Table of Contents: The Big Bike Accident - September 1, 2004

On Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, I washed my face and showered only once per day. Both actions were painful. I had trouble getting myself to brush my teeth even once a day because of the pain, even though I knew it would help to keep the amount of bacteria down. My sense of time had slowed down considerably, even as real time marched along at its normal pace. The days seemed to slip away quickly. It seemed almost as if I could hardly fit in all the things I did, even though they could not have been very many. I was doing little more than eating, watching videos, checking and writing email, bathing, sleeping, talking a little with Ian, washing a few dishes, and perhaps one other "major" event each day.

I watched my face day by day, and it seemed to improve very gradually. The most worrisome part of it was the dead flesh inside my lip. This flesh was white and smelled bad. Ian could smell it when he was close to me, and I could smell it most of the time.

If you are faint of heart, you should skip this paragraph. From time to time, I could feel loose strings of dead flesh pulling away from the mass, and I would trim them off with scissors. I really wanted the whole mass gone, but I knew I couldn't do that. That whole area was extremely painful, and it was frustrating to have to wait around for something to happen. I knew that the dead flesh wouldn't go away by itself.

Each day, the alive parts of the lip seemed to heal a little bit. After a few days, the live parts seemed to have gotten much stronger, and were separating away from the dead part. A noticeable gap in my lip had appeared, where the dead part sank down, and the live parts grew healthy. It became more difficult for me to hold liquid in my mouth without tipping my head back.

On the day I went back to work, I still had traces of the "shiner" in my right eye; there was still a patch of slightly raw skin on my chin; and my lip just looked bizarre. But I knew that wasn't going to change much this week, so it was time to bite the bullet and just go. I had an appointment with a plastic surgeon on Friday, but I figured it'd be just an evaluation, and that nothing would be done to change my looks for several weeks. This was a discouraging thought, but I could not hope for what could not happen.

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Next: Being Back at Work

Table of Contents: The Big Bike Accident - September 1, 2004