anniversary of a real pain in the ass...

7 years ago today I was in a horrific bike accident, and though it happened so long ago and I was in excruciating pain, I remember just about every detail from that day.  I was riding my bike to work in Kingston, coming down the big hill on Division Street to the Shopper's Drug Mart at Kingslake Plaza just before Division exits onto the 401, and was going the same speed as the traffic (about 40-50kph, I would say).  It had rained that morning, so the road was pretty wet, which of course made my tires pretty wet, and my rims pretty wet, and therefore my brake pads pretty wet.  So when some jerk in front of the blue Acura that I was following decided that he/she REALLY REALLY needed to stop at Tim Horton's, turning at the last second without signalling, the Acura driver slammed on his brakes, and without having time to think too much about it, I slammed my brakes on too (if you can 'slam' brakes on a bike).  Because it was wet and I was going so fast, my bike quickly fish-tailed out of control and sent me into a giant skid, and before I knew it, I hit the pavement, going 50, landing smack-dab on my right hip and then skidding about ten feet along the road.

The incisions in my hip.  Oh they get better, believe me.

I have read that the femur is the strongest bone in the human body.  It is as strong as concrete.  Apparently no one told my right femur that, because it broke upon impact as soon as I hit the ground.  I can distinctly remember hearing it break - it sounded like when you take a big fat thick carrot by both ends and snap it in the middle.  I'll never forget that sound for as long as I live.  The force involved in that fall must have been pretty substantial to do that kind of damage.  At the time, I remember hearing it, but it didn't really register that I had broken anything; I guess probably because I was in some serious shock.  I had also dislocated my knee, which was a whole 'nother ball of wax... just agonizing pain...  I remember standing up, dazed, and trying to walk on my broken leg to get off the road.  The sickly feeling of broken bones buckling under my weight was pretty gruesome, and it hurt a whole lot, so I lay down again in the middle of the lane to await the ambulance, whose siren I could hear in the distance.

3 days after

When the paramedics arrived (one was named Terry, and I can't recall the other guy's name), they were just amazing.  They cut my pants off in the middle of the street, which I'm sure was just thrilling to the ten or so gawkers who had gathered to watch me writhe in agony (hey, I can't say anything bad about them; one of them called 911 after all). They got me on a back board and immobilized my neck and asked me a whole bunch of questions, and then they told me they were going to put my knee back where it should go, and that it would be the most pain I have ever experienced in my life.  No one wants to hear any kind of medical professional tell them this.  Ever. But they weren't lying.  The other dude (not Terry) held my shoulders, and Terry got down by my feet, and after telling me to take a deep breath, he YANKED ON MY BROKEN LEG with all his might.  Oh it hurt.  I remember screaming at the top of my lungs for what seemed to be a lifetime, but was probably just a couple of seconds, and then all of the sudden, my knee popped back into place and it was like a wave of instant relief washed over me... my pain was gone... never mind the broken femur, it didn't seem to be an issue, as far as pain level was concerned.  Then the EMTs bundled me into the back of the ambulance (which was pretty darn cool, I must say), and off we whizzed to Kingston General.

Five days after.  Pretty sweet road rash, eh?

At the hospital, I was put on a morphine drip and they stabilized me in a little room to wait the eight hours until they could get me in for surgery.  During this time, I had x-rays taken and learned that my femur was broken about three inches above my knee; a long, jagged, ugly looking break.  The bone had snapped, but on an angle, and then one of the broken ends had cracked up the length of the bone.  Pretty nasty.  I gave one of the nurses Matt's work number, and they made the call for me.  After talking to Matt for a bit, he hung up to start the journey from Cobourg, where he was still working at the time, only coming up to Kingston on weekends.  He got to KGH in record time, and I felt much better.  I drifted in and out of drug-addled consciousness, and then awoke to find myself upstairs being prepped for surgery.  Before I knew it, I was counting backwards from ten (I doubt I made it past 8 or 7), and then I woke up in a semi-private room in the dark, with Matt there holding my hand, promising me he would return the next day (it was about 3am).

Six days after.  Gettin' all yellowy now.

During surgery my surgeon, Dr. David Yu, made an incision at the top of my hip, drilled a canal down into the middle of the femur, then rammed a titanium rod through the length of the bone, and screwed it into the head of the femur just above the knee (I have seen this procedure done on TV since then, and it does not look pretty.)  My leg swelled up to at least twice its normal size, and it was most uncomfortable, to say the least.  I  woke up the next morning at the crack of dawn with the bitchiest nurse on the face of the planet telling me to 'get up!' and yanking the covers off of me.  Get up??  Was this woman completely mad?  No.  Well, maybe.  She got me up and out of bed and standing with the help of a walker, and I shuffled gingerly to the bathroom.  I tried to get on the toilet to pee, but had some difficulty, which resulted in me pissing on the floor.  I did this several more times while I was there, and I think the orderly who came to mop the floor for the umpteenth time during my stay really really wanted me to die.  If looks could kill... sheesh...

One week after.  If there was a 'best bruise' contest, I would be a shoe-in.

After a few days of half-assed physio, when they were satisfied that I had mastered the crutches, I was finally allowed to go home.  I was given a prescription for some serious narcotics and was told that a physiotherapist would be by once a week to help me with my recovery.  The pain was horrific as Matt bundled me into our van and drove over the pot-holed streets of downtown Kingston to our basement apartment on Fraser Street.  I was dizzy and light-headed and weak; I thought I would never make it down the stairs to the pull-out couch which Matt had set up for me, as our bed was too low to get in and out of easily.  He took great care of me for several days after my return home, which was good, because I sure as hell couldn't.  My sweetheart is such a great guy... aww...

Nine days after.  Such colour!  Such texture!  lol

But then he had to leave.  Matt left Kingston for Cobourg, and I was on my own until the following weekend, when he could come up and see me again.  I was petrified.  I was all alone in a basement apartment in the middle of December, and was so sore and light-headed that even the most menial task like going to the bathroom or making myself something to eat took forever.  Everything was SO hard.  My leg was still swollen and puffy, and I could barely find it in me to do much of anything... if I had had a bedpan, I would never have gotten out of bed, because it was just so much work.  I realize that the best thing in such situations is to get up and get back to normal as quickly as possible, but that idea seemed totally laughable at the time.  I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat, I couldn't go anywhere, and I was all alone except for three cats (Spliff, Black Cat, and Frank) and our first rabbit, Zeus.  And while they did their best to take care of me (the three cats would not leave my side the entire time, and even Zeusie jumped up on the pull-out and stretched out beside my leg), it sucked, to say the least.

Frank (left), Black (behind my head) and Spliff (right) on nursing duty

Looking back, the accident and its aftermath has been one of the most challenging things I have ever had to deal with in my life.  But I try to look on the bright side.  If there had been a car behind me when I fell, I would be dead.  The shards of broken bone in my leg could have ripped through my femoral artery, and I could have bled to death on the side of the road before the ambulance arrived.  There is no end to the possible tragic endings that COULD have taken place, so I consider myself pretty lucky when it all boils down to it.  Definitely not something I want to do over again (I have been on a bike ONCE since my accident, but I am determined to ride the shit out of one the next chance I get).  Oh well, everyone has to have one exciting yet horrible story to tell for evermore, right?  In my case, I hope this is the one and only.  As for the titanium rod, it's still there.  I can have it taken out at any time if I want to, but it is totally unnecessary surgery, so I think I'll keep it.  I've grown quite attached to the dear little thing over the years, and it hasn't caused me any grief, so I see no point in having it removed.  

Plus, I like to tell the kids I am a robot.  

Attack of the Homicidal Jungle Cat...

I was most brutally savaged by a tiny tiger last week.  

You wouldn't think an eleven pound house cat would be able to inflict the sort of damage I have endured over the last eight days, but you would be sorely mistaken.  Last Tuesday I helped my dad take my parents' cats, Spot and Carol, to the vet for their annual check-up and vaccinations.  When asked a few days prior if I would help dad out, I agreed without thinking twice.  As it turns out, I should have thought twice.  While Spot is just the sweetest little cat you ever did see, his sister is a force to be reckoned with, and while I 'happily' take her abuse in the form of spitting and hissing and swearing when I go upstairs to cut her nails from time to time I seriously underestimated her sheer power and ferocity.  As a feral cat not much more than a kitten herself, Carol was rescued from a window well with her two tiny babies by a cat rescue agency and was put up for adoption, unwittingly taken in by my naive parents in their quest for a pal for Spot after our old dog Max had to be put to sleep.  She has always been on the wild side, and is never quick to trust anyone at all, but I had no idea she was capable of such carnage.  I mean, come on... it's a house cat, right?

After giving Spot his needle and putting him back in his carrier, Dr. Hall moved on to Carol.  The minute he touched her, she started muttering under her breath in that unearthly, eerie, demonic cat voice we are all familiar with; a foreshadowing of the hellfire that was about to be unleashed.  He checked her ears and mouth and heart and lungs and all that good stuff, then gave her her needle, and she was pretty well behaved, relatively speaking. I was duly impressed at her ability to keep her composure; I figured Dr. Hall would have long been disemboweled by this point in the proceedings.  Then he moved on to her nails.  Carol has trouble with her nails - sometimes they grow too long and curl around into her little pads, the poor thing - and since she is so violent and trimming them is a chore that involves me, dad, a towel, and lots of screaming and carrying on, we aren't as diligent about cutting them as we should be.  Since this was one of those times, and we were here to see Dr. Hall anyways and he probably happily cuts cats' nails all day long, dad asked if he wouldn't mind cutting them.  Like a fool, he agreed, and like a fool, I held her.  

I am no stranger to holding cats.  Whenever there are veterinary procedures to be done 'round these parts, I am inevitably the one to carry them out, and I do so quickly and efficiently with my pet's well-being in mind.  In fact, until I was eighteen, I lived my entire life believing I would become a veterinarian, and did my co-op in Grade 11 at this very clinic (the Dundas Animal Hospital), which is owned by Dr. Hall.  Needless to say, I like to think I know what I am doing when it comes to this sort of thing.  This soon changed, however.  As the vet started in on Carol's talons, her muttering turned to growling, which grew louder and louder with each toe.  Then the shit hit the fan.  When Dr. Hall tackled the nail that had curled over on itself, Carol EXPLODED.  

She screamed, she snarled, she spit and hissed and drooled and panted.  She wriggled and twisted and puffed herself up in a frenzy as she tried to get away from me.  I held her as tightly as I could in a futile attempt to keep her still, but she was like a rabid, cornered wolverine in a fight for her life.  And she bit.  She bit and bit and bit.  She sunk her teeth into my hands no less than three times; a not-so-serious chomp to the right wrist, and two bites so deep that her entire fang disappeared beneath the skin - once into the meat between the thumb and forefinger on my left hand, and on the other hand, she very nearly bit clear through my pinky finger.  At the time, sure, they hurt - I restrained myself from yelling 'FUCK!' at the top of my lungs in the vet's office, which I am very proud of - but the pain wasn't that bad, and I didn't think they would turn out to be so serious!  I'd been bitten by cats before; certainly not this badly, but I'd been bitten by cats before.  I was more concerned that Carol was ok, and that Dr. Hall was able to clip ALL of her nails, because I certainly wasn't going to finish the job after this little psychotic display.  It took dad (who was scratched for his participation) and I both to hold Carol down and cover her face with a towel, while Dr. Hall finished her nails, and then we shoved her back into her carrier and I assessed the damage.  

My hands were already starting to swell to an unbelievable size - they looked like inflated surgical gloves - and they were turning an angry shade of reddish purple.  They were burning and itching like crazy, and had started to throb painfully.  I didn't think very much of it, being preoccupied by the sheer amazement of Carol's ability to defend herself for such a wee beastie... dad and I drove home in awe at the fury and speed of her attack.  After coming back downstairs (mom and dad live above us), I looked up 'cat bite' on the internet, just out of curiosity.  Like an idiot, I was totally skeptical when all I read was how dangerous cat bites can be, and how serious they are, and how at least 40% of them turn out to be infected and require medical attention, so I did nothing right away except wash them really well and put Polysporin on them.  Surely they couldn't be that bad, could they?  It's only a cat, for pete's sake!  

But no.  I was wrong.  It seems cat bites are among the worst out there.  Their slimy, filthy, little cat mouths are teeming with bacteria, including Pasteurella, Staphylococcus, Streptococcus, and Clostridium, just to name a few.  And while they have little to no bite pressure (unlike dogs, which have teeth designed to crush bones, etc), and are unable to move their jaws back and forth to grind their food (cat jaws can only move up and down, not back and forth), the shape of their teeth contributes to the severity of the bite.  Because cats' teeth, particularly the long canine teeth, are long, thin, cone-shaped, and needle sharp, they are capable of penetrating deep into flesh and leaving puncture wounds that close up when the tooth has been pulled out.  While this may not sound so bad, the danger lies in their filthy bacteria-ridden saliva, which is essentially 'injected' into the hole and then left under the skin to fester once the wound has closed up again.  Cats are essentially venomous, it seems... like little komodo dragons, or little gila monsters... While I should have heeded the advice to head to the hospital immediately and get my wounds checked out, I was so tired and the thought of sitting in emerg for a couple of hours was so unappealing that I decided to wait until morning, and tried my best to get comfortable enough to go to sleep; no mean feat, let me assure you.  

The next morning, I woke up in excruciating pain.  My hands were huge and the flesh around each bite was a red, hot, blotchy, streaky mess.  I had Matt drop me off at St. Joe's on his way to work, thinking I would be out in an hour or so with a prescription for an oral antibiotic.  No such luck.  When I told the triage nurse I was there because of a cat bite, he rushed me through the intake process, and before I knew it I was whisked away for my first course of IV antibiotics.  I sat with an IV drip in my arm for half an hour, then a lovely, dreamy nurse named John unhooked me, taped the little lead tube to my arm leaving the needle in the back of my hand (after blowing out a vein in the top of my forearm... ugh), and bandaged my puffy freakish paws for the return home.  I came back twice more for more IV antibiotics and was given a prescription for ten days of clavulin (in pill form this time, thankfully) on top of that.  Finally, on Thursday afternoon, the IV and bandages were removed and I was told I didn't have to come back unless things took a turn for the worse.  I am finally able to close my hands in a half-assed fist (they still hurt like crazy and I can't make a tight fist, but seeing as how a few days ago I couldn't even move my fingers, I'll take what I can get), and the swelling has gone down almost completely.  It appears I am 'on the mend.'

If anything, I have gained a whole new respect for house cats through all of this.  I think a lot of the time we forget that we are living with what are essentially 'little big cats' and that above all commonly-kept pets, cats remain the most unchanged by evolution and domestication.  Cats command respect and will not be coerced, tricked, or forced into anything they don't see as worth doing, and for years and years human beings have learned to accept this, so I guess I should have seen this coming a mile away.  Carol's explosive reaction was phenomenal, and there is no doubt in my mind as to her ability to defend herself when faced with danger.  Seriously, I am still in awe.  While my initial feeling was something akin to wanting to boot her down the stairs (no, I'm kidding, I could never do that...), I have since come to terms with the fact that she was just doing what any cat would do, whether it be a pampered tabby or the most ferocious of wild beasts.  That being said, will I go upstairs to help cut her nails any time in the near future??


Not on your life.  

Evil, heathen Carol (left) and lovely, wonderful, well-behaved Spot (right)