Eastern Europe Trip

This week, both Tracy and I have taken significant steps forwards, as we continue to push our recoveries… sometimes a bit too hard!

First, Tracy’s story…

As mentioned in my last post, Tracy had the skin-graft operation on her arm last Tuesday. Yesterday the “tissue viability nurses” (don’t you just love the job titles they have in the NHS!) visited her to change the bandage on her arm. The good news is that the skin graft has largely “taken”, meaning it has attached to the underlying tissue, at least for most of her arm. There is a small patch of skin (about the size of 2 x 50p pieces according to Tracy) where the skin has not taken as well and this has a bit of infection and was seeping, so she’ll need yet more anti-biotics to target the infection. They’ve re-dressed her arm and will be changing the dressing every 48hrs, so we’ll keep a close eye on how this develops. The skin on her arm looks a bit like a snake’s skin apparently (that’s Tracy’s description), due to the scoring applied to help the skin mould to the new shape – hopefully that will improve over the next few weeks. In addition to the good news regarding the grafts, this new skin has some sensitivity – she can feel when it is touched – which is much more than we expected, and a lot better than when the dead skin was in place a few weeks ago… and there’s more good news…

If you recall, during the accident a nerve in her arm was severed, which meant that she had permanently lost all feeling in her little finger and down the side of the finger next to it. Well, it seems “permanent” in this case, wasn’t!! When I got to the hospital last night, she had a big grin on her face when she told me she could feel when the finger was touched. I didn’t believe her at first, and so put it to the test, and she was telling the truth!! This is fantastic news, as it now means she will have full sensitivity in her hand, and whilst we don’t yet know how restricted her movement will be, at least she’ll be able to feel me holding her hand when we walk along the beach when on the holiday I’ve promised to take her on when she’s better!!

And the good news doesn’t stop there. Last Friday they put her back brace on, and she was able to sit up for the first time in 6 weeks. Naturally, this was a really big step, and she called me from the hospital to share the good news (I was in the Dainese store in Manchester at the time, and shared the good news with the sales assistant, with whom I was having a heated debate at the time!). Tracy, being Tracy, then pushed this new experience a bit too far. No-one told her how long she should wear the brace for, so she naturally wore it for as long as she could bear… about 6 hours… That had the effect of making her extremely dizzy for the next 2 days, meaning she couldn’t have the brace refitted… and as she ate more than she’d been used to, coupled with coming off the morphine and other pain-killers, she also got a stomach upset and suffered from being sick and having diarrhoea throughout Saturday and Sunday, only recovering yesterday afternoon…

Next time, she’ll take it a bit more steady…

As for me, well, I’ve been pushing things a bit too…

First, I’ve been trying to do the exercises the physio gave me, but these are extremely painful – in all the wrong areas. Most are designed to build strength in my thigh (which has lost 3” of muscle in comparison to my left thigh), but the swelling in my knee means my knee hurts like hell when trying to do them. I’ve also been out and about a bit… I wanted to get back on a bike as soon as possible, so went out window shopping last Friday, looking for some new Gore-Tex bike clothing to replace the jacket and trousers trashed in the accident. After visiting the Dainese shop in Manchester (see above!) and Hein Gericke, I concluded that the BMW Rally suit was what I needed, and so went to the BMW dealers for a look… I found I could get a 20% discount on the trousers, and found a jacket in another dealers in the colour I wanted and was fully prepared to pay full price for it, and arranged the deal for the following day. When I went to visit Tracy that evening and told her what I’d been doing she said two things. First, was to take it easy, as my leg has still not fully recovered (I ignored this, naturally!), and second was to have a look on ebay. So that night I did just that and found a BMW suit in exactly the right size for some £200 less than I was about to pay!! Clever, my missus… So the following day I picked up the suit… which meant that when Monday came, I decided it was time to ride again…

If you recall, I have a GS Adventure that we bought for the round the world trip, which was sat in my sister’s garage, some 50 miles away. And Tracy’s bike (Lydia) in my garage at home. The plan was therefore simple. Ride Lydia over to my sister’s and pick up my bike, which I’d then ride home, and I’d have a bike I can use anytime… Sounded good, and when I sat on Lydia to see how my knee would cope, all seemed OK. A little discomfort, perhaps, but surely nothing serious… How wrong I was… Kitted up, I set off to Nikki’s scrunched up on this tiny Ducati (which has been lowered from standard to enable Tracy to reach the floor). I realised I’d probably made a bad mistake after about 10 minutes, when on the M62 near the M61 junction, and my knee was starting to make it’s feelings felt, by shooting red hot pain into my leg. This got worse until I stopped at the services on the M61 – where I stopped to straighten my leg and massage the pain away. On stopping, I found I couldn’t lift my right foot from the footpeg, and had to stand up off the bike and man-handle my right leg to get it moving again. Ironically, the services are half-way between my house and Nikki’s, so I now had a choice to make – head back home or keep going – either way was not going to be very comfortable… Not surprisingly, I decided to keep going, knowing that the GS would be much more comfortable to ride as the distance between the seat and footpeg is about twice as far as Lydia… Suffice to say, the rest of the journey to Nikki’s is one I won’t forget for a while. I had to stop a further 2 times on the way to stretch my leg, and it’s still sore now, 24 hrs later… I did manage to ride the GS back, though, and it was a lot more comfortable… but I think I’ll have to leave it a little longer before I try to ride again… and it’ll be even longer still before I try to ride Lydia again!!

So I think this week has been one in which Tracy and I have both learnt valuable lessons about the pace at which we can recover, and the importance of not pushing too hard, too soon… but, of course, that won’t stop us both pushing as hard as we think we can get away with in order to get back to full fitness!!