I felt like what I was doing was within my abilities, and was just another part of increasing the flexibility and strength of my knee.
What I didn’t anticipate was my right cleat suddenly detaching from the pedal in mid-stroke, suddenly placing all of my weight and momentum onto my bent left leg. Not having the strength to hold myself up on the injured leg alone, it bent beneath my much further than I had yet been able to achieve through physical therapy. I remember hearing a noise, something like a snap and a pop, and then the pain began. I don’t think I have ever felt anything so painful before.
It was laying on the road, screaming obscenities into the sky, biting hard into the leather palms of my gloves, wiping tears from my face, and screaming some more, that I realized I had done something enormously regrettable. An X-ray taken this morning confirmed that I had split my kneecap open again, worse than the original fracture I had inflicted little over two months before.
So I’m back to square one, a bit worse off this time around. It would have been nice if just letting the bone stitch itself back together had been enough, but the fact that I could split the bone simply by bending my knee proves that it was insufficient, and that more invasive measures are necessary. I’m going to have knee surgery sometime this week, in which they will either pin my kneecap back together with small metal rods, wrap the bone in thin metal wires to hold the pieces together, or some combination thereof.
This operation will be followed by another eight to ten weeks in a cast, after which I will begin some much more challenging physical therapy. I’ve got a long way to go before I’ll be riding again, let alone walking.
I had planned to spend this summer working, riding, and generally recovering from the mild depression that seven weeks in a cast had brought upon me. It now looks like I may have to push that process a bit further down the calendar.