Ok I’m Back

Unexpected medical leave is over.

Spent the last week dealing with some ill back pain.

Backstory for outside and new fam:

In the summer of 1999 I was riding my bike down South Street next to a rusted out hoopty driven by some seniors.

A car on the left side of the street started to pull out of a parking space and the hoopty swerved to avoid it, bumping me.

There was a patch of oil on the street and my bike slipped out from under me and went horizontal.

I fell straight onto my ass from saddle height.

Vertebrae L4 and L5 compressed on top of each other, both fracturing. The disc between them was smashed and pushed out to the side.

The hoopty kept going. I doubt they knew they hit me.

I sat there for a couple of seconds, did a bike/body check, everything seemed ok. Stood up, got back on, rode a couple of blocks and my toes started going numb.

I was new to back pain and the numbness freaked me out. I rode to Jefferson ER, locked up outside, went in and waited.

MRI revealed the fractured vertebrae. And just like that I was out for a few months.

This is the part of the story where I tell you how Boney thought I was faking it to get the big half paycheck workman’s comp!

Hey Boney-I was not faking it. LOL. And that workman’s comp sucked. Took 2 months to get the funds, was taxed and fee’d to shit and ended up being around 125 dollars a week. Good luck paying rent on that.

So that’s the beginning of my broken back story. Maybe the beginning of some other parts of my story too. This is where I got a lot of recurring painkillers the first time.

There was not much regulation of percocet and vicodin at that point. Oxycontin, luckily for me, had not peaked in popularity yet. I got one script for a 6 month supply of vicodins with 90 pills a month. 6 refills. That is insane.

I know a lot of other people have similar experiences. Look at the painkiller addiction trends in the US. This is where it starts.

(Now they only prescribe tramadol. Which I think is horrible and doesn’t help much! I know this is absed in the pro peloton and I can’t see why it’s popular. I get that you can ride through pain on it, but the nausea and dizziness seem like they’d distract you. Personally. I have a pressure point roller and a road bike and I deal with it. Sometimes not well lol. This week was ugly.)