Roller Coaster Saturday: Part 1

So, as you can imagine from the title, Saturday was quite a day.

After finishing Heidi’s road bike, we went out for a ride together in the morning. The front brake needed to adjusted so we came back and my neighbor John fixed it for us. We then decided to go ride over to Jamba Juice to get a smoothie.

Just in front of the store I attempted to ride up through a driveway dip in the curb. All of a sudden the front tire sharply cut to the left (the curb had a bit of a lip that stuck up) and my body continued to the right, thus throwing me from my bicycle. I reached out with my right hand to brace my fall and continued to roll across the sidewalk. As I stood up I looked down at my right hand and my pinky was jetting out perpendicular to the other fingers. I looked at Heidi and said “I think I broke it”, surprisingly though, it didn’t really hurt, more uncomfortable than anything.

So we walked a couple of blocks down to the Scripps Mercy Emergency Room. Upon entering I began to feel very light-headed and sat down. Once I entered the exam area to take my weight and blood pressure, I began to get light-headed again and my blood pressure read 60/40. The nurse immediately laid me on a stretcher.

As I was being wheeled back to my waiting room, I had heard a woman crying in hysterics. I thought to myself that she had most likely lost someone very close to her. I asked the nurse that was setting up my IV why the woman was crying. She said that the woman’s husband had died of a massive heart attack while driving a car.

The first thought in my head after that was how sad Heidi or I would be if we had lost one of the other. I immediately felt very grateful to have her in my life and told myself that I would let her know what I had just experienced. When Heidi came back in to the room, I told her what had happened and thanked her for being in my life.

The doctor came in and told me that they were going to send me to the x-ray area to have x-rays taken of my hand. The nurse rolled me down there, I had x-rays taken, and then they rolled me back. The doctor came back and said that my pinky finger was dislocated and broken in 3 places. She also said that the way it was broke, I might have to have surgery.

The doctor dope me up with something similar to morphine. She then proceeded to grab my pinky and bend it back into place, not once, not twice, but three times. It barely hurt (might have been the drugs or my high threshold for pain), but it did feel weird as she moved it. I expected it to pop back in to place like you see in the movies, no such thing happened to me. It seemed more like she was bending a piece of metal straight again.

Afterwords, Heidi and I went to pick up my pain meds. The whole time I was acting all ornery, and feisty. Heidi got a kick out of it and I kept making her laugh. Then we went home to rest.

Roller Coaster Saturday Part 2 – coming soon…