Show us your biking scars!

[DebW]

Here's the x-ray of my right collarbone when it was broken. Notice the 2 small pieces where the big pieces overlap. Wish I could see what it looks like now.

[chickwhorips]

i can't believe the leg x! wow. but i do like the nail polish. i think i have the color.

deb ouch! that looks painful. thats a break!

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

has anyone here crashed and ruined their cycling garments (shorts, tights, etc)? i have seen pictures of cyclists after a tumble and their cycling shorts will have big rips and holes in them. cycling shorts are expensive (to me), so how common will this happen and can they be patched/repaired?

Gee Cali, better to get your shorts ripped than your leg.
"How common will this happen?"....I guess it will happen as often as you go flying down the road on your shorts.
When it happens you can then make the big decision whether to throw them out, sew them up, or go around with your a** hanging out. You might start a new fashion!

[Xrayted]

Actually, I think margo wins hands down. Now that girl sounds tore up!

I love my sapphire blue polish. Indigo, sapphire, any dark blue just does it for me. We're not allowed to wear any polish on our fingers at the hospital due to bacteria so I overcompensate on the toes.
Tough? I'm actually quite a softy. My progress is solely due to those who were there for me, especially when I needed a good swift kick in the, um, shin. (the other one ) (And to the one who left me when this all happened... thank you very much. I couldn't have done it with you.)

KnottedYet - (sorry, still can't call ya KY, it makes me lose my train of thought ) This is gonna kill ya but... I went to physical therapy ONE time when going through this. I didn't like their attitude of "there's not much hope but the insurance is paying so try this". I got them to send me home with some big rubber bands, (sorry, I don't know the right term) some basic moves and a lot of my own determination, creativity and good sense. My orthopod agreed with my philosophy (LOVE YA Dr. Alfred Cooke! - aka pops) and trusted me not to do damage. In the end, he thought I had much better progress because I wasn't held back by that group of PT's. (only ones my insurance paid for then) 15 yrs later, I'm still looking for a PT that shares my thoughts on "alternatives". I don't think they exist in this conservative area, however.
I may have to move. Or at least, fly to Seattle every now and again so you can "play with my leg a little". **Ahem. I can pay in lentils.

To all of us who've lived through life's scars (of all kinds) and came out better than before. And thanks everybody for not going "Gasp, how horrible!" That always just knocks the life out of me.

-X.

[Xrayted]

DebW - one word

Ouch!!

Ok, I lied, here's some more... That is a very nasty clavicular fracture. I can only assume they went in and screwed a plate on there. Those are some of the most painful fx's to have too. There's just no way to completely immobilize them until healed. Now look who's tough!

[Kitsune06]

I may have to move. Or at least, fly to Seattle every now and again so you can "play with my leg a little". **Ahem. I can pay in lentils.
-X.

*covers her ears first, then her eyes* OH MG. giggity giggity legumes.

[Aggie_Ama]

I don't have any photos of my cycling scars. I did crack my tailbone mountain biking back in 2004, but no X-ray for that. My normal injury is to bruise my calf badly when I try to get going and hit it with my pedals.

[TerraNik]

I don't have any scars (yet) though my current injuries from my most recent accident might turn out to leave some scars... I have some lovely pictures of my wounds while still healing *mmmmmm*!

This was only 2 weeks ago when I was riding my brand new bike (!!) up in the mountains (mtn biking)... I don't remember the accident but basically I must have been going too fast and got caught in a water groove and overcorrected and just slammed myself into the ground. That's all I can imagine happened.

Anyway, I ended up with a concussion + mild head injury (don't remember the accident and had a couple of minutes of lossed consciousness). I also had a nice bruise around my eye where my sunglasses slammed into my head! I fractured my radial head (elbow) and cut up my legs (as you can see from the pics). The x-ray for my arm is pretty boring, so I won't bother putting that on.

[DeniseGoldberg]

has anyone here crashed and ruined their cycling garments (shorts, tights, etc)? i have seen pictures of cyclists after a tumble and their cycling shorts will have big rips and holes in them. cycling shorts are expensive (to me), so how common will this happen and can they be patched/repaired?

In the overall scheme of things, your health is a lot more important than keeping the clothes you crashed in. If you end up in a hospital it's likely that your clothes will be a total loss since they will be cut off of you (at least that's what happened to me after my own crash. The only things that were returned to me in one piece (and still usable) were my shoes, sunglasses, and gloves.

I wear clear or yellow glasses. There is still a huge amount of crap flying around in a rain storm. I'll go with my ophthalmologist's recommendations.

I'm with you - my eyes are too valuable to me to risk riding without some protection. They are always covered with glasses when I'm out on my bike, clear lenses in low light - but lenses that still have UV protection.

--- Denise

[DebW]

DebW - one word

Ouch!!

Ok, I lied, here's some more... That is a very nasty clavicular fracture. I can only assume they went in and screwed a plate on there. Those are some of the most painful fx's to have too. There's just no way to completely immobilize them until healed. Now look who's tough!

Nope. No surgery. No plates. No screws. It's healed in that configuration, though the sharp edges have rounded themselves off. Actually, the doc told me that it would heal better because it was so smashed up - something about pulverized bone working like a graft. He actually said to me "The only reason you would want to have surgery on this is if you are a big-time backpacker." I let the collarbone heal as it was and modified my backpack (sock on right shoulder strap to hold some foam that evens out the offset in the bone). The collarbone healed up fine, my torn deltoid still bothers me, and recovering from frozen shoulder sucked big time. Recovery was 5-6 months with PT. Sounds small compared to what Xrayted went through.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

And thanks everybody for not going "Gasp, how horrible!" That always just knocks the life out of me.

-X.

Horrible? No, it's wonderful and admirable how you have worked your way out from under from this major injury and are riding again!! You are some woman.

[Lenusik]

Maybe I will be an exeption, but I hate my scars. I still have my scars from the first crash that I had in March. It is only left shoulder and elbow. I can deal with the one on my elbow, but that shoulder pink bright thing is just horrible. I live in Phoenix and could not wear tank tops or any open shoulder dresses the whole summer. I can show off my scars in front of the cycling crowd, but not anywhere else. I've been always proud of my skin, but now I just get upset when I see this scar. I hope that it goes away one day.

[LisaB]

I'm with you - my eyes are too valuable to me to risk riding without some protection. They are always covered with glasses when I'm out on my bike, clear lenses in low light - but lenses that still have UV protection.

--- Denise

Let me clarify something here: I said I'd never wear glasses on the bike and I put it badly, because I meant prescription lenses - I too wear sun glasses and Sliders with clear or yellow lenses - but there was something about waking up laying on the ground after my first major crash, with an ambulance, paramedics, and a crowd surrounding me and not being able to see anything clearly because my glasses had broken when they hit my nose that was really frightening. No matter how early I get up to ride these days, I'll always put my contacts in. I never want to be in that situation again.

Now, back to scars ...

[emily_in_nc]

Fortunately, the 5-6" scar left on my right hip from surgery to repair my broken ilium (cycling accident in April 2005) is now, just as my orthopod promised me, a thin little white line. If I wore bikinis at the beach (which I don't), it wouldn't even show. I'm less pleased with the large numb area on my upper thigh below it where a nerve was cut during surgery. Surgeon warned me this would probably occur. Kind of a bummer.

I do have one particularly heinous picture I had DH take while my surgical incision was healing, at a lawyer friend's recommendation. It shows butterfly bandages (complete with dried blood) from one end to the other, along with a nice red incision. I won't subject y'all to that one!

Emily

[margo49]

Just came back to this thread only to find that I had missed my (Warhol-ian) 15 minutes of fame.