Joan on the Road

Remember how I ended my last blog entry..."ready for whatever comes next." ? Thursday morning, the day after chemo, we set out for our bike ride around the park. I took off first, got to the end of the road and looked back....no Jim. So I headed back to our site and he's standing there by his bike. He says, "You won't believe this, but I fell off my bike again!"

Seems he was putting his leg over the bike to mount it, became unbalanced and fell against the hood of the car, ramming his right back rib cage area against the car. Yikes! At first, it didn't seem too bad, but after we parked the bikes and went inside he felt very nauseaus and then the pain set in.

So it's off to the Urgent Care again! After a pretty good exam of feeling bones and muscles the doc said it was probably a severly strained muscle injury. Could be a broken/cracked rib but the treatment would be the same. So Jim opted not to have an xray. He probably should have in retrospect....just so we'd know.

He got prescriptions for muscle relaxers, pain killers and directions for hot/cold treatments and exercises. He was in a LOT of pain. The first 48 hours he zapped out on drugs. Sunday he finally felt a little improvement and today he's moving around without pain killers and it's bearable. He says he now feels like he won't be a cripple forever. Maybe you know the feeling! Everyday you wake up hoping the muscle pain will be gone but ...damn...it's still there.

Normally this would not be scary....just a real pain in the a$$. Being in the midst of chemo with all the blood ups and downs made it very worrisome. But no symptoms of internal injury have developed so I guess/hope he's out of the woods on this.

It seems like the chemo has affected his sense of balance and feeling in hands and feet. So needless to say his bike has joined the knives in "lock-down".