Bike Crash Update…Cracked Rib?
It’s been a week and two days since I crashed my bike sideways into a minivan and I thought it would be good to give an update. I think I might have cracked or bruised my rib(s) on the left side. When I breath deeply, laugh, cough, or sneeze I have a sharp shooting pain in one very specific spot in in front of the left side of my rib cage. I had kind of noticed it just a little last weekend, but I was taking it so easy and not exercising because I was so beat up that I didn’t really do any deep breathing until the last few days back on the bike again.
Today I rode about 18 miles on PCH on my single speed, which was painful in recovery at the top of the hills (deep breathing). Then right afterwards I ran about 1.5 miles, and that got pretty painful towards the end. Just to explain, I’m training for a short triathlon in September, I had just taken a week off of training after the crash to recover.
So, the chest pain is a bummer. I did hit the guy’s minivan pretty hard, and I took a lot of the impact with my ribs and shoulder so I guess this makes sense. It’s weird, the day of the crash it took a while for things to start to hurt, but I was kind of running on adrenaline for a while, it was later the afternoon of the hit that I started getting achey, and really it was like Day 3 that I was really hurting.
Anyway, from the reading I’m doing online, doctors can’t really do anything about cracked ribs anyway other than give you pain relievers, so at least I’ll save money on a medical bill. It’s not that bad, just don’t say anything funny (”haha OW! Oh god!”).
June 26th, 2006 at 9:50 am
Yeah, when you’re in shock you tend to miss that initial pain. Did you happen to get the guys insurance info?
Hope you feel better soon.
June 26th, 2006 at 7:19 pm
Wow - well you should at least go get the fun pain meds!
June 30th, 2006 at 6:00 am
Wassup sally. I found fixpert. Damn, you hit a mini-van? That sucks. Did you get to swing at the guy at least. That’s the time to do it. When the adrenaline is pumping.
I like the site.
sweet. J
June 30th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
Thanks J! No, the guy was really nice, he didn’t do it on purpose. He’s was pretty upset, so I was kind of comforting him, I wanted to give him a hug to convince him that I was ok. I sort of patted him on the shoulder and was on my way.
About a week later, some lady deliberately tried to clip me on the side as she passed. I felt her side-view brush by me eventhough she had tons of room to pass, and I looked up at her car as it was driving away up ahead and quietly said “wtf?” to myself and made a wtf-style shrugging hand gesture. She was looking back at me in her rear view and saw that and flicked me off!! THAT made me really mad, because she was trying to hurt me on purpose.
July 1st, 2006 at 11:32 am
Update time. Ok, I don’t think I have a cracked rib. I think I might have just bruised it. It’s only 2 weeks since I got hit and I’m feeling a lot better now.
August 2nd, 2006 at 6:53 am
Hola,
I crashed on my bike last Thursday, right before I was getting ready to go to DC for the weekend. A light rain wetted the road; I applied some brakeage and wham-O the rear wheel went right and I went left and cracked 2 ribs! It’s good to go to the ER just to see if you might’ve puntured something. I’m taking it slow and easy in the meantime; like walking and light stretching for a week.
l8tr
Jeff