Day 11 - Faith in God

Last night I tell my wife I want to go to church. I feel I need to pay my respects to God. So after breakfast we get dressed and off we go. We make it there. My wife wheels me in and we use elevator to get upstairs. I miss church. We faithfully attend most every Sunday. It feels good to be in the house of the Lord. The preacher asks how I doing from the pulpit, and I tell him "I'm making steady progress, thanks to the Lord". In his sermon the pastor preaches about having faith in God. "Put you faith in the Lord and he will sustain you," says the preacher. I'm not an overly-religious person. I don't blame God for my accident or ask God why it happened. Instead I thank him for my blessings. There are people in this world who are suffering more than me. I have faith in God and that he will help me get through this ordeal. On the way out after church I thank the preacher for coming by to say a prayer for me when I was in the hospital.

Day 10 - First Beer

I had my first beer this evening. It seems like an eternity since I drank one. In reality it's been 14 days since my accident. I love frosties. My favorite are microbrews. While at HEB earlier during the day I convince my wife that since I am no longer taking any Vicodin during the day that it is ok. She relents. I pick out a six pack of "Wild Blue". It is a blueberry flavored lager brewed in New York. It packs a whallop with a 8% alcohol content. It's like drinking two beers instead of one. After we get home from our outing for the day (went to Petco, HEB, and my mom's) I open it and take my time savoring the flavor as it slides down my parched throat. Toast to the brewmaster!

Day 10 - La La Land

Yesterday I had a breakthrough in cutting down on my dosage of Vicodine that I take for pain. I make the whole day without having to take any. The night was a different story. My leg starts twitching. (I guess it is tired from the rehab and moving I do during the day). So to stop the twitching I pop two Vicodin and two Valium. Welcome to La La Land.

I wake up in the middle of the night cause I have to pee. I keep the pee bottle next to me and do my business. I pop another two Vicodin and drift back to sleep. One hard thing about sleeping is I have to sleep on my back. I normally sleep on my left or right side, which I can't do with of my hip fracture. It's uncomfortable since I am used to sleeping on my side, but once the pills kick in I'm ok.

Day 9 - My Blog

Getting up in the morning is the worst. I have a hard time waking up because of the Vicodins I take to go to sleep at night. It takes quite an effort to get out of bed. I basically have to turn my body 90 degrees using my arms and heels of my feet to move my body around. Once I am perpendicular to the side of the bed, I slowly slide myself off the bed and put my good leg on the floor and grab the walker at the same time. It takes about two to three minutes to do it. The painful part is all the blood in my leg rushes to my calf and foot which hurts a bit for a while until I walk around a bit.

I usually go take a piss and then grab my pills and walk to the kitchen and eat breakfast. My wife is up and cooks breakfast and makes coffee. I drink a cup of coffee to wake up and then eat my breakfast. My leg isn't in too much pain today. I decide to not take my pain pills to see how I do. After breakfast I spend a few hours on the computer checking my e-mail and working on my blog. A few days earlier I had decided to create a blog of my ordeal called "Singletrack to Recovery". Singletrack means "a trail" in mountain biking terminology. Singletrack also means "a singular focus". The title conveys my focus on recovering so I can mountain bike again. I like it.

Writing the blog is theraputic and gives me something to do besides work. I have always liked to write. I plan to post a link to my blog on our club's forum so people can follow my recovery. I've been working on it steadily for the past two days. Writing and editing. Most of the entries have been postdated to approximate the days and times of the actual events as I did not have access to a computer until I came home on Saturday. I work on my blog until 2 p.m. I'm doing good without the Vicodin. I pop an Ibuprofen 600 mg for pain just in case. I start to get sleepy. I'm going to lay down for a while.

Day 8 - Stomping Grounds

My public outing today consists of going to Mission Trails. We load up and get in the car and drive to the trails. We arrive at 6 p.m. I get out and into my wheelchair. Paul, one of local regular riders out there sees me and comes up and we talk for a while. I explain my story to him. We finish talking and my wife pushes me in the wheelchair down the paved Hike and Bike. It feels out of place to be riding the paved Hike and Bike in my wheelchair. I look over at the trails to my left and imagine myself on my bike riding the trails. It feels good to be back at my stomping grounds. I love riding my mountain bike and can't wait to get back on it.

My wife pushes me past the Bike Breaker. The Bike Breaker is an expert-level 25-foot drop down and up a steep ravine over a wooden bridge. It is the most difficult and dangerous obstacle we have at the trails. It has claimed numerous bikes, hence the name. It took me six months to build up my skills and courage to ride it. I now ride it regularly, but it is always scary and gives me an adrenline rush no matter how many times I ride it. I think about trying it my wheelchair. That would be a first. But I don't have my helmet. Safety first. Just kidding.

We come across Caleb, John D., Joanne, and Ray, who are riding. They stop and we talk for a little bit. It boosts my spirits to talk to them. Caleb takes a picture of us with his phone. After that my wife wheels me back to the parking lot and we drive home.

Day 8 - My Angel

The one person who has been my angel through this whole ordeal is my wife. She has been at my side since the accident, staying at the hospital and taking good care of me. Most of the nights she slept on a chair next to my bed. She also has been taking care of me at home, feeding me, cleaning up after me, transporting me around, pushing me in the wheelchair, and in general cheering me on. I thank God that I met and married her and appreciate everything that she is doing for me. This accident made me realize how sometimes we tend to take the people we love -- our family, friends, and others who are important to us -- for granted. Sometimes it takes something bad to happen in our lives to realize the good we have.

Day 8 - Experiment Didn't Work

Yesterday was rough. I tried to suck it up and take the pain of cutting back by taking one Vicodin (325 mg) instead of two every four hours as the doctor had prescribed. But I could feel the pain in my leg and it made me grumpy for most of the day. To top it off my ankle and foot was swollen. I think I have been walking too much. Called the doctor's office and they say I need to be in bed and keep my foot raised. After responding to some work e-mails and paying bills in the morning, I climb into bed for some rest.

Day 7 - The Medicine Police

I wake up and I'm in a lot of pain. It's been six hours since I took my last pain pills. I get out of bed and using the walker go empty my pee bottle from the night and then brush my teeth. I transfer myself to the wheelchair and wheel myself to the kitchen to eat breakfast -- blueberries, sausage, eggs, and coffee -- but I'm in too much pain. I down a Vicodin and before I can down the other my wife snatches the bottle away from me and says it is time for me to start cutting back on the pills. In pain and protest I wheel myself to the bathroom and make a big stinky for her to clean up. I have a bad feeling that it is going to be a long day.

Day 6 - Connecting to Work

I call a few of my coworkers at work to let them know the surgery went well. Quite of few of them had gotten together and sent me a plant/flowers, a big goodie basket, books, and a card while I was in the hospital. The goodie basket was awesome. It was filled with a bottle of wine, fruit, candy, crackers, cheese, magazines, and other snacks. My wife and I made a serious dent in it while we were in the hospital. I was tempted to break open the bottle of wine but my wife wouldn't let me. Besides, who needs alcohol when you have Vicodin and Valium? You know how bad hospital food is. Bland. No taste whatsoever. It was real nice gesture of them. I write them a thank you e-mail. I speak to our IT guy and he set me up with a remote desktop connection so I can access my work computer files and e-mail through my home computer, which is cool technologically-speaking. What a dedicated employee I am. I have been out of work for less than week. Must be medications going to my head.

Day 5 - Target and Underwear

My wife thinks its time for me to get out of the house. So we plan my first public outing -- to Target. She's tired of looking at all my old crusty underwear. I was putting on a pair of briefs in the morning and just about when I had them all the way up I look down and see the floor through them! Turns out they had some nice size holes in the bottom of them. No wonder I could feel a draft. LOL. So I get dressed and we gather and load my handicap stuff -- pills, pee bottle, walker, wheelchair -- into the car and off we go. The hardest part of the trip is getting into and out of the car. I have to use my walker to get out of the house and then I transfer myself into the wheelchair. My wife wheels me over to the car, where I stand up and turn myself using my good leg and slowly lower myself into the car seat. I rotate my hips and slowly move both of my legs into the car and viola! I'm in. The whole process takes about five minutes. At Target I wheel around in my wheelchair as my wife pushes the cart and we get our stuff. I pick out a pack of boxers along with some other stuff we need. We make it home two hours later. Mission accomplished. It feels good to get out in public again.

Day 5 - Memorial Day Honor

Today is Memorial Day. I think about some of the veterans who have died or have come home without a leg or arm or other body part from the Iraq War and it puts my broken hip injury in perspective. You can recover from a broken hip. How does it feel to have you legs blown off by a IED in Iran. Can you imagine the pain and rehabilitation from that and how it dramatically changes your life? My injury and rehab is a walk in the park by comparison. While it is not easy, I remind myself to not complain or have a pity party about my situation. Things will be getter slowly. I raise my box of apple juice -- since I can't drink frosties for a while -- to salute our veterans who fought in previous wars and the soldiers who are fighting in Iraq so we can remain free to pursue life, liberty, happiness, and ride singletrack. God Bless America.

Day 5 - Thanks Cruzers

I want to thank the Mission Trails Club Cactus Cruzers for sending me a plant/flower arrangement and card, visiting me, and keeping me in their thoughts and prayers. Several of my friends from the club had come by and dropped off magazines, notes, cards, and other care packages while I was in the hospital. I have met and made a lot of good friends through the club since I joined three years ago. I truly value the friendships and the good times, both on and off the bike, that we have had. I post on our forum to thank everyone and to let them know the surgery went fine and I am at home recuperating. I call a few of my riding buddies to tell them what happened. They all tell me if there is anything they can do for me to let them know.

You can read about the Mission Trails Club and our adventures and see pictures of our club events and activities at http://www.missiontrails.org/. If you are looking for a cycling club to join, I highly recommend ours. But as a member, former president, and now one of the directors of the club, I am bias. Our club is about more than just cycling. We are like family. If you are looking for a club to just train and race then look elsewhere. While some of us are competitive, myself included, we are very supportive and encouraging of all level of riders and abilities. I tell people our club values are based on the four F's: friendship, family, fun, and frosties.

Day 4 - Sunday Routine

It's my first full day home from the hospital. No quite sure what to do. Usually the first thing I do on a Sunday after I get up is to go for a ride on my mountain bike. When I was in training I would ride from my house near 2 Mile Line and ride to the trails. From the trails I would ride the Hike and Bike to the World Birding Center and do a lap at the WBC. Then back to Mission Trails and my house. It was a good hour to hour and a half workout. After my ride it was off to church from 10:45 a.m. to noon. Sometimes after church we go visit my parents in McAllen for lunch. So much for most of usual routine. I spend most of the day in bed watching movies, using the walker to get to the bathroom to take a leak, or to the kitchen to eat lunch and dinner, do laps around the kitchen and living room to rehab my leg, and popping pills. Guess this is gonna be my new routine for a while.

Day 3 - Home at Last

Home at last. It feels good to be home after spending over a week in the hospital. I escaped from the hospital at 2 p.m. The first thing I do when I get home is look for my cats. I have three indoor cats --Smokey, Casey, and Kippy -- that I am very attached to. They look at me in in the wheelchair and are scared. One of them - Kippy -- hides under the bed and doesn't want to come out. After a while they realize it is me and come over to sniff me and my stuff to see where I've been. I know I'm ripe. My wife tells me so. She helps me take a shower. Several of my family and my wife's family come by to help. My mother-in-law had both of her knees replaced two years ago and knows what the pain and rehab is like. She's in her late 60s and if she can do it and walk again, so can I. Together they brought me a wheelchair, a walker, a chair for the shower, and a potty chair. I feel like a 70-year-old fart. I also get to see my younger son, Noah, 10, who I hadn't seen since the accident. He gives me a big hug. It's great to see him. He was staying at my in-laws while I was in the hospital. My mom brings me some brisket and potato salad. Nothing beats my mom's home cooking. It's good to eat some real food again.

Day 2 - My First Walk

My second day of recovery after surgery in the hospital is about the same as the first. The rehab people come by in the morning. They help me get up and using the walker I walk to the door of my room with them closely by my side. At the door I turnaround and then walk back to my chair near my bed and sit down. It takes me about five minutes to walk ten feet using the walker. My right leg is still swollen and I can't put any pressure on it. While I sit in the chair they ask if I can kick my right leg up by myself. I try with all my might and am able to feebly move it two or three inches forward. My right leg is swollen and weak. I have a long way to go. Later in the evening I walk with my wife from my room to the nurses station and back, which is a good 30 feet or using the walker. I hope I get to go home tomorrow.

Day 1 - Baby Steps

First full day of recovery from my surgery at the hospital. My right quad is swollen and tight from the surgery. I spend most of the morning in bed watching tv. My orthopedic surgeon comes by later and checks me out. He says the surgery went fine and he put in a titanium rod and screw and would show me later. He says I am good enough to go home. I think to myself, "Is he crazy or what? I just had surgery yesterday and I can't walk."

Two persons from the Rehab department come by later and try to get me to walk using the walker. Heavily medicated, I manage to get out of the bed and up, but boy is hard to walk. I can't put any pressure on my right leg and hip at all. They put a belt around me to catch me if I fall. Using the walker I get up and and sit down in a chair about three feet away from my hospital bed. I feel like a baby trying to learn to walk again.

Surgery

I don't know how I made it through the night. Tuesday was more of the same. They tell me that the surgery is scheduled for the afternoon but won't give me a specific time. So it is more of lying in bed and taking the pain and spasms. I plead with my nurses to talk to the doctor and increase my meds. I think they finally give me a Valium shot which helps. I'm NPO again and can't drink or take much medication. I watch the clock as the hours tick by they as they are in slow motion. 10 a.m...11 a.m....12 a.m...1 p.m...etc. Finally at 5 p.m. I'm told they will be taking be down for surgey. Thank God! Over 36 hours of suffering in the hospital with a hip fracture and given minimal medication to deal with the pain I am taken into surgery. They wheel me down to the surgery room with my wife in tow. When I get to the operating room I remember talking the anesthesiologist who realizes how much pain I am in and quickly gives me something to knock me out. I am down for the count. The surgery takes an hour. The doctor puts in a titanium rod and screw in my right hip to brace the fracture. He tells my wife the surgery went fine. I wake up an hour later in postop and remember somebody asking me if I am ok. As I float back into conscienceness I respond with a foggy "yes". They wheel me up to my room for recovery.

Face the Pain

The transfer to my hospital bed was the start of a day full of pain. They set up an IV and start giving me Demerol shots every hour. But they are not giving me much. Since I might be operated on later in the day I can't drink or eat anything or I can't be too medicated. I'm what they called in hospital speak "NPO" which means "nothing by mouth". I lie there for what seems like eternity, watching the hours on the clock slowly drift by.

The Demerol gives me some relief. but only seems to work for 45 minutes. After that I start getting these intense spasms in my right hip and leg. It's like someone is wacking my leg with a sledgehammer. The pain becomes so intense throughout the day that I tell me wife that I can't see any visitors. It seems like any noise, or person even walking by my leg, sets off the spasms. Caleb comes by, as well as my preacher, to say a prayer when I am having some these spasms and I am a mess.

Around 8 p.m. the doctor comes in and gives me the bad news. "I'm not going to be able to operate on you today," he tells me. I am out of my mind in pain at this point and tell him to give me something stronger for the pain. They up my Demerol dosage. They put my right foot in a boot and traction, raising it and immobilizing it. They allow me to drink something, but not eat. I tell my wife to go home cause I can't bear for her to see me in such so much pain. I spend the rest the my night in pain, letting out a mixture of screams and curse words.

There is older patient who is in the room across or next to me who is also in some serious hurt. I can hear him screaming and cussing in Spanish. You know the saying "misery loves company". It is like he and I are having some kind of screaming contest to see who can scream the loudest. LOL. It's kinda of funny when I think about it now, but it sure wasn't for him or I when it was happening.

My nurse on duty keeps telling me to try control the pain. At one point she brings me some material to read about hip fractures. I think to myself "You've got to be kidding me?" The spasms in my hip and leg are excruciating. I can hardly talk. I'm about to pass out.

I try focusing on taking the pain. First I hum religious songs like "Amazing Grace" and others. That doesn't work. I play the song "Take the Pain" by STEMM in my mind. It's on my cell phone ringtone. I love watching the UFC. I imagine myself in the Octagon fighting. But it doesn't help as I'm getting my ass kicked taking punches to my face and kicks to my leg by an badass opponent called "the hip fracture".



Remembering the breathing exercises my wife used when she gave birth to my second son, I try the childbearing method of pain control. I breathe in and out rapidly in forced movements. This seems to work the best and I spend the rest of the night breathing rapidly and holding my right leg like I was having contractions for a baby. The only question that keeps running through my mind is -- "What am I going to name the baby?" LOL.

It is the most painful night I had ever gone through in my life.

The Bed Transfer

They wheel me up to my room and tell me they are going to move me to the hospital bed. Up to this point, I haven't been given any pain medication whatsoever. No even a stinking asprin or Tylenol. And I've been in the hospital for over 12 hours with a hip fracture. So I ask them to give me something cause I have a feeling that it is going to hurt like hell when they move me onto the hospital room bed. They telll me "It won't hurt", and call in a bunch of nurses and staff, at least four or five people, and try to place some kind of rolling board on my back. They ask me to turn on my side, which is extremely painful because of the hip frature. I let out several screams as I lay on my side and they put the board behind my back. They straighten me out and and then they pull me onto the bed. Pains shoots through my body as I let fly more screams mixed in with some good curse words. They hastily leave the room for me to deal with the pain alone.

Waiting for a Room

I spend the rest of the night laying in bed waiting for a room. My wife stays with me through most of the night, trying to keep my spirits up. I doing ok as long as I don't move my right leg and hip. The doctor hasn't given me any medication for pain. I don't get any sleep as I am in some kind of area were they bring in patients to work on them from the emergency room. There is a lot of activity going on. I hear nurses, doctors, and technicans walking around. The lights are on. I hear beds being wheeled around. I hear the beeps from the hospital machines. It is a long night but not painful. My wife stays with me to at least 4 a.m. and then leaves. She comes back in the early morning around 7 a.m. to see how I'm doing. Around 8 a.m. I finally get the word that a room has opened up on the surgery floor and they wheel me up to room 344.

The Diagonsis

We arrive at Mission Hospital emergency room. They transfer me to a wheelchair. Surprisingly, the emergency room is not busy and we are seen and admitted within an hour. I am in good spirits. I don't feel too bad. I didn't have any broken bones sticking out and everything seemed to be in the right place. I am optimistic that I might get out of here.

They send me down for x-rays of my right hip. It hurts like a mother to get from the wheelchair onto the x-ray machine. The techs don't seem too concerned as first since I am not in a lot of pain. They gingerly move me up onto the x-ray table. After the first set of x-rays the tech tells me that they look fine. They take another set and then he tells me that he thinks he saw something but he can't tell me. They get serious all of a sudden and tell me they are going to move me onto a hospital bed using a straight board to transfer me. I let out a couple of screams as they move me from the x-ray machine to the bed and I now know that I did something more serious that bruise my bone. They wheel me back to see the emergency room doctor.

The doctor comes in and asks to talk to my wife outside. Now I'm begining to get worried. Am I gonna be paralyzed or something? They come back after a few minutes. I glance at my wife and she has a worried and scared look on her face. The doctor doesn't say much except he wants to do a CAT scan of my hip. So they wheel me down to the CAT scan room and do the scans. They transfer on my back from the bed to the CAT scan machine. Fortunately, it isn't too painful since I can lay on my back. They finish the CAT scans and wheel me back again to the doctor.

My wife doesn't want to tell me what she and the doctor discussed so that worries me. After about 20 minutes the doctor comes in after looking at the CAT scans and tells me the bad new and good news. The bad news is I fractured my right hip in two spots and I will probably need surgery to fix it. The good news is the fracture was not dislocated or total broken, which is worse and harder to fix. They call my orthopedic surgeon who visits me and tells me that while I don't need surgery -- they could put me in a full body cast for five weeks -- it is better to have surgery and place some screws in my hip to help it heal properly. He tells me they willl try to schedule the surgery for Tuesday. The problem is he has nine other surgeries ahead of me. I don't know if that is good or bad being number ten. "Do you want a doctor operating on you after a long day of surgery?" I ask myself. It doesn't look promising, but at this point I just roll with it.

My Bike Wreck

I feel embassed explaining how I wrecked on my bike and broke my hip. But here is the truth. Sometimes when I want to get in a quick training ride after work and don't have time to load up my bike and gear and drive to Mission Trails, where I normally ride the singletrack trails, I do a few laps around Veteran's High School which is close to my house in Mission. There is a sidewalk that runs around the perimeter of the school that is about a mile long. So after a day of work I feel like getting in a quick ride around the school. I gear up and ride out on Giant Anthem X2 for some laps. I had done these rides hundreds of times before with no problems.

I do one warm up lap and started to pick up the pace on the second lap when I come too close to a school sign. I clip the steel post with my left handlebar grip which spins my handlebars 180 degrees and throws me off the bike. My right hip bone takes the full brunt of the fall hitting the concrete sidewalk squarely on the bone. I was doing at least 15 mph when I clipped the post. The wreck was instantaneous.

I lay on my side on the ground. I had fallen before so I didn't feel too bad. I knew I was in trouble when I tried to get up and couldn't. I thought maybe I had just stunned the bone so I laid on the sidewalk longer hoping I could get up in a minute or two. Luckily there are a lot of walkers and joggers who walk and jog around the school. Several stop to ask if I was ok. Being a man, I say, "I'm ok" and try to shake it off. I ask someone to help me up and using my good right leg and my bike as a crutch I hop and wheel myself maybe ten feet. But I realize I am not going to make it. I had left my cell phone at my house so I didn't have my wife's number. I called our main home number using a jogger's phone, but my wife doesn't answer. We get a lot of telemarketing calls so she usually never answers the home phone. I am less than a block from my house and I can't make it home. Finally, I swallow my manly pride and ask a walker for help. He flags down a guy in a truck who loads my bike and me on the tailgate and takes me home to my wife.

My wife and the guy, who turns out to be a new neighbor who had just moved into our subdivision, help me in the house. It's bad. I can't put any pressure on my right leg or hip, and if I try an excruiating pain shoots through my right hip. I sit helplessly on my living sofa while my wife calls her mom and dad and a good neighbor of ours who is a DPS trooper and his wife. They all come over and after feeling some more pain I come to the realization that I need to go the hospital. So they carry me to the car. My wife quickly gathers some of my things and my older son, Greg, drives me to Mission Hospital.

I need to think of some more manly excuse for wrecking like, I was going down the Bike Breaker backward....or I was hucking off a ten foot drop...Something. Breaking my hip while doing laps around the school is just plain embarrasing for a mountain biker.