A number of years ago I had attended a week-long forum on Washington Island, Wisconsin, a northernmost tip of the state off the coast of Green Bay in Lake Michigan. I had gone alone and thoroughly enjoyed my time learning, questioning, reading, and biking. It was a good week.
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On the final morning of presentations by the speaker, I arose early to pack the car and load my bike onto its carrier. The bike was the last thing to go. It wasn’t a lightweight bike, but I had been able to handle it and had practiced lifting it onto and off of that rack several times. I don’t know if I was hurried, wasn’t paying attention, or if it might have just been a good old accident, but as I lifted the bike up so as to catch the crossbar onto the carrier, the bike slipped out of my right hand. The crossbar fell squarely onto the middle of my upper right arm.
It was all I could do to unfurl myself from it. I thought my arm was broken. I went to the owner of the resort where I was staying (and I say “resort” in the simplest of terms – there were only two cabins in addition to his) and found him at the breakfast table with his significant other. I knocked quietly and apologized for bothering them, and asked him if he would be willing to help me lift my bike onto the carrier. I think I must have been in too much pain to even tell him what had happened. I just knew that I couldn’t get the bike up there alone. My plan (within these few seconds) was just to get the job done and then get help as I needed it.
The landlord protested that he didn’t have time and that he had to leave. I insisted that he help me. We got out to the car where one end of the bike was still hanging from the carrier. “Would you, please, just lift the back of the bike up and onto the carrier for me?” He was continuing to protest about the time. I quietly insisted that he do this for me. In a split second, it was done. He stood there while I tightened the cords, pulling on them with my left hand and arm only. I couldn’t lift my right arm. He continued to protest. While I thought it might be nice to ask him to fully tighten those bands for me so that the bike would be steady, I was in too much pain to ask him. So even as he protested and did nothing, I continued to pull and tighten the best I could. I left him standing in the yard as I got into the car and headed to the road. I wondered later how long he stood there and complained about the encumbrance on his time.
Now, here’s the weird part. I had been enjoying the speaker so much during the week and I knew he had only a couple more hours to share with us. So rather than seeking medical attention, I drove to the conference center, took my notebook and pencil in my left hand and found a seat close to the door. I was sweating profusely, not because of the heat but because of the pain. Thankfully, I didn’t have to talk to anyone. Once I got into my seat and flopped my papers and pencil on the desk, I discovered that I could bend my right arm but not lift it. So with my left hand, I lifted my right arm up on the armrest and placed the pencil in my right hand. I was able to take notes as necessary for those last two hours and then I was out the door, into the car and headed to the ferry and back to the mainland.
Now, I’m not one to complain or cry about pain. But I will tell you that it hurt so badly that once I got the car onto the ferry, I just stayed in it rather than going topside. As I recall, the trip back to land was at least 30 to 45 minutes so it is the custom for most everyone to sit out in the fresh air and ponder the waters around them. I sat in the car and cried. I considered my options. I knew I had a four-hour drive back home. I didn’t know where the hospital was in Green Bay (although I’m sure I could have found it), but I wanted to get to a health care facility with which I was familiar and who I knew would accept my insurance. Plus, if there was something really, really wrong, I wanted to be closer to home.
So after disembarking the ferry, and with my right arm and hand hanging limply into my lap, I negotiated the two lane highways of Door County south and westward to the four-lanes around Green Bay and heading back toward Madison.
I was still sweating from pain. And crying. When I got about two hours from home, I called my doctor’s office and briefly told the receptionist my malady, explaining that I thought I would be on the east side of Madison about 5 p.m. Since the doctor’s office is on the west side and closes at 5, I was directed to Urgent Care which would be much closer and more accessible. I don’t blame the doctor’s staff. It was a reasonable thing to do. In hindsight, I should have gone to the emergency room.
Terry met me and took me to Urgent Care where they held me in waiting for an hour and made me retell at least five times my story of how it all happened. By the third time, and when Terry was not standing with me, I figured out that they were trying to get me to say that Terry had grabbed me by the arm and hurt me. But the pain had not subsided so I decided not to start an argument about it. When the doctor finally arrived to look at it, I had to tell the story once more. He determined that it wasn’t broken, just badly bruised. No tests were run. I don’t recall any medication other than, perhaps, ibuprofen or acetaminophen. He told me the most serious thing that might happen to me as a result was frozen shoulder so I should exercise it.
I went home. When I got into the shower, I found that the only way I could wash my hair was to pour the shampoo up there, raise my right arm with my left hand and then use both hands to massage it all through. I cried the whole time.
I cried a lot in the next weeks. But I determined that this must be what a really bad bruise is all about. I gradually gained strength by walking my hand and arm up the shower walls or using my left hand to manipulate my right arm up into kitchen cupboards to get plates and bowls. Over time, over years I began to bear some weight in that right arm as long as that weight was supported by my left arm.
My pink Schwinn. It hasn’t left the shed since I got it back from Washington Island. It’s not a lightweight bike and that crossbar is what fell squarely onto my right arm when I was loading it onto the car carrier. By the looks of it now, you can tell it’s not going anywhere soon. Kind of sad. I put a lot of miles on that bike both in Wisconsin and in South Dakota.
Nothing was ever the same, but I just worked my way through it. No more golf swing. No more successfully channeling a bowling ball down an alley unless that channel was the gutter. But there wasn’t anymore pain. Then, for some reason, I could no longer sleep because of pain in my shoulder. That’s when I went back to my primary physician who immediately sent me to a specialist.
The long and short of it is that when the bike fell, it tore the tendon in my right upper arm and tore my rotator cuff. The surgeon watched as I moved my right arm up and down and around and he said solemnly, “You shouldn’t be able to do that.” Apparently, my injuries were that serious. Much more than just a bad bruise.
After surgery he told me that there was nothing left in the rotator cuff to repair. He was able to clean out “dead tissue,” he said, and assured me that I would no longer have pain that would keep me awake. But once again I had to start over with walking my arm up the walls of the shower. This time I understood that the muscles I had been using and would be using in the future were all in my back, not in my arm or shoulder. I have no rotator cuff at all. The tendon in my arm could not be repaired.
He was right. I was able to sleep after the dead stuff was cleaned out. I find myself frustrated by my inability to lift even lightweight objects at certain angles. I still support my right arm with my left if I’m pouring a glass of water from a pitcher or passing a dish at a dinner table. I take extra precautions as I bring heavy stoneware down from the kitchen cabinets and, more often than not, I leave it to Terry to put it all back up there.
I was reading yet another story this past week of a professional football player who was forced into retirement due to injuries that resulted from playing a violent sport. Nerve damage throughout the upper part of his body plus damaged vertebrae and sundry other injured parts left him without the ability to play football. He is much younger than I and in much better physical condition.
I certainly don’t put myself in the same bailiwick as a professional football player, but pain is pain and having it affect your ability to work and to live can bring tears long after the injury has healed to the best extent possible. Then again, the tears dry up and you learn to live with it, often masking it.
Most people never know the significance of our pain. I found out that I have a lot of physical resilience.
It helps to remember that some folks are hurting and we have no idea that they are. Some of those hurts are physical. Others range the gamut of emotional and spiritual consequence. Many people are resilient. Some not so much.
It’s a good thing to take a few seconds to help someone – even to lift a bicycle onto a car rack.
“Banish anxiety from your mind, and put away pain from your body; for youth and the dawn of life are vanity.” – Ecclesiastes 11:10
“Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice; you will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy.” – John 16:20
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