Hella Patella
This is the short version:
Yesterday I crashed my bicycle while riding back downhill towards Chico from Paradise. My injuries would likely have been much worse had I not been wearing my helmet. I was given a ride to Enloe Medical Center where X-rays revealed I had fractured my left patella (kneecap). Luckily, the orthopedic surgeon doesn’t think my knee will require surgery, but I will have to wear a full-leg cast for the next 8-12 weeks. I have a positive outlook and know that things could have gone much worse.
This is the long version:
Yesterday started off great. I woke up a little later than I wanted to but was able to fry up some eggs and a grilled cheese before riding out the door. Met up with a crew of eight other riders outside a coffee shop near the edge of town, and took off into the hills by about nine thirty. There are a few routes from Chico through the foothills and up and out of the valley. Honey Run road is a popular climb, with no shortage of narrow blind corners, sharp switchbacks, and off-camber curves. Normally one would suffer up this relatively steep 1500’ climb to Paradise, and then ride back down to Chico on Honey Run Road’s gentler, longer, and smoother cousin Neal road. This Sunday we attempted the reverse.
The climb up Neal road was certainly kinder than it would have been going up Honey Run. Riding in a larger group than normal was nice, and we soon broke up into a few sets riding at different paces. At one point I stopped with Quinn who was taking off some layers, and we both dropped to the back of the field. Being the only rider on a single-speed, it was satisfying to be able to leap-frog my way from rider to rider and ultimately get to the top of the hill first. Blah blah I’m a hardbody fool.
After the full group converged in Paradise, about half of the riders turned around to roll back down Neal road, while the rest of us continued up the relatively mellow bike trail through Paradise. Finding the trail none too exciting, we began to descend back towards the valley. While the bike trail wasn’t too steep, it was smooth enough to build up some speed if you tucked in, zipping past joggers with freewheels buzzing like angry bees.
I was originally opposed to riding down Honey Run road, since the last time I did involved a few too many close calls with motorists coming up and around blind corners. Staying in the right hand lane (as if there were room for two lanes) on the way down means frequently riding but a few feet away from a steep drop-off into the canyon. I rationalized though, last time I had been riding with only one brake on my bike while I now had too, and I had become much more confident descending at speed since then. If things started to feel sketchy, I’d simply cool-off my speed a bit and take it easy.
So the five of us began our descent. The uppermost portion of Honey Run is deceptively well paved and offers longer-than-usual sight lines around corners. I allowed myself to push my luck a bit in a few of the early curves, and the thrill of leaning hard through the apex of a curve with confident rubber kissing the pavement is undeniable. The road started to deteriorate pretty rapidly and the turns started coming a bit quicker, and I failed to adjust my strategy.
About three quarters of a mile from the top of the hill, things got sketchy and I crashed. I had whipped around one corner and found myself going too fast for the next. Had I let myself lean a little bit further into the curve my tires most likely would have held, but instead my brain took over. Coming into a curve too hot, the brain incorrectly says “sit up! hit the brakes!”. That’s what I did, and it took me right into a ditch, over the handlebars, and into an outcropping of volcanic rock, dirt, and grass.
I felt my helmet smack into the earth and my lower body bounce off the dark stone. I fell back and to the side, and was laying sideways on the pavement with my feet dipping into some cold water that was running through the ditch alongside the road. I don’t know who came upon me first, but the three riders behind me took the corner a lot slower and were able to safely come to a stop upon the sight of me laying in a ditch with my bike flipped ass-over-elbows.
Ryan instantly took control of the situation, calling upon his Wilderness First Responder training. He checked my head, my neck, my shoulders, my ribs wait and hips, and worked his way down my legs. My left knee was screaming out in that vividly bright kind of pain that comes with stubbed toes or crushed funny bone ganglia. Ryan pulled me up onto the shoulder of the road and straightened me out, telling me not to move. I didn’t feel that bad though, and was able to stand up for a little while, putting a bit of weight onto my gimp leg, but as soon as I tried to bend it at the knee things started to really hurt.
I gave my boss Steve O’Bryan a call and he sped over in his monstrous Chevrolet. Soon enough we were cruising back towards civilization, while Ian, Steve’s ten-year old son, fed me chips one at a time from shotgun. I first thought I should go to the Student Health Center, to get some ice, painkillers, and an x-ray “just in case”. When it turned out they were closed along with the rest of the buildings on campus for César Chávez Day, Steve recommended Enloe, the nearest hospital.
It was climbing out of the car and into a wheelchair outside the Enloe ER that I bent my knee more than a few degrees. I’ve heard that the way we remember pain is peculiar in that our brains are unable to “playback” the pain when we recall it, as it does with other sensations. All I can remember about bending my leg is light and heat and cursing and not wanting to do it ever again. I remember it hurting worse than anything else I’ve ever done to myself.
They called me into the examination room after about an hour wait in the lobby. Some poking, prodding, and a few x-rays later, they told me I did a great job crashing. The collision had fractured my kneecap in about three different ways, without actually cracking it into separate pieces. If the bone had broken apart, the tendons in my thigh and shin would have pulled it apart causing some nasty tissue damage in the process. As the doctor described this avoided injury I visualized the two tendons snapping back like spring-rolled window blinds. Luckily, the rest of the joint was unscathed.
After consulting with an orthopedic surgeon and a few more radiologists, they determined that I would most likely need to have the kneecap wrapped in wires to prevent it from fracturing more and pulling apart. At this point my knee had swollen from internal bleeding to the point where all definition and shape of the kneecap through the skin had disappeared.
They dosed me with some heavy strength Vicodin, and warned it might make me feel a bit “loopy”. I’d never taken anything with hydrocodone in it before, so I started suspecting every slight variation in my perception. Is that me going loopy, is this? Only when they tried to move me from the examination table to a wheelchair did it really hit me. Balance and vision were lost pretty quickly and replaced with a dry and empty nausea. They flipped me back into the bed and promptly put a drop or dissolving tablet of something under my tongue. Within seconds it was like they had snapped their chemist fingers and my head instantly cleared up. Miracle anti-hydrocodone elixir?
With my knee wrapped in ace bandages and my leg held straight in a velcro immobilizer, they sent me home with an appointment to see the orthopedic surgeon first thing this morning, most likely for surgery. After picking up some more Vicodin at the pharmacy (and almost passing out again) Steve took me back to his house for the night. A little bit of reading, a little bit of lasagna, no shortage of care or concern from the O’Bryans, and plenty more Vicodin put me to sleep rather easily.
Monday morning I met again with the orthopedic surgeon to discuss methods for mending, and I was very relieved to hear that he didn’t think any surgery would be necessary. Apparently my kneecap has too many fractures running through it, and placing pins into it or wrapping it with wire could cause it to deform. He referred to the current state of the bone as “mush”, and instead recommended that I let the bone continue to heal on its own, just within a cast.
The casting technician began by taking off the ace bandages and immbilzer that I had been wearing for about twenty hours prior. Binding my leg in a few layers of various cottons, he topped it off with a wrap of wet fiberglass that set within a few minutes. From my ankle to about six inches below my hip is one solid cast at this point, keeping my leg very straight.
Steve’s wife Katy drove me home with my new club of a leg, about twenty-four hours after I crashed. Not a bad turn-around time if you ask me.