This is not 2008, but 16/7/2009. Since Jan and I are starting to get excited about CQ9, and in the interest of completism, I'll tell you what happened to CQ8.
I broke my right Achilles tendon on 1/7/2008 and couldn't go.
I was pushing my car, a 1978 BMW 635CSi, which had had a fuel pump failure, out of my shed to a waiting tilt-tray truck. The driver pleaded a bad back and wouldn't help. Exerting a lot of effort, with my daughter steering, I slipped on the grass outside the shed. I then heard, rather than felt, a "twang" that I recalled from braking my right rotator cuff tendon in 2005. This was also during a car-related activity, but was the cumulated effect of doing push-ups, sawing wood, painting houses, playing sport, etc. and... getting older. I can say though, that in contrast to 2008, my 2005 tendon episode did hurt and immediately. 2008 didn't hurt much until later.
I fell on the ground, because my right leg wouldn't work properly, thinking, "Shit, goodbye Cycle Queensland". The driver still wouldn't help. My daughter and I pushed the car out to the truck. I no longer do business with that company.
This is the errant car.
1978 BMW 635CSi
Digressing a minute, I like a nice unmolested 6 Series Beemer. They say the car you own is a reflection of yourself, but I also have a passion for 1950-51 Ford Customs (known as Single and Twin Spinner Fords because of the aeroplane motifs in their radiator grilles) and I also have owned a 1972 Holden HQ 1-tonner since 1983. I opine that the 635 was (sold it in April 2009) a reflection of the tasteful, sophisticated side of my character. The Ford and the Holden tell their own stories, which I won't go into here.
Jan and I had already paid our fees for Cycle Queensland 2008. We had also won a ballot, thereby getting a tent, which was a big deal. After Cycle Queensland 2007, our attitude was "no tent; no go", especially after the cool wet weather we experienced from Kingaroy to Maleny. We've scored a tent for CQ9, again by ballot, but CQ10 will lose us if we don't get one next year.
I spent the following week having examinations, starting with a physio (Rob Chambers), ultrasounds and, finally, a MRI that confirmed the bad news. Jan took a lot of time off work to drive me around. I don't think I whinged too much about "woe is me", but that might be selective memory.
The hapless foot sitting up with me on 9/7/2008 watching the Tour de France
A close-up so you can see I wasn't malingering. My ankle was no longer its normal well-turned, shapely self
Up at the Wesley Hospital, surgeon Mark Richardson looked at me after reviewing the MRI images of an obviously snapped Achilles tendon and said there was some "degenerative damage" that had contributed to the mishap.
"What's that?", I said. I can be really stupid sometimes.
Mark looked straight back and said "You're not as young as you used to be". Well, I knew that - there had been other indications, and not just my rotator cuff tendon - but it's a rude way to have the point emphasized. Jan held my hand. I wondered about my other leg, and what was going to drop off next.
Mark outlined my options and how he could fix me up and asked "How active are you?" I was still wondering about what was going to drop off next, so Jan told him about all the cycling I was doing to & from work (90-150 km/week)and the cycling we were doing on the weekend (about 50-60 km). Mark said that was encouraging. I was not the average 50-something couch potato. All that cycling was not only maintaining my fitness, but also ensuring that I was physically capable of a complete recovery. For a start, I would be able to get around on crutches because I was strong enough and not too heavy. (Being middle-aged and over weight/obese has all sorts of more sinister implications, like heart trouble and diabetes. Getting old is fun stuff; you can't just be old and fat, which is bad enough, all these other bogies come to stay as well).
The message here for everyone is: stay as active as you can, for as long as you can. Not only will that help recovery from accidents which you can't foresee, but it might also prevent foreseeable accidents, because you can take action to get out of the way or mitigate the accident as it unfolds.
He went on to say that he would have to slice open the back of my leg, locate the ends of the tendon and tie them back together. I would then have wait three months and be on crutches until I was sufficiently healed to walk again. "You'll go mad sitting around" he said, "but it's the best way". As he put it, "at the end of September, you'll be as good as you're going to get".
Tendons don't have a blood supply and heal very slowly. He said that I would've been better off breaking my leg. I'm not sure I agree. That's sure to have been a lot more painful. Even more painful would have been to wait for surgery in the public hospital system. That could have taken months. With medical insurance, I could afford to get it done almost without delay. I also had a stack of long-service leave, which I had been hoarding for various eventualities. I could have gone back to work, but the exigencies of public transport (no rail connections that didn't involve long distances on foot; no bus connections ditto) and the likelihood of an accident, made it an easy decision to give myself the optimum chance of a complete recovery and stay home.
I relayed Mark's information to Rob. He wanted to know if he could come and observe the operation. In the interests of his professional development, I agreed. Some blokes are a lot tougher than me. Mark told me in a later consultation that observers had sometimes fainted during his operations, but Rob hadn't. Rob said the process was fascinating, especially the way Mark had stitched the tendon up with a complex pattern of splicing and sewing and re-sewing. Watching Mark fishing the unravelled tendon out from wherever it had "twanged" off to must have been a real blast too. I'm glad I was out to it.
After the operation (and before I got the couch re-upholstered), on the night of 12/7/2008, again watching the Tour de France
A week or so later, I got fitted out with a $350 surgical boot, the heel of which was locked to a setting to prevent my tendon re-twanging. The boot got to be fairly annoying, especially sleeping with it. It also had to be frequently deodorized with Glenn 20 otherwise it would've become very whiffy. Shower times, since I was living alone, were a bit edgy, but I installed a plastic chair in the shower cubicle and only had a couple of off-balance moments. It was imperative not to put my body weight on the repaired tendon. Mark said that could snap it it again very easily.
After the boot fitting, on the night of 22/7/2008, watching the Tour de France. Being crook has its compensations
2008 Tour de France: Heinrich Haussler on the box on the night of 22/7/2008. Very timely seeing him again almost exactly 12 months later just after he won a stage of the 2009 Tour de France. I recall Australian commentators were more than slightly miffed that he'd gone back to Germany (he is a German national) after his formative years in Inverell. Following his 2009 success, they were all prepared to reclaim him as a native son. More than anybody, sporty people love a winner
2008 Tour de France; team Columbia in the Swiss Alps, I think, on 22/7/2008. Despite all the drug scandals, I enjoyed it greatly, especially the scenery. I pick it up wherever I can in 2009, but I wonder at SBS's priorities in giving Test cricket preference over a major event like Le Tour. You can watch cricket anytime. Sometimes, it seems you can't get away from bloody cricket, no matter how hard you try
One of the things I did do was go with Jan down to Bicycle Queensland's West End headquarters and help stuff envelopes for CQ8 with a whole bunch of cheerful volunteers superintended by BQ's ebullient Jane Clarke. Under the circumstances, an ironic task. I wasn't the only cripple there. There was a bloke who had been involved in an accident while riding his motorbike to work and was recovering from a serious operation to save the heel of one of his feet. There's always someone more unlucky.
The recovery did have lots of benefits. I didn't have to go to work, which was a mixed blessing, because it was a political and technical time and not good to be away; I re-discovered the joys of painkillers (and some of their unfortunate side effects); I did get to watch most of the 2008 Tour de France (which often finished after 2 in the morning), then sleep it off next day; Jan took me to a lot of fine films during the Brisbane International Film Festival (BIFF), as well as all the other caring she did, which was wonderful of her; I read a lot of books and listened to a lot of music; I got some work done on my house, in particular by my friend Peter Hazel who dropped by in his Troopy on one of his trips from Bauple to Maitland, stayed a few days and did most of the work fixing my hoop pine floor in preparation for sanding and polishing; and I got to spend a lot of time with the cats, which was great for all three of us.
The Tabby's name is Sushi. The other bloke is Sam, a Manx. Jan says they are politely not facing each other. Good company for me and each other
Jan and I went out to Sandgate to see the riders from CQ8, Bundaberg to Brisbane, come in. We listened to stories of the rainy day from Pomona to Maleny, long grades, the odd hospitalization and read the accounts that became available from Bicycle Queensland. "Next year", we said.
About mid-September, Mark gave gave me the all-clear and said I could shuck my surgical boot. Walking without it was a cautious process, because re-twanging did not appeal. On my next trip to Red Hill Physiotherapy to see Rob, I presented the Glenn 20-redolent item to him for the clinic to have. They gave me a free consultation in return. I hope it's as helpful to someone else as it was to me.
I went back to work on 3/10/2008 and resumed riding my bike a couple of days later. I had recovered and am still riding to work. The tendon and both my knees play up now and then, but stretching and exercises learned during my convalescence soon fixes that. Good thing too: when your kneecap decides to not slide neatly in the groove it's supposed to slide in, that is painful. It gives an extra meaning to something cartoonist Michael Leunig is supposed to have said: "The knees, the knees; they never tell you about the knees".
As a postscript, you might recall I mentioned Alenax bicycles in Ron's Cycle Queensland 2007. Back then, I owned 5, but my unfortunate mania for collecting soon swelled that number to 10, before I got over them. They're just too mad and take up space, so I'm selling them off now. A lot of things have changed since 2007, besides my Alenax fetish. Look at my separate Alenax blog http://ronsalenaxblog.blogspot.com/
and marvel that such things exist.
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