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September 28, 2006

healing bones take time

finally, i've turned the corner, made it out of the vicodin fugue. after the surgery there was three quarters of a day in which the anesthesia lingered on and i felt whole, and then the pain came down and sat throbbing and heavy on my surgical wound. I retreated to my friend the analgesic, and stayed steadily there until a few days ago, when i realized i was running out. i cut back the dose, out of necessity, but found that the pain was tolerable, acceptable except when i have a sneeze or a big cough. when this happens, there is a pain that feels to begin from inside my body, causing me clutch at my torso, looking unsuccessfully for somewhere to press hard against. it makes me sit down, and i breathe it out, and then i'm fine. don't worry, this only happens once or twice a day, and the last couple times it happened, it didn't feel as bad as the first few.

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the state of california disability insurance board has decreed that i shall receive checks of 250 dollars a week until i am well. this will cover my rent, and leave me money for necessities and bus trips to reno for follow up x-rays. i head back to reno on monday morning, where i'll meet with the surgeon and we'll see how the bone is healing. i'm looking forward to seeing the new x-ray with the piece of titanium plate glowing from atop my renewed clavacle.

I've really enjoyed making a digital record of the evidence of my accident. i wonder if i'd be as interested to look at the scars of someone else?

until then, been refleecting a bit. thinking about changing my profession. more on that later.
i've also been reading too much news and watching jon stewart and colbert report reruns on youtube. the fact that we're letting our elected officials do away with habeas corpus is so amazing, so very very wrong, that it makes me try and shake my head in disgust, but that makes the tendons in my neck hurt real bad, so i hold still and mutter under my breath.

Posted by bendan at 04:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 19, 2006

get your surgery on

So yesterday i had my surgery. It was a day long process, involving a lot of waiting in doctor's offices, waiting rooms, pre-op rooms, and post-op recovery rooms. throughout the course of the day i began to think that i should have just skipped the surgery and let my collar bone heal on it's own, but then i'd cough and this fierce pain would stab me in the muscles of my upper right back. this wasn't where the bone was broken exactly, and while the swelling and pain from the actual break had gone down over the course of the week, this distinct back pain had grown worse. i found ths troubling, and as i rolled into surgery i was hoping that everything wouldn't hurt as bad when i came out.

The surgery was expected to take 1.5 hours, but it ended up taking 3. This was because once the surgeon opened me up, he discovered that there were many more bone fragments in there then the x-ray had let on. What i am most grateful about is that he discovered that what was causing me at least as much pain as the broken collarbone itself was the fact that one of the bone fragments has perforated my trapezius shoulder muscle. it was this that was causing me all the pain when i sneezed and coughed and tried to sleep and move around. he gently worked that fragment out (it took him more then 30 minutes to do just that), and then he put a titanium plate in there to hold the major collar bone segments together.

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A funny thing was that in the post op room, when i was waking up from the anesthesia, my father first spoke to me in spanish, so he and i had a conversation in spanish as i was coming around, and it felt pretty natural.

now i feel much better, plus the fact that i'm still tanked up on the anesthesia that's left in my system, and a new prescription for vicodin. I plan on returning to SF either tomorrow evening or maybe on thursday, depends on how i'm feeling. I feel quite lucky to have had all the support from my family and from my friends through all of this, i owe you all a debt of gratitude.

Posted by bendan at 01:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 13, 2006

surgery bound

i'm getting on the chinatown bus to reno tomorrow morn. gonna have a consult with the surgeon on friday, then the operation is scheduled for monday. i'm really looking forward to being able to sleep the whole night through w/o waking up at 4 am in excruciating pain.

Posted by bendan at 09:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 12, 2006

a word that rhymes with perjury

dansxrayswithtxt

give up? Surgery! crap. went to the orthopedist today, and he thought that i should get the surgery. he said that i will have a better range of motion and a better chance of 100 percent recovery for the rest of my long, active life. now the questions include: do i get the surgery here or in Reno, and how do i afford it? i have this insurance that doesn't kick in until i spend 5,000 bucks, which is specially made for circumstances such as these, so the prospect of 30,000 bucks in medical dept isn't looming.
i keep waking up at 3 am in excruciating pain. it sucks bad.
i'm gonna try and get gov't. money for technology training in motion graphics. we'll see how that goes. until then, a lot of sitting around the house, trying not to move my shoulder.

Posted by bendan at 05:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

September 10, 2006

self destruction

today i went on a ride to the Marin Headlands on my new mountain bike. while descending this narrow dirt road, i came around a corner and found the road very rutted. i tracked well through most of the first section, but then my wheel went into one of the ruts and i flew over the handlebars. while unconscious, i had some amazing dreams, mostly about me being hurt. then i came to, and found that my was cracked, my ribs were bruised to hell, and i couldn't move my right arm. before too long some other riders came along, and then quickly called the ambulance. the ambulance came and took me to St Mary's hospital, right next to my house. on the ambulance ride the gave me morphine, which eventually made me puke a lot. at the hospital they took x-rays and determined that i'd broken my collarbone in multiple places, something that may or may not require surgery. the people at the hospital were not very kind, and they ushered me out really quickly. i think i talked to the doctor for about 50 seconds. then i stumbled home to my house, where my roommates are taking care of me really well.
this couldn't have happened at a worse time. my dad was gonna come next weekend to go mnt biking, kelsey is arriving that weekend as well, and i had been really into climbing and road riding and getting back into mnt biking. plus i can't work for 5-8 weeks, which is gonna hurt me financially. everything was going so well in my life, and now i'm stuck at home, or riding the shitty public transit here in SF for a month at least. i almost hope they do surgery, just so i get better more quickly.
like i'm supposed to say, i guess it could have been a lot worse. with luck i'll be able to get some money from disability unemployment, and i can spend some solid days starting to learn motion graphics. but i'm pretty bummed, i must admit.

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Posted by bendan at 10:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack