The knee, part 1

Well, if you have not heard, this past Saturday, I was in a biking accident and blew my knee out. "Biking accident" makes it sound like I was on the Tour De France but it was much less dramatic than that. We were on Put in Bay and rented those cheap bikes where you have to back pedal to stop -- remember when you were in elementary school? I had to make a sudden stop and I was on the top of the circle and pushed back.

I heard this loud pop.

I felt this excruciating pain.

The next thing I knew I was laying on the ground with a police officer hovering over me. She was asking, "Are you okay?"

I mean how do you answer that question and not be a smart aleck?

"Sure I'm okay! I always lay in the street, surrounded by people, holding my knee and screaming!"

Fortunately, the Police officer was right there, she called the EMT and they were there in minutes. They cut off my favorite pair of pants, secured my leg and loaded me in the ambulance. They said that they would put a splint on me but since they didn't have a hospital, that is all they could do is secure the leg. It was then that it hit me that I was on an island.

Surrounded by water.

Very choppy water.

Now, the funny thing is they asked me if I wanted to take the Life-flight Helicopter. I mean, I blew my knee... it's not a gunshot wound to the chest or anything. So they loaded us on the jet boat (yes, we all had to pay for the tickets, including the EMT person), they wedged my bed against some chairs, and across the water we went. [SPLASH! JUMP!]

They took us to the hospital in Port Clinton and admitted us to the Emergency room. My wife told me the hospital was really small, but all I can say is they had some nice doctors, nurses and some really nice ceilings -- no water marks and mostly drop ceilings. They used can lighting rather than a lot of Flurescents. You notice these thing when you are laying on your back for a day.

Like most emergency room visits, the majority of time was spent waiting. They did some X Rays, poking and prodding, they gave me meds for pain and the emergency room doctor tried to re-set my knee. ["Now, we are going to give you this medication and you won't remember anything. You won't be asleep, but you won't be aware of what is happening" -- for the record, I remembered EVERYTHING.]

To be continued...