Over the past couple of years, they have been completely redoing the road I was riding down, including new sidewalks. They didn’t have the top of the road resurfaced yet. I was riding down the sidewalk and came to a spot where they hadn’t completed it. I swung out into the newly created bike lane to bypass the missing section of sidewalk. As I was crossing back in, my back tire slid on some loose gravel and caught the edge between the missing road surface and the newly poured concrete of the edge of the curb. The back tire slid on this edge for a second and I was situated so my back tire was almost parallel with my front, and then it caught traction which caused me to pitch forward. If you had seen it happen, you’d say I went over sideways.

As I was falling, even though it was just a split second, I distinctly remember thinking if it would be better to land on my head or my hands. I knew I was wearing my helmet, but I don’t know how much protection it would have provided. I chose to use my hands to break the fall. Since the accident, sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night having just had some sort of nightmare about this moment. That’s especially weird, because I generally don’t remember my nightmares/dreams.

I hit with my left hand first, then my right, and then my right knee. I’m not sure where or what I hit my knee on, I only realized later in the hospital that it was bleeding. When I hit the ground, I immediately suspected that my left wrist was broken, the pain was, until that point, the worst pain I had felt in my life. There are a few things I want to touch on about this moment. First, I wrecked on a fairly busy street, and not one person stopped to help. Second, I was wearing headphones and the force completely snapped the cord for the headphones. Third, strangely, the first thing I did when I sat down to think was to shut off my Endomondo tracker!

As soon as I completed that very important task, I called my wife and let her know that I thought I broke my wrist and for her to come pick me up. I then did the unthinkable, and put my phone into my left pocket, because that’s what I always do. Unfortunately, we have one car that will carry my bike, and it only has one key. That key was in my pocket. When she called back asking which side of the road I was on, I almost passed out from the pain while getting my phone out of my pocket. Luckily it was only a few blocks to my house, so she came and got the key. I asked if she thought my wrist looked broken and she almost threw up, so that pretty much confirmed it. I handed her the key and she went home to get the other car. I decided I would save some time by walking my bike part way home, so I struggled and met her about halfway.

We grabbed the kids and dropped them off at her mom’s house and headed to the emergency room. We got to the Riverside Methodist Hospital Emergency Room a little after 10pm. We got in pretty fast after the receptionist figured out we were there for an Emergency. I’m not sure why she had to spend 5 minutes before that staring at the TV, before she thought to ask us if we were there to see a doctor. It was odd, as we were the only ones in there at the time.

When we got to the back to see the doctor, they gave me some diloudid. That’s some GOOD STUFF. My pain went away pretty quickly, and they sent me down to get X-rays. I couldn’t move my wrist into the positions they needed for the shots very easily, but I made it. I probably couldn’t have done it without the drugs.

I’ll never forget the moment that the X-rays came back. Let me set up the scene really quickly. I’ve never broken a bone in my life, but I had mentally prepared myself for what I thought was going to happen. I’d go into the emergency room, they’d say my wrist was broken, they’d put it in a cast and that would be the end of it. Nothing in my life experience had ever shown anything different, so that’s the only thing I was expecting. When the doctor put the X-ray up, it was immediately clear that I didn’t just break one bone. I broke two bones, and I broke them both in multiple places.

As I was staring at the X-ray in shock, I heard the technician say the word “surgery”. I’ve never had any sort of surgery except a minor oral procedure when I was a kid.

I have to apologize here. I didn’t get any pictures of any of the X-rays. I was thinking soundly enough to get a bunch of pictures of everything else, but I managed to fail on the X-Rays.

I snapped out of it and started listening to the technician. She said that there was a pretty strong possibility that I would have to have surgery. She casually said the word “shattered.” I asked what the next step was, and she said that we’d put a splint on it and give me a referral to to a hand surgery specialist and a prescription for some vicodin.

August 18th was a Saturday and the referral was to call Hand and Microsurgery Associates first thing on Monday morning. We called and the place was so busy that I couldn’t even get in for a consultation until Thursday. That was one of the hardest times of my life, I was sitting there in pain and had nothing but fear to keep me company. It was pretty frustrating, but I managed to make it to the appointment on Thursday after having taken my last pain pill that morning.

My first meeting with Dr. Gowda didn’t go well. I was in pain. I was in a lot of pain. He laid out my options, and although the surgery was completely necessary in my book if I ever wanted to use my wrist properly again, the surgery was ‘elective’. I let him know we’d go ahead with it and he said we could schedule it for the following Monday. I said, great, now about the fact that I’m out of pain pills.. He said the he doesn’t prescribe narcotics prior to surgery and neither do his partners, but I was free to take tylenol and motrin, alternating every 4 to 6 hours. I felt this was absolutely ridiculous, as if narcotics aren’t for when you break a bone, what the hell are they for? He assured me that he is a great surgeon and that he will prescribe me lots of pain medicine after the surgery.

He left the room and I waited for the nurse to come in. She was going over the pre-surgery instructions and she mentioned that since my surgery was so close, I couldn’t even take motrin! I got angry, I was practically delirious with pain, and I slammed my good fist on the table. That’s not really like me. I think she figured out how much pain I was in, because after she left the room, she was gone for a bit and the doctor came in and prescribed me some pain medicine. Ultracet I think it was, at any rate, not the most powerful of stuff, but enough that I wasn’t going to go crazy with pain over the weekend.

I made it through the weekend by basically just sleeping as much as I could. I had surgery at about noon on August 27th.

There are a couple of funny things about the surgery date, but probably the most memorable is that I had a ‘block’ on my left arm. Basically they give you several shots and it makes your brain/nerves think that your left arm isn’t there anymore. Pretty convenient for surgery, pretty hilarious AFTER surgery. My wife almost pee’d herself when my arm was flapping around while I was trying to put my shirt on. We fixed that with a sling eventually.

Remember earlier when I told you that the breaking of my wrist was the most pain I’d ever felt up until that point? Well, here is the next point. The block typically wears off in about 12 hours, or so I was told. So I was essentially pain free for a while, it was pretty neat. The doctor said I should start with the narcotics and get them in my system for when the block wears off. I started to do that, and the block wore off early. If my wrist break was a 10 at the time, the new 10 was the pain after the surgery. That would make the wrist break about a 3 on that particular scale. It was insane. I took a combination of sick and vacation days and I was off work for a total of about 9 days, laying in bed, waking up only to eat some string cheese and take pain pills.

The final result is that I had 10 screws, a plate, and 2 pins put into my wrist. I had surgery a few weeks later to have the pins removed, but I will have the plates and screws forever.

Today is April 30th, I’m finishing up this post that I started about 6 months ago. My wrist is doing okay, but it’s nowhere near full strength still, I’ve managed to gain most of my weight back, but I started walking again today, so hopefully I can get back on the right track.

I’ll post about my adventures in physical therapy at some point, but I wanted to get this one out there.

Thanks,

Mike

Just dropping a quick note to let you know where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing.

A few days before my last post on August 14th, I bought a brand new bicycle. My plan was to ride it for a few days, and then post about it, and then do a bunch of followup posts about all of the great trails and things I found with the bike. (Those posts will still happen, but probably not until the spring.)

Unfortunately, bad luck happened on August 18th. I was riding my new bike down Clime Road, not far from my house, and I hit a patch of gravel as I was transitioning over a lip on the edge of the curb where it meets the road. Long story short: I wrecked my bike, and shattered my left wrist.

I’ve had two surgeries over the past seven weeks. I have ten screws, two pins and a plate in my wrist. It’s been one of the darkest, most self-pitying times in my life. I couldn’t even shower and dress myself for a good portion of that time.

I’ve started the post that details everything that’s gone on in the past couple of months, but it’s not ready yet, I’m just letting you know that it’s coming. There will be details, and pictures, and horror stories.

It’s going to be months, if not a year before I fully regain motion in the muscles in my left wrist/hand area, but it’s getting stronger every day.

I think that’s an important life lesson I’ve learned. Sometimes stuff sucks. Sometimes stuff REALLY sucks, but there’s always something better on the other side.

At any rate, I want to tell you that dark times get better. I’m coming out of it now, I’m getting back on my weight loss journey and I’m not going to let it beat me. The great thing is that I’m essentially even at 43 pounds down since I started. It’s been down and up during the time off, but I didn’t lose any ground on my previous work.

I walked three miles this morning, with almost no extra swelling in my wrist. I’m going to walk 3 miles tomorrow morning, and 3 miles the next morning, and so on, until I’m a skinny guy.

I’ll talk to you soon.

Mike (Fat Guy Shrinking)

On Saturday, July 21st, 2012 I earned my first 20,000 Step Badge for my Fitbit Ultra.

I actually almost made my 25k badge, which is incredible. It started out with The Color Run. Then we did our normal grocery shopping, which involves multiple trips to multiple stores. After that, we took the kids to their Aunt’s house, where they’d be staying for the week. On the way back, we stopped at Polaris Mall, walked around for about an hour, and then we went to the new Casino at Scioto Downs.

The Casino was GIGANTIC, and we walked around there for probably an hour or more.

It was after midnight when we got home, so had I realized I was so close to 25k steps, I couldn’t have gotten them anyway.

Here is a graphic from the email that Fitbit sent to me, congratulating me for earning that badge. I hope it’s not the last one!

Not long ago, I earned my 750 Mile Badge for my Fitbit Ultra!

I got my Fitbit Ultra on February 18th, 2012. I can’t believe I have walked 750 Miles. I’m guessing I haven’t walked 750 miles in the last 10 years combined prior to this.

It is almost impossible for me to detail all of amazing benefits that the Fitbit Ultra has provided for my life. Honestly, the motivation that the stats provide is the one reason I’m down almost 40 pounds as I write this.

This is my first cycling workout. I’ll be posting quite a bit more of these, detailing the different parks and trails that you can go on here in Columbus.

I just wanted to post a quick update as to what I’m doing, and how my progress has gone since that post.

At the weigh-in yesterday, I was down a total of 9.5 pounds! That’s pretty huge, as it constitutes my two biggest weeks of weight loss to date. (5.5 and 4.0).

The low carbohydrate diet is working well for me, but I definitely can’t keep this up forever. I’m craving all sorts of foods that I can’t have, that would even be normally fairly healthy for me. I think I can keep it up for a couple more weeks. I’m eating a ton of eggs, tuna, chicken and steak at the moment. I even ate quite a bit of bacon. It seems counter-intuitive, but it’s working.

The part I haven’t done so great on is the resistance training. I’ve definitely kept up the cardio end, I think I’ve got that down pat. I have been doing some push-ups and sit-ups and doing a small amount on the Kinect game I referred to in the previous post, but I certainly haven’t been doing as much as I wanted to do.

I’m going to try to get that on track more this week and keep up my cardio and the low carbohydrate diet.

I came in second both weeks, to two different people, but for this month so far I’m in the lead. I’m in 6th place overall as well. If I win the month, I can get a 50 dollar Amazon gift card, and if I win the whole thing I can get another 100 dollar Amazon gift card. I’m trying for both, we’ll see how it goes.

Thanks to my friend Mark who hung back with me, I made it through the whole thing.

I even RAN parts of it. I didn’t fall, die or anything. As a matter of fact, I PASSED some people! It was insane.

It was a pretty nice day, not nearly as hot as it has been. There were thousands of people there, I think I heard the number 12,000, but my racing number was in the ~39k range.

As promised, here is the Endomondo map of the race.

At around the halfway point, Mark and I decided that we were going to challenge ourselves. We’d pick out an two obstacles ahead and say we would run from one until the other, and then we just repeated that the whole way. It worked great, After the race I felt probably better than I’ve felt physically in about 10 years. (Today is another story though, the soreness is catching up!) I’d estimate we probably ran for close to a mile of the race. I feel amazing about that.

I am REALLY glad I participated in this, and I will probably do so next year.

If you are on the fence about doing something like this, about challenging yourself in your weight loss. DO IT. Seriously. I would especially recommend The Color Run as your first race if you do so, simply because it isn’t timed, people are there to have fun. I thought for sure I was going to be the fattest, slowest person there, and that if I was, I’d be embarrassed. Turns out that there were people of all shapes and sizes, kids, adults, people in wheelchairs, it didn’t matter. It was a good time.

I’ll leave you with a picture of what I looked like after the race:

The Color Run here in Columbus, Ohio is tomorrow morning. I’m pretty nervous about doing it.

It’s definitely not that I don’t think I’ll make it to the end. I walk this much every single day in the morning before work. I had planned on at least jogging a little during the event, but I’m not sure if that will happen or not, my feet have been pretty sore lately.

I’m more nervous about the perception. It’s stupid, but it’s there.

Here’s a little bit of what happened yesterday for you to get an idea of what I’m talking about. In order to get in the race, you need to pick up a packet, which is basically a bit of swag and your number. I got a T-Shirt, a headband, a wristband, a packet of (pink) color powder, and my running number. (Pictured below.)

I went to pick up my packet at a place called RoadRunner. I had not heard of this place previously, but it’s a pretty large running/walking specialty store. When I got there I immediately felt out of place. Everyone there was skinny, in shape. The person who gave me my number asked me if I was picking it up for me or for someone else. I hadn’t heard her ask the previous person that, or the person after me. Also, when I went to pick up my T-Shirt, the highest size they had was 1x. Yes, I realize it’s a ‘race’ and most people who are 2x aren’t going to run in it, but it’s also billed as a run that anyone can do, runners, walkers, even people with strollers. Right or wrong, in my head, they were judging me for being a fat guy. I know I’ve lost 37 pounds in the last few months, but they don’t. They only see a fat guy.

Whether they were thinking them or not is pretty irrelevant to me irrationally mindscrewing myself. It’s something I really really have to try to get over, especially as I become skinnier and skinnier. I am one of the few fat guys who knows what it’s like to be on both sides, and I KNOW I’m treated differently by many people as a fat guy than I was as a skinny guy, so the perception in my head is hard to fight. Anyway, enough about my psychological problems.

I have my swag, and I’m ready to go. Like I said, I won’t be jogging much if at all, but I’m going to walk as quickly as I can and continue down my weight-loss road.

If you are someone like me, who has failed at weight loss in the past, I highly recommend doing things like this to keep yourself motivated. Look in your area, find a 5k that’s a few months out, sign up. Don’t look back. If you’ve paid the money, you have to go right? Even if your mind plays tricks on you and you feel like I described above, do what I do, use it as motivation.

If you can set goals like this that are out a few months, it’s much much easier to not fail. It’s easier to keep it up because you KNOW you have that event coming up in the future.

My next one is the Air Force 5k in September.

I’ll do a post ‘race’ recap, hopefully with some sweet pictures of this fat guy covered in colored powder.