(no subject)
i guess i started this entry in early december with periodic updates and i never got around to editing and proofreading it but here it is:
after almost 22 years of skateboarding with general bruises and road rash i got an injury i couldn't tend at home
the last 4 months or so
11/24 - broke my arm and dislocated my wrist, went to patient first, too severe so they sent me to hospital ER. they numbed it up and pulled it back into it's relative correct position, put on a partial cast that allowed swelling but immobilized elbow and lower arm
12/1 - had surgery on my arm and wrist. titanium plate, screws and pins, removal of bone fragments, repositioning of wrist bones. another partial cast, this time alowing bending at elbow. lighter and easier to cover for showers.
12/14 - got cast off. bones not entirely healed but pins hold it together so i can start moving wrist and arm in order to lose as little movement as possible. brace to wear whenever i'm not exercising it and instructions not to lift anything over a pound...my limit is more like 10 ounces right now anyway
12/15 - went to first of fourteen physical therapy sessions scheduled over next 5 weeks. also exercises to do at home 3 times a day (very basic for now- mostly just squeezing, touching thumb to fingers, tiny amount of bending i can do)
12/19 - pain not too bad when at rest or keeping it straight, hand moves a lot but is just about useless for any actual daily task. can barely hold one side of hoodie while i pull on zipper with good hand. i couldn't turn a doorknob for a million dollars. fingernail clippers too hard to pinch together. still hard to plug in phone or ipod on charger. can sometimes squeeze out toothpaste. i am seeing improvement in how far it moves during exercises. swelling is still decreasing. figured out ways to do just about everything one handed (including shoveling horse manure and pushing a wheebarrow) and back to feeding horses etc, everything just takes longer and i have to be careful not to fall anywhere. I'm stil sleeping out in the treehouse but carrying water, food, stuff i use, coming back for ice packs, walking dog, and keeping the fire going makes it too much a pain in the ass to spend the day out there. unfortuntely my bedroom is one of the coldest rooms in the old part of the farmhouse. Looking forward greatly to housesitting. Burying deep in my brain how long this is going to take to pay off and later the fact that i'm not supposed to skateboard anymore.
1/4/2011 - i'm continuing to heal up and the doctor told me today to feel free to leave my brace off and go about life somewhat normally avoiding impacts and lifting anything heavier than 2 pounds. right now i would consider picking my nose or lifting a cup of coffee still challenging enough to provide additional physical therapy to the 2 and a half hours of range of motion exercises i'm already doing. he wants me to go to physical therapy for another month which i might do if i can keep getting it free...the therapists do about 20 minutes of massages and manipulations of my arm and wrist but all the exercises i can do at home and i've been pretty committed to them since i hope to live at least another 34 years and have the most use out of my arm as possible. i've been watching a show called "Scarred" that was on mtv about people breaking bones while i'm sitting there doing exercises and they had that guy on who was screaming "MY ankles are broken
1/6 - breakin bones is wack, i'm about 2/3 of the way through my physical therapy with 9 appointments left and then whatever they think is best for me to continue at home indefinitely. my hand/fingers are all clumsy and still not rotating all that great but i'm seeing improvement. it's just frustrating because i'm doing these basics at home for about 3 hours each day and if i devoted that much time to regular working out i'd be in better shape than ever in my life. I did bicep curls at therapy today with a 2 lb dumbell and unscrewed pegs etc. then the therapist massages it and forces it to move certain ways for 20 minutes but only about 3 minutes of it is truly painful. i'm hoping that once i get to the point of being able to do yardwork i'll get back to normal strength quickly just from shoveling manure and trimming bushes etc but i have to go slow and steady for now. right now everything i do can be considered physical therapy because it's somewhat challenging ..nose picking, picking up and drinking from a cup of coffee, playing a videogame :) next week when i'm done house sitting i'm going to see if i can play guitar worth a crap.
1/28 - still in physical therapy 3 times a week and doing various movement exercises at home 3 times daily. doctor visit next tuesday to see my progress and if i can then do rest at home (6 months to a year if i want to keep movement i have and gain more) everyday activities like eating, showering, doing dishes seem mostly normal, giant right forearm from shoveling coal and manure one handed all this time. can almost play guitar, can't bend wrist sharply enough and fingers aren't responsive enough for chords. have some new exercises to stretch tendons because my thumb is still weak and limited. still can't lift much weight and it's generally stiff and sore but far less tender than it was. i can carry my lunch down to the treehosue in my left hand again and use my right to carry water pitcher and hold firmly to the ladder. i'm wondering if i fratured my left ankle in the fall, too because it still hurts to bend it inward, aparently that wasn't just road rash. at this point, it works enough. i'm only taking tylenol 2 or 3 times a week. it doesn't seem to do much for the general achiness but it helps after i've done a good bit of exercise.
february - looking forward to warmer weather and hiking. going to have to be careful since most hiking i do is through rocky streams and random bumbling through the brush.
3/11 - Final day of physical therapy appointments (lasted so much longer than i thought they would), been hiking and yard work all the time. back to normal pretty much, can't play guitar or do push ups yet, but i'm hopeful. no tingling or numbness, hand feels normal again. have another 7-9 months to improve it's performance with exercise before it's as good as it will get
current status - working out and doing my stretches 2-4 hours everyday, happy to be alive
last winter it was multiple visits to the dentist for a broken tooth, root canal, extraction and implant, and biopsy of strange skin on my tongue. the day before thanksgving i broke my arm and dislocated my wrist quite severely so this winter: a trip to patient first(due to a total lack of understanding how severely i screwed myself), the emergency room, and surgery center i now have more titanium in my body, zero hope of saving up any money, and ten more sessions of physical therapy to see what kind of use i can get out of my hand. right now i have very limited rotation and strength but i'm healing fast and keeping up with my exercises so i'm optimistic. what i'm bummed about is i want to skateboard right now and my doctor is telling me i should never do it again. i've been skatebaording since Christmas of 1988 when i was eleven and got my first skateboard. it was briefly "cool" and then considered pretty lame the rest of the time i was in middle and high school. tony hawk wasn't a househod name yet (even though even in 1988 i was already watching him in powell peralta videos) and I knew and skated with just about every kid in my school who also did it (5-25). from 9th grade until my fist year in college i skateboarded all the time, sometimes every day, sometimes multiple times in the same day and i actually learned some tricks and could ollie enough to get up on benches and shorter loading docks and walls\ledges. I kept skating through the years as i was getting busier with my band and work but i lost my consistency at sticking the few tricks i had mastered but i still did it for fun and then i met surfin joe who introduced me to longboards which put the fun and relaxation back into it all over again. my knees aren't great and i was worried more about breaking my wrists or ankles so even when i did skate stuff ike ramps or steps i really took it easy and didn't push myself to get better, just have fun. I just fixed up a 70's board and a offroad longboard this fall (both from yardsales, one needed bearings, the other bushings) and I'd been riding the offroad board constantly. It has 6 inch tires that are inflated so it's perfect for the rough roads around my house that have random gravel and leaves all over. It was also great for riding back from feeding the horses, because i walk uphill to do that anyway and the board is a big tank and riding it in boots crusted with manure or dirt wasn't much of a problem. anyway, the way i fell was simply by getting speed wobbles after lossening the trucks so i could turn sharper on it (the board is long with no tail, all turning is done by leaning, more similar to surfing or snowboarding). I even went down a smaller hill first to see how it handled but the next hill i tired was totally different result and i got speed wobbles worse than i ever had in my life. I stayed on through 5 or 6 cycles of twisting and headed toward the edge of the road so i cold crash into the grass but i hit and slid on the road for the first 5 feet or so and i landed on my arm poorly despite my few seconds of anticipation of impact. I didn't even bend it backwards, iI can't even say if any part of my palm touched the road or it was only the side of my arm but after i got done sliding i stood up and looked at it and "DAMNIT". it was twisted enough that i knew for sure it required medical assistance. Not good. In the process of sliding I ripped off the button on my pants and pulled the teeth of the zipper apart so in my good right hand i carried my skateboard and held my pants up and left hand loosely grasped my gloves and walked home. Nothing hurt at the time but i had some nasty road rash on my back, left ankle, left hip, and wrist. The scabs became almost as thick as quarter and some still haven't come off yet. The next day my abs,neck,left ankle, and left ribs were really stiff and sore. I've fared better in car crashes. I was probably going a little over 30 mph hour when i fell, but that's typical and also about the top speed i'm comfortable with...of course anything over a speed you can hop off and run out of is dangerous, but i've never fallen going that fast before. I was skating down a huge hill with joe before carving back and forth to maintain 30 mph while he ducked and tucked to get up past 40 and got speed wobbles and fell. He rolled a lot first before he slid and escaped serious injury but each limb was compete road rsh on one side.
my best friend through middle and high school, matt, and i used to talk about how we'd still be skating when we were 35. we skated shitty spots around here and bel air and everywhere and when we went on vacations to ocean city we said screw the ocean and hit the skatepark every damn day. Skating has been the purest most reliable high in my life. I'm 34 now, and although it's been a long time since i've skated daily and enough to improve at what i'm doing I had settled into a nice pattern of ocassionally riding a ramp and trick oriented street stuff but mostly nice easy coasting and slaloming on the various longboards i have. this fall the weather was so nice..sunny, 50's that i really was getting into it because i knew winter was coming and i'd be in better shape to snowboard in our fields with my knees nice and conditioned. now i'm not ure what to do...my doctor said any kind of forceful impact could cause the bone to break..this time along the screwholes and pins and i can only assume i'd be left with some crippled nightmare of an armbone at that point with even less to screw together (not to mention the pain and expense). on the other hand, how the hell am i not going to skate again? i'm supposed to skate for fun and with my future nephews, neices, or own kids. i really can't imagine just never doing it, nd even taking it any more easier than i already had been. if i stuck to cruising in fla parking lots that would limit my speed to 15 mph tops but if i hit a rock and go flying that might be plenty to break my arm again or irritate my stiff wrist. ER doctor and surgeon both said i'm going to have bad arthritis, the only question is how bad and how soon. also, they said i could expect carpal tunnel symptoms. i always got sore hands using shovels, playing video games or guitar for anything over an hour already. i'm wondering if i can modify a lacrosse gauntlet to wear for potection. i'm trying not to think about it now. it will take a year or longer to be as healed and strong as it's going to get and i'll just have to make decisions based n my results at that point. i considered just letting it heal without surgery so it would't be a big deal if i broke it again but it seemed to be that without surgery i would be looking at zero movement of my wrist. i'm kind of lucky i can use all my fingers and feeling in them is close to normal.
lucky that...
i don't have to worry about making rent and ending up on street
was planning to spend money on dental work an new computer. tooth can wait and computer may be replaced by warranty (it was, better than old one, sweet)
didn't end up requiring external metal brace attached to arm bones
i'm right handed and don't type much and i could draw to wind down at night
hardly ever any constant "can't even read or sleep" pain
getting physical therapy for free
doctor i feed horses for did my medical history and pre-surgery bloodwork order for free
way ahead on fixing up things around the treehouse because i didn;t even want to wait for warm weather to get started. have some house sitting and the pig roast coming up and i've been staying at Josh's house a couple of days a week because Tess just broke both of her ankles and can use some help around the house. Insanity!
after almost 22 years of skateboarding with general bruises and road rash i got an injury i couldn't tend at home
the last 4 months or so
11/24 - broke my arm and dislocated my wrist, went to patient first, too severe so they sent me to hospital ER. they numbed it up and pulled it back into it's relative correct position, put on a partial cast that allowed swelling but immobilized elbow and lower arm
12/1 - had surgery on my arm and wrist. titanium plate, screws and pins, removal of bone fragments, repositioning of wrist bones. another partial cast, this time alowing bending at elbow. lighter and easier to cover for showers.
12/14 - got cast off. bones not entirely healed but pins hold it together so i can start moving wrist and arm in order to lose as little movement as possible. brace to wear whenever i'm not exercising it and instructions not to lift anything over a pound...my limit is more like 10 ounces right now anyway
12/15 - went to first of fourteen physical therapy sessions scheduled over next 5 weeks. also exercises to do at home 3 times a day (very basic for now- mostly just squeezing, touching thumb to fingers, tiny amount of bending i can do)
12/19 - pain not too bad when at rest or keeping it straight, hand moves a lot but is just about useless for any actual daily task. can barely hold one side of hoodie while i pull on zipper with good hand. i couldn't turn a doorknob for a million dollars. fingernail clippers too hard to pinch together. still hard to plug in phone or ipod on charger. can sometimes squeeze out toothpaste. i am seeing improvement in how far it moves during exercises. swelling is still decreasing. figured out ways to do just about everything one handed (including shoveling horse manure and pushing a wheebarrow) and back to feeding horses etc, everything just takes longer and i have to be careful not to fall anywhere. I'm stil sleeping out in the treehouse but carrying water, food, stuff i use, coming back for ice packs, walking dog, and keeping the fire going makes it too much a pain in the ass to spend the day out there. unfortuntely my bedroom is one of the coldest rooms in the old part of the farmhouse. Looking forward greatly to housesitting. Burying deep in my brain how long this is going to take to pay off and later the fact that i'm not supposed to skateboard anymore.
1/4/2011 - i'm continuing to heal up and the doctor told me today to feel free to leave my brace off and go about life somewhat normally avoiding impacts and lifting anything heavier than 2 pounds. right now i would consider picking my nose or lifting a cup of coffee still challenging enough to provide additional physical therapy to the 2 and a half hours of range of motion exercises i'm already doing. he wants me to go to physical therapy for another month which i might do if i can keep getting it free...the therapists do about 20 minutes of massages and manipulations of my arm and wrist but all the exercises i can do at home and i've been pretty committed to them since i hope to live at least another 34 years and have the most use out of my arm as possible. i've been watching a show called "Scarred" that was on mtv about people breaking bones while i'm sitting there doing exercises and they had that guy on who was screaming "MY ankles are broken
1/6 - breakin bones is wack, i'm about 2/3 of the way through my physical therapy with 9 appointments left and then whatever they think is best for me to continue at home indefinitely. my hand/fingers are all clumsy and still not rotating all that great but i'm seeing improvement. it's just frustrating because i'm doing these basics at home for about 3 hours each day and if i devoted that much time to regular working out i'd be in better shape than ever in my life. I did bicep curls at therapy today with a 2 lb dumbell and unscrewed pegs etc. then the therapist massages it and forces it to move certain ways for 20 minutes but only about 3 minutes of it is truly painful. i'm hoping that once i get to the point of being able to do yardwork i'll get back to normal strength quickly just from shoveling manure and trimming bushes etc but i have to go slow and steady for now. right now everything i do can be considered physical therapy because it's somewhat challenging ..nose picking, picking up and drinking from a cup of coffee, playing a videogame :) next week when i'm done house sitting i'm going to see if i can play guitar worth a crap.
1/28 - still in physical therapy 3 times a week and doing various movement exercises at home 3 times daily. doctor visit next tuesday to see my progress and if i can then do rest at home (6 months to a year if i want to keep movement i have and gain more) everyday activities like eating, showering, doing dishes seem mostly normal, giant right forearm from shoveling coal and manure one handed all this time. can almost play guitar, can't bend wrist sharply enough and fingers aren't responsive enough for chords. have some new exercises to stretch tendons because my thumb is still weak and limited. still can't lift much weight and it's generally stiff and sore but far less tender than it was. i can carry my lunch down to the treehosue in my left hand again and use my right to carry water pitcher and hold firmly to the ladder. i'm wondering if i fratured my left ankle in the fall, too because it still hurts to bend it inward, aparently that wasn't just road rash. at this point, it works enough. i'm only taking tylenol 2 or 3 times a week. it doesn't seem to do much for the general achiness but it helps after i've done a good bit of exercise.
february - looking forward to warmer weather and hiking. going to have to be careful since most hiking i do is through rocky streams and random bumbling through the brush.
3/11 - Final day of physical therapy appointments (lasted so much longer than i thought they would), been hiking and yard work all the time. back to normal pretty much, can't play guitar or do push ups yet, but i'm hopeful. no tingling or numbness, hand feels normal again. have another 7-9 months to improve it's performance with exercise before it's as good as it will get
current status - working out and doing my stretches 2-4 hours everyday, happy to be alive
last winter it was multiple visits to the dentist for a broken tooth, root canal, extraction and implant, and biopsy of strange skin on my tongue. the day before thanksgving i broke my arm and dislocated my wrist quite severely so this winter: a trip to patient first(due to a total lack of understanding how severely i screwed myself), the emergency room, and surgery center i now have more titanium in my body, zero hope of saving up any money, and ten more sessions of physical therapy to see what kind of use i can get out of my hand. right now i have very limited rotation and strength but i'm healing fast and keeping up with my exercises so i'm optimistic. what i'm bummed about is i want to skateboard right now and my doctor is telling me i should never do it again. i've been skatebaording since Christmas of 1988 when i was eleven and got my first skateboard. it was briefly "cool" and then considered pretty lame the rest of the time i was in middle and high school. tony hawk wasn't a househod name yet (even though even in 1988 i was already watching him in powell peralta videos) and I knew and skated with just about every kid in my school who also did it (5-25). from 9th grade until my fist year in college i skateboarded all the time, sometimes every day, sometimes multiple times in the same day and i actually learned some tricks and could ollie enough to get up on benches and shorter loading docks and walls\ledges. I kept skating through the years as i was getting busier with my band and work but i lost my consistency at sticking the few tricks i had mastered but i still did it for fun and then i met surfin joe who introduced me to longboards which put the fun and relaxation back into it all over again. my knees aren't great and i was worried more about breaking my wrists or ankles so even when i did skate stuff ike ramps or steps i really took it easy and didn't push myself to get better, just have fun. I just fixed up a 70's board and a offroad longboard this fall (both from yardsales, one needed bearings, the other bushings) and I'd been riding the offroad board constantly. It has 6 inch tires that are inflated so it's perfect for the rough roads around my house that have random gravel and leaves all over. It was also great for riding back from feeding the horses, because i walk uphill to do that anyway and the board is a big tank and riding it in boots crusted with manure or dirt wasn't much of a problem. anyway, the way i fell was simply by getting speed wobbles after lossening the trucks so i could turn sharper on it (the board is long with no tail, all turning is done by leaning, more similar to surfing or snowboarding). I even went down a smaller hill first to see how it handled but the next hill i tired was totally different result and i got speed wobbles worse than i ever had in my life. I stayed on through 5 or 6 cycles of twisting and headed toward the edge of the road so i cold crash into the grass but i hit and slid on the road for the first 5 feet or so and i landed on my arm poorly despite my few seconds of anticipation of impact. I didn't even bend it backwards, iI can't even say if any part of my palm touched the road or it was only the side of my arm but after i got done sliding i stood up and looked at it and "DAMNIT". it was twisted enough that i knew for sure it required medical assistance. Not good. In the process of sliding I ripped off the button on my pants and pulled the teeth of the zipper apart so in my good right hand i carried my skateboard and held my pants up and left hand loosely grasped my gloves and walked home. Nothing hurt at the time but i had some nasty road rash on my back, left ankle, left hip, and wrist. The scabs became almost as thick as quarter and some still haven't come off yet. The next day my abs,neck,left ankle, and left ribs were really stiff and sore. I've fared better in car crashes. I was probably going a little over 30 mph hour when i fell, but that's typical and also about the top speed i'm comfortable with...of course anything over a speed you can hop off and run out of is dangerous, but i've never fallen going that fast before. I was skating down a huge hill with joe before carving back and forth to maintain 30 mph while he ducked and tucked to get up past 40 and got speed wobbles and fell. He rolled a lot first before he slid and escaped serious injury but each limb was compete road rsh on one side.
my best friend through middle and high school, matt, and i used to talk about how we'd still be skating when we were 35. we skated shitty spots around here and bel air and everywhere and when we went on vacations to ocean city we said screw the ocean and hit the skatepark every damn day. Skating has been the purest most reliable high in my life. I'm 34 now, and although it's been a long time since i've skated daily and enough to improve at what i'm doing I had settled into a nice pattern of ocassionally riding a ramp and trick oriented street stuff but mostly nice easy coasting and slaloming on the various longboards i have. this fall the weather was so nice..sunny, 50's that i really was getting into it because i knew winter was coming and i'd be in better shape to snowboard in our fields with my knees nice and conditioned. now i'm not ure what to do...my doctor said any kind of forceful impact could cause the bone to break..this time along the screwholes and pins and i can only assume i'd be left with some crippled nightmare of an armbone at that point with even less to screw together (not to mention the pain and expense). on the other hand, how the hell am i not going to skate again? i'm supposed to skate for fun and with my future nephews, neices, or own kids. i really can't imagine just never doing it, nd even taking it any more easier than i already had been. if i stuck to cruising in fla parking lots that would limit my speed to 15 mph tops but if i hit a rock and go flying that might be plenty to break my arm again or irritate my stiff wrist. ER doctor and surgeon both said i'm going to have bad arthritis, the only question is how bad and how soon. also, they said i could expect carpal tunnel symptoms. i always got sore hands using shovels, playing video games or guitar for anything over an hour already. i'm wondering if i can modify a lacrosse gauntlet to wear for potection. i'm trying not to think about it now. it will take a year or longer to be as healed and strong as it's going to get and i'll just have to make decisions based n my results at that point. i considered just letting it heal without surgery so it would't be a big deal if i broke it again but it seemed to be that without surgery i would be looking at zero movement of my wrist. i'm kind of lucky i can use all my fingers and feeling in them is close to normal.
lucky that...
i don't have to worry about making rent and ending up on street
was planning to spend money on dental work an new computer. tooth can wait and computer may be replaced by warranty (it was, better than old one, sweet)
didn't end up requiring external metal brace attached to arm bones
i'm right handed and don't type much and i could draw to wind down at night
hardly ever any constant "can't even read or sleep" pain
getting physical therapy for free
doctor i feed horses for did my medical history and pre-surgery bloodwork order for free
way ahead on fixing up things around the treehouse because i didn;t even want to wait for warm weather to get started. have some house sitting and the pig roast coming up and i've been staying at Josh's house a couple of days a week because Tess just broke both of her ankles and can use some help around the house. Insanity!