I started the race and things were going fine. The course was incredibly smooth and fast and the conditions were close to unbeatable. The trails at Krug Park have several bridges that cross what I'll call ditches. It is a cool feature that has riders crossing what I'll guess is 2 to 4 feet in the air. On the first lap I came out of a turn onto the fourth of these bridges and cut the corner a bit too much. As a result, my rear tire went off the side of the bridge and me and my bike went over. Normally this probably wouldn't be a big deal, but I was pretty unlucky. My bike was fine and dropped into some brush and to my knowledge is in OK shape, but I landed on the right side of my back directly on a large rock. I was immediately in some pretty severe pain, but I didn't quite grasp the extent of the injury at that point. The Parisi rider immediately behind me kindly inquired to see if I was OK, to which I lied and said I was fine and that he shouldn't ruin his race over me. I stood up and leaned against my bike for at least 10 or 15 minutes. At first this was an effort to decide if I could proceed with the race, but then it turned into a debate in my head about whether or not I could get myself out of the woods. I finally got myself to start walking and due to sheer luck found my way directly to the start/finish area. I immediately told the officials I was out and then sat by my car for a good half an hour to try to deal with the pain. I finally mustered the courage to load my bike in the back of my car, which I should add was excruciatingly painful, and then I decided I needed to get home since I was feeling slightly better.
I made it home just fine, but it turns out driving myself home was probably a really stupid and irresponsible idea. I should have called my wife to help, but she is working nights right now in her residency and I knew she would be sound asleep since she had already told me the night before was pretty rough. So I tried making what I thought was the considerate decision and drove. On the way I noticed in my back that there were popping/crackling noises around the area where I landed on the rock and of course the pain was pretty persistent. This was odd, but I didn't think much of it. I got home and hobbled myself around the house doing things like eating lunch, unloading some things out of my car, etc. I then realized that the pain was not getting better at all and that my wife would probably be more mad if I didn't tell her than if I woke her up with a concern. I woke her up, told her I was in severe pain, and mentioned the popping/cracking noises that were especially prevalent when my back was pushed on. She was clearly battling going into panic mode and noted that she thought I had subcutaneous emphysema, which occurs when air gets in the subcutaneous layer of skin (not normal). Due to the nature of how the injury occurred, she immediately thought I had broken a rib (or more) and punctured my lung. She called my brother (also a doctor) just to confirm her thoughts that we should make a trip to the ER. He concurred.
We went to the ER at KU Medical Center and there was talk about the potential of a chest tube having to be inserted from the start. I didn't think much of it until my wife gently explained to me what that meant, and at that point I started to make it known that I wanted to avoid that at all costs. I really didn't want a tube being stuck between my ribs and into my lung, but if it has to happen there isn't a lot that can be done to avoid it. They do numb patients that require these, but they can only numb so deep and below that it supposedly involves a lot of pain. After a series of x-rays, CT scans, an IV, and a lot of random stuff being hooked up to me, we were told that I did in fact fracture a rib and that resulted in my lung being punctured and slightly collapsing. The subcutaneous emphysema was confirmed, as well as a pneumothorax aka pneumo (an abnormal collection of air between my chest wall and my lung related to my collapsed lung). However, a chest tube wasn't yet required so they decided I needed to be kept overnight for monitoring. This involved x-rays at various intervals to ensure the pneumo wasn't growing in size. If it stayed the same size or got smaller, I would be in the clear. The picture below is me trying to put on my best happy face in the ER while waiting to get my CT scans done and then sent to my hospital room.
I never heard anything back on the results of the intermittent x-rays to ensure the pneumo wasn't growing, but I guess in this case no news was good news because I was sent home this afternoon. Now I just need to make sure I don't get worse in terms of pain or breathing, but otherwise I should be just fine. I do have pain medication that I'm trying to use minimally, so I'm not entirely uncomfortable. To my wife's dismay the doctor told me at checkout that I could resume biking whenever I could deal with the pain. She wants me to take a break until I'm more or less all better, which would be pretty much impossible for me to do. I'll probably take it pretty easy for a few days just to let my body do some healing, but I doubt I can stay off the bike until the end of the week. I had intended to take a small break of a few days to a week at some point in the summer just to get refreshed, so I guess this will be that break (albeit under different terms that I expected). Hopefully there will be no more updates regarding this rib/lung issue and it can be assumed that I healed as expected.
