The Long Road To Recovery

Well the stitches are gone, and I’m cleared for riding in 4 weeks.

For those of you who didn’t already know, I had a bit of a freak accident.  I’ve been working down in Texas for a while, and when I finally returned home my truck wouldn’t start.  I have pull-down electrical reels hanging from my garage ceiling, and in order to reach the reel I had to move a WaveRunner that I had on a wheeled stand in my garage.

Not rocket science.  At least for a person of average intelligence, which apparently I am not.

My garage has a slight slope leading towards the doors for water runoff, so I had locked the back two casters on the ski lift to prevent it from rolling into the garage door.  Now here’s where the difference between myself and someone with brains comes in.  To move the ski, I grab the back of the boat and begin to pull backwards.

Now simple physics and geometry will tell you that locked wheels act as a pivot point when you have a top-heavy item such as a WaveRunner on a stand.

The entire stand tipped backward, and the metal ride plate on the rear of the ski ended up right on the big toe of my left foot.  Or right where the big toe of my left foot SHOULD be.  The edge of the ride plate isn’t terribly sharp, but sharp enough to slice right through skin and bone when there’s enough inertia behind it.

So I’m looking at the ski that I just knocked over, and I notice my toe on the floor next to my flip-flop.  My first thought was "Now that is not a very good way to start a Monday morning"  My second thought was that it was going to start hurting like hell once the shock wore off, so I shuffled the ski off of my pinned flip-flop, grabbed my toe, and made a very poor attempt at bandaging it back on with some paper towel and bandages.

Keep in mind that I’m home alone, and my truck has a dead battery still.  So I manage to get the truck plugged in, wait a couple minutes, and it still won’t start.  Plan B.  My uncle Gerry lives a couple minutes away, and a quick phone call later and he’s on his way to pick me up.

Now you know it’s a good injury when the physician’s assistants are taking pictures of it with their cell phones.  They initially tried to block my view of the area when they began working on it, but if I’m going to bang myself up I want pictures to show for it.  Several hours and lots of Lidocaine later, I’ve got a toe of normal length, just missing a nail and with a lot of stitches.

I got lots of good drugs - Vicodin and Percoset, only to discover that I’m immune to Codeine, so they were pretty useless.  Good old Tylenol for me.

The worst part is living on a lake and not being able to get in the water because of all the bacteria in Michigan’s inland lakes.  The couple times that I absolutely HAD to go out on the Waverunners, I wrapped a couple garbage bags around my foot and duct-taped them to my leg.  Waverunner?  Check.  Garbage Bag?  Check.  White Trash?  Check.

So back to riding and racing.  If this had been my right foot, I’d be back to riding already because the stiff sole of a motorcycle boot would keep too much pressure off the toe.  But since it’s my shifting foot, no such luck.  The doctor took the stitches out yesterday and the wounds have healed well, but the broken bone will take several more weeks before it’s healed up enough for shifting duty.

Here’s looking forward to healthy and productive 2009 season!