the injury thread

[psynide]

mine is a torn ligament in my left knee.
messed up sometime in the late 1997 at pune university.
there is this nice slope, i thought its a good place to test my cyclocomputer which
was newly installed. another given plus were that there were some aerodynamic chicks hangin around.
i put the pedal to the metal, i gain good speed, enroute there is this small speed breaker. my mind thinks lighting fast, lift the front wheel land on other side of
the speed breaker, chicks will be impressed. blow kisses in the air. but alas, my reflexes were slower than molasses. i lift the wheel just as it hit the speed breaker, all hell breaks loose.
its all a haze, but i remember that my tires were looking skyward, with me doing a superman hanging on to the bars for dear life.
i'm airborne for a couple of seconds, covered probably 6-7 feet in the air, land on my left foot, i hear a weird noise just as i land from my knee. a blunt pain
follows,i keep tumbling for sometime, in the process i see my bike doing multiple somersaults. trust me that really was painful to see my bike taking a beating.
everything stops. there is almost 20 to 25 feet distance between me and my bike, i tried to get up, but nah. my knee was swollen it almost looked like a knee pad.
my friend who was following me, brought the bike closer to me, i felt better, but only momentarily, i notice a twisted front fork, bent handlebars, but
the cyclocomputer was alright ! thank god for small mercies !
i was lying on the road for quite sometime. finally the very chicks i was tryin to impress, comes up to me and asks " are you okay? you need any help?! " i said "i'm
fine". kahan fine yaar. yahan pe to lagi padi hai. one of them asks " are you sure?!" i said "yeah, will be okay in a few minutes"
and they walk away.
impressed? ya right !
while they were walking away i muttered to my friend " arre yaar.. chale gaye woh.."
he gave me one whack on my head and gave me the most colorful of gaalis that i wont be forgetting soon.
back to my knee, it was like a mini hot air balloon. meanwhile one good chap/uncle/aunty/granma in a black santro, i still dont know who he/she/it is drives
by me, goes all the way till univ. main gate, calls a rick, comes back to the site, and leaves. thanks to who ever that was! i get in the rick. go to this wretched hospital close to home. i could
barely fold my knee, this quack of a m#$%#$F#$$er, asks me to relax my leg and folds it with all his might. i yelled like a bad loud speaker on steroids and i'm sure that
was when the bacha-kucha ligament must have exploded. C^%^$ya docktar.
i could bear everything. the pain of the knee, the pain of seeing my bike in a mess
( even my mom when looked at the bike said "paavam cycle" translation - poor bike, first time in her life ! ) what i couldnt bear, was...er.we didn't have a western
style toilet in our bathroom. i had to umm.. y'know, Squat to do the business. which i barely managed to do with some ingeniuity. i dangled from the tubes and pipes that
were jutting out with both my hands, and when finally it was time to 'finish' it off, i had to let go off one of my hands, DAMN ! balancing on one hand and one leg,
with the pain going right upto my hair strand was the stuff that could be aired on discovery channels " i shouldn't have been alive "

sorry for the long post. i thought i should share. i miss my old knee when the ligament was okay, when i see pics from my childhood. i love you knee. i do !

[psynide]

forgot to mention, this ass of a doctor told me, its just some "soft tissue damage"
stupid dingbat, i hope that the winds of misery blow through his vacant skull.
later on when i went to hardikar hospital i was told that its an issue with the ligament.

[sunil_r]

Gosh Rahul - you take that 13 in your handle seriously. Get well soon. I read your post and was thinking I am most un-adventurous compared to you, clearly I need to go check out Turahalli sometime, so I know what I'm missing.

Havent broken anything for a while, but psynide's mention of Hardikar Hospital reminded me - I fractured my ankle back in 96 when trekking back down from Lohgad - jumped over a fence and it twisted and snapped when landing - then I had to hobble across a couple of kms of countryside with broken ankle to catch a local train into Pune. I loosened my shoe on the train and the foot just puffed up like a balloon. I got a cast put on at that Hardikar place. The cast came off in 3 weeks but it took a year or so to heal completely. That's the worst I've done so far.

[rahul13]

Take care man. Wish you a speedy recovery.

Jesus man. Get well soon. That sounds like a nasty tumble.

All the best for the surgery Rahul.

Gosh Rahul - you take that 13 in your handle seriously. Get well soon.

Thanks all for all the good wishes. Really appreciate it. Am home now and just had the first dressing changed. Surgery went really well. Posting before and after xrays because im really amazed at what medicine can do. In the 'after' xray you cant even see where the break was.



I was rather bummed out because I had my sights set on the bbch dh race in july. i knew the big bikes couldnt be beaten but i wanted to try and be among the quicker hardtails on the day. the day i crashed i had done a few sub 1:30 runs without pushing hard which wasnt too shabby considering i only got back on the saddle 10 days before. oh well, guess that'll have to wait.

@hathidum, venky and shankar: Thanks guys. Tough nut? Stubborn and a little soft in the head is probably more accurate. Protective gear - I was wearing a full face motocross helmet and leg guards. Ironically the arm guards are due to arrive in a few days and i was 'taking it easy' until they did (look how that turned out). hathidum, funnily enough, i wanted to head to the nandi dh but remembering ur horror story, was waiting till all my gear landed before i did. will have to wait another few months i guess. venky, its hard to imagine the fixie demon having knee problems running. you should revisit it man.

@stalker: thanks man. valamont indeed looks beautifully flowy and scary. did you have the temerity to take ur cross bike there or is there a big dh bike in your stable which you've been hiding from us?

@psynide: i feel your pain man.. hit up ligament zen master sumit (alphazed1). he's severed and/or damaged some half dozen odd ligaments in his body and is now literally fighting fit (trains ppl in kickboxing). he just might be able to help you. anything's worth a shot i guess..

Stuff I learnt

- never ride alone, particularly if you're headed to some remote offroad location. i actually really enjoy alone time and was at turahalli alone that day. a friend happened to wake up late and joined me really late. had he not been there i have no idea how id have coped. he brought the bikes down the hill, made a sling out of a spare tube, loaded the bikes up and drove me home - none of which i could have done seeing as i was in a lot of pain and had only one good hand.

- the cycling community here is awesome and takes care of its own. ive never wholly bought into the community theory but it was there to see and was really amazing. my ortho operates at sita bhateja hosp and so a friend of mine called arvind bhateja and he was so very very kind. he went out of his way to look out for a stranger who was simply a fellow cyclist. i was really really touched. it also helped that he's converted all the docs in his hosp into cyclists. i hardly had to explain anything. funny story: on my way into the operation theatre, the head nurse asked how and where i was injured. when i said offroad cycling at a place called turahalli, he nodded knowingly. turns out he was in the ambulance which was on standby during lat year's bbch dh race.

- shit happens! you can try and be careful and minimise risk and things could still happen to you. dont let it beat you down. get over it and get back on that saddle.

Cheers,

Rahul

(grammar police, forgive the lack of caps - one hand typing)

[Carpediem]

Good to hear that the surgery went well. Take care.

[deepakvrao]

Now that all is well, wanna switch to something safe, like road cycling? As long as you survive the trucks/buses, you don't get these niggling issues like fractures.

[stalker]

On the trails, atleast you don't have anyone else to blame . Unlike when you dodge trucks/buses/bandits on nice road!

[htedum]

Now that all is well, wanna switch to something safe, like road cycling?

Safe? Road cycling in India? Surely you jest, doc D! After madman's drunk driver crash, he switched exclusively to trail rides for a while because he didn't feel safe on the road.

[shankarbn]

something safe, like road cycling?

[deepakvrao]

Was just looking at Rahul's history

[Nautanki]

This in the morning news:

http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_best-buses-the-new-killer-on-the-prowl_1697804

[rahul13]

Was just looking at Rahul's history

given the road riding I saw at this BBCh with chaps hurtling at speedbreakers in excess of 60-70 kmh and bunnyhopping ditches on road bikes while clipped in, I'll stick with the dangers of mtbeeing thankee very much. another upside is the fact that elephants aren't very good at chasing downhill

[cryptic_abbreviator]

Hi,

recently i got mail that I lost my Chutney's to KBR KOM from Strava. That loss was to Richard so I was not exactly crushed and heartbroken or motivated to go try defend it or something and cut 2.5 minutes over a 2.5 km climb

this guy's story is very different

ciao
gr

[deepakvrao]

^^Crazy. Only in America.

[rahul13]

Hi,

recently i got mail that I lost my Chutney's to KBR KOM from Strava. That loss was to Richard so I was not exactly crushed and heartbroken or motivated to go try defend it or something and cut 2.5 minutes over a 2.5 km climb

this guy's story is very different

ciao
gr

Reading that article only partly decrypted that post for me. Then again, its a sign of how long ive been here that I'm starting to understand bits of your posts GR. That, or you're losing your touch O Abbreviator

Hilariously tragic (or tragically hilarious?) read that.