So… A week ago, I fell off my bike and fractured my collarbone.I had started writing a huge blog post about it, and in excruciating detail, got as far as my first urgent care visit, and then went, “this is boring“ and stopped. So here’s the highlights version.

Memorial day Monday was the first nice day of the three day weekend I was riding in somewhat new territory, and saw a soft right turn to a Street with very well marked bike lanes. So I turned, and immediately hit a speed bump I hadn’t seen. Not a nice gentle speedbump, more like a curb. Bike stopped, I went over, landed on my right shoulder.I pulled myself together, pulled the bike off the road, found my water bottle which had gone flying, then had to figure out how to get an Uber with a car big enough to put the bike in the back. Got home, had C check me out, took some pills. That afternoon, I went to urgent care around the corner, but they could not see me until the next day. Next day, I went – because my pain wasn’t too bad and my mobility also was OK, doctor didn’t think I had broken anything (although the bruising was impressive and got more so), but set me up for an x-ray on Wednesday. Went for the x-ray on Wednesday, the doctors had me stay until they could look at it, then called me in worriedly. I had a fracture, it was displaced, it might stab me internally, this was bad, go back to urgent care right now. Urgent care sent me to the ER, where I stayed until 2:30 AM mostly sitting around, but got more x-rays and more checks.

Bottom line: yes the collarbone was fractured, no, I didn’t need surgery, but I just need to immobilize the shoulder for 6 to 8 weeks.Both urgent care and ER gave me an arm sling as a temporary measure, but told me to order something called a figure 8 brace, which would actually work better and give me more mobility. Magic of Amazon, it should have shown up on Friday. It did not. Had to order order another figure 8, which showed up late Sunday. In the meantime, had a follow up with urgent care.So, the second figure 8 brace did show up and it works great. I have a follow up with an orthopedist on Friday.

Pain level has not been too bad – they gave me a prescription meds which worked pretty good, and I was icing my shoulder with a bag of frozen mixed vegetables every morning – but this morning it doesn’t seem to be necessary. Every night I seem to sleep better and better.Although it’s annoying, it’s not actually as annoying as the hand fracture was two years ago – for instance I don’t have to cover my arm when I shower. I have laid off the piano for now, and canceled the horn gig I had, but I am needing knitting a little bit.

The end, except I think I will try to blog a little more, since my practice time is not being used right now. Apologies for typos, formatting, weird word usage, etc. – I am using the wordpress iOS app and voice dictation, and it’s not the best.