ouch.
As many of you know, I have a few bicycles and love to ride as opposed to drive around town. The bike path along the coast is a favorite corridor, but is sometimes clogged with tourists (bless their hearts). A few weeks ago, I was coming home from an appointment in Monterey when a little touristling (child touron, about 5) leapt out in front of me and I had to bail to avoid ending a perfectly good vacation in tragedy. Over the handlebars I went and down on my knee. Aftermath: Kid was fine, my bike was pretty untouched and my knee was scraped to hell.
I hobbled off home and gave myself over to the careful ministrations of the lovely Deb and my daughters Kaya and Kenna. They helped my wash it out and put it up on a pillow and took care of me for a few hours. The mechanical portions of my knee felt fine, just had a big bruise on the outside.
What the hell happened to Spence?
Two Weeks Later...
My knee has healed up fantastically, I’ve worked for days constructing windows for Kayas room. I’m back on the bike and everything is excellent.... or so I think...
3:00pm
I get up from my office chair and notice a small pain on my left knee.
9:00pm
Writhing on the couch, un-able to stand or walk with out incredible pain, Deb takes me into the Emergency Room with a knee the size of a softball.
No fun there. First experience with Morphine. Not a fan. Made me feel... metallic. Very unpleasant evening.
Thursday Night at the ER
They send us home from the ER and suggest we go see an orthopedic surgeon the next day. We do, he extracts what looks like a pint of un-filtered apple-juice from my knee and sends us home with antibiotics to “keep an eye on it”. Deb keeps that eye on it (I’m in too much pain to keep eyes on anything) and it’s determined at some point (Friday Night?) that I need to get back into the hospital.
Friday
The first few days are a bit of a blur. Lot’s of pain meds, IV drip style.
The upshot is this: I contracted a resistant bacterial infection in my Bursal Sack which is some part of the knee apparatus. The infection cause the Bursa to burst, spreading the goodness into my other muscle parts and allowing it to get really red and sore and dangerous.
Hospital
They fired me off to surgery and cut a big old opening in my knee so the doc could scrape out the offending yuck and wash it out with antibiotics. Trippy thing about surgery, you wake up as soon as you fall asleep - it seems like there’s no lag in time at all.
Surgery
Several more nights in the hospital and I was released into the wild, where I now sit, typing up this explaination.
