Alittle bit of information…

Can be dangerous.  Reading the internet or researching your health or injury problems online quite frankly can suck.  It never fails to lead to faint symptoms of hypochondria.  

You read how a blunt trauma (just sounds bad doesn’t it?) to the trunk of your body can have other adverse problems than just some broken or bruised ribs.  Like, oh yea, these ribs are there for a reason – protecting vital internal organs.  You know like, lungs, spleen, liver, pancrease… the list can go on.

So when you relive the experience in reading the stuff – diagnosing where you were struck, what symptoms you had and currently have you, that little voice in the back of your head starts to say “oh, shit – it better not be that.”

Of course being stubborn, compounded with conventional wisdom that says nothing can be done for broken ribs and having stupidly high health care costs & insurance deductibles – only to confirm in the medical appointment nothing can be done for your injury.  It becomes ever increasingly easy to pass on the obligatory visit to the doctor. 

But from the getting stuck in the lower left part of my rib cage, feeling nauseous at times, having some shoulder pain and feeling the need to sleep alot.  My spleen probably took a good pounding, if it ruptured… well, this would be moot as I’d of been dead by now, without having seen a doctor.  Just real bruised and some bleeding most likely. 

This prompted me to look at my cycling computer “PowerTap” file of the ride – just how fast was I going when I crashed?   It shows the last reading was 33.6mph before going to zero mph.  Ow… no wonder why….. I got a problem.

Coincidentally enough, I read an article in the Economist the other day that was talking about bike friendly cities & how it’s different in the US vs. europe, etc.  They had some statistics I found interesting.  If you get struck by a vehicle traveling at 20mph or less there’s a 5% chance of dying… not good, but not bad either given the the choice of getting hit.  If the vehicle were going 30mph there’s a 45% of death.  And if the vehicle were going 40mph, pack your bags for purgatory because there’s an 85% chance you are road kill.

Now, I’m not sure what the different is between getting hit by a car at 30mph or hitting the ground at 30mph – they both seem like pretty immovable objects.  I can tell you I’ve had enough from hitting the ground at that speed that I don’t want the opportunity to test out the theory on a vehicle.