A small portion of my current audience are also connected with me on either Instagram or Facebook (I don't really use Twitter as much anymore). The ones who are not will not be aware that I had a fall on my bike on Saturday 19th which has affected me in a greater way since then....I will start from the beginning.
As I mentioned last week, I was heading over to the Womens CX skills session out at Essendon Fields where there will be an actual event on the 27th. I thought that I will brush up on my skills before the day.
When I talk about brushing up, I meant just ride around....because I am still not confident enough to do a flying mount. I can do a dismount with no hesitation but the mount....maybe that could be my life goal.
So after about 1.5 hours of the skills sessions (ran fantastically by DDCX and Sunbury CC), we had a "go" of the course. Now I have mentioned before that I am hopeless at turning right (getting better but still not 100%). So at one of the more tricker parts of the course, instead of being able to manoeuvre my bike towards the right to follow the flow, I went up on the embankment and just came down on the other side, face first.
I was out (felt like forever), winded and confused. The guys who were onsite attended to me straight away and their actions were commended. I spent most of my time on the ground, with my body down along the embankment (head filling up with blood) with a throbbing headache and neck pains. I could feel that my face was scratched as it stung bad. When the adrenalin wore off, I actually started to cry a bit as I was just scared of what had happened and my headache was too much to handle.
The guys from Sunbury CC called the ambulance and when they arrived, attended to me onsite. Once the OK was given for me to move from my position, I sat up and cried even more - I was embarrassed, I felt like I had ruined a perfectly great day for all, I felt like I had let so many people down. I wasn't able to stand up and felt even more dizzy.
At this point, the spine board and neck brace came out and I was placed on the board so I could be carried off the embankment and into the ambulance. I felt nauseous.
I was in the ambulance for what felt like 30min before it left the site. They gave me an IV drip of something, then something else was jabbed into me....I dídn't take morphine as I was feeling sick. No pain killers as I rated my pain at about 2 or 3 and I could tolerate it. The trip to the ambulance felt like forever. Whatever they gave me to settle the motion sickness didn't work as I threw up once the ambulance stopped at Royal Melbourne Hospital (RMH). I threw up again when I was wheeled from the reception to my trauma room.
The trauma room was an experience all together. They tried to remove all my clothing, great difficulty with the ratchet of my bike shoes. They cut my "sports crop top" when I told them to as it was no easy to take off without going over my neck brace. Lucky I wore a cycling jersey which had the zip going all the way down. All my jewellery was removed so I could get a chest X ray as well as a CT scan. I was naked on the table with a thin cotton sheet over my body whilst I was being examined by the doctors and nurses. I was given a tetnis shot during the examination which hurt like a bitch! I think I also bleed from that injection onto my hospital bed.
After what seemed like an eternity of being examined, I was finally wheeled into an area to be parked before a "room" was available. I remember tears started to roll down my face and the Orderly wiped the tears from both my eyes once he stopped wheeling me from one area to another. I thank you for that, it meant something to me.
When a room was free, I was brought there to be rested. I was in my neck brace for about 4 hours before it could be removed. That was excruciating, especially for a person who cracks her neck and shoulders several times an hour! When all the hustle subsided and there was nothing further to examine, I was in my room with an IV drip feeding both antibiotics and saline into my arm. Both fluids were so cold that it started to hurt a bit.
I was attended by so many people throughout the 6 hours I was at RMH, everyone introduced themselves to me - paramedics, nurses, doctors, orderlies. It was slightly overwhelming.
I was discharged from RMH around 7pm. Went home, ate a huge bowl of laksa (comfort food and also my first real meal for the day). The next few days I was constantly dizzy and nauseous. The scabs on my face only came off on Wednesday evening in the shower. Bruises on my body are still appearing and I still have a dull headache like I am wearing a really tight helmet. I didn't end up participating in the Rapha Womens100 ride on Sunday 20th either which I was really sad about, just scrolled through photos throughout the morning and felt really jealous and filled with guilt.
I haven't done any training since Saturday, not even a gentle walk mainly due to catching up on work. I took myself off the stress of training and giving my body a bit of a break. I may get on the bike on Saturday and I may do a small jog on Sunday. I will be back at Essendon Fields on Sunday to spectate the CX event as well as picking up my bike from the guys at Sunbury CC.
I also learnt that the private health insurance I am on (paying $180/month) which is sold as a "sports insurance" DOES NOT include ambulance cover....does not make sense. I am waiting on my ambulance bill and finding a way to pay that. Since Tuesday, I have paid for an ambulance subscription, something which I would have done earlier if I had known that my current private health insurance does not include ambulance cover....especially as I am paying about $500/month on insurances already (very risk adverse person).
Huge Lessons Learnt:
- No matter how much ambulance appears to be covered under your private health insurance - just pay for a subscription. I will do this after I change to another health cover, not happy with my current one, feel like I am paying too much and receive no better benefits compared to another one which is $50 less per month.
- On the bike - look where I want to travel rather than where the bike appears to be heading.
- Ride more off road - get better bike skills
- Must learn how to mount the bike - no point turning up to these skills sessions where I am not really learning anything new as I am not practising them.
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