The Den

Two and a half weeks ago, when Sarah and Bethany were visiting, just moments before we left to go camping at the coast in Half Moon Bay, a floorboard on my back porch broke under me as I was reaching to get something. My left leg instantly went through the new slot in the floor to the ground below (only about a foot and a half down) but unfortunately said slot was about 2 inches narrower than my leg just below the knee

So, as my weight pushed my leg down, the neighboring board scraped up along the inside of my leg, nicely mashing all the flesh as it went, stopping just below the knee. Very little broken skin, only a few scrapes, and no injured bones - but now I know what a steak feels like when you take a meat tenderizer to it. This has been the most serious bruise I've ever had.

But, it was just a bruise, and although it swelled up quite a bit, it didn't really hurt that much. And I was on vacation with Sarah and Bethany, so I wasn't about to let a bruise keep me from the beach. I iced it as much a I could, and stayed off it when possible, but it wasn't until 3-1/2 days later that I could really finally get off it - and boy did it look nasty. It looked much much worse than it ever felt - but bruises tend to do that. All sorts of colors over my whole leg. For those of you who aren't squeamish, here's a photo of it 5 days after it happened. *yay*

So I ended up spending most of a week and a half laying flat on my bed, keeping it horizontal, wrapped, and iced. That seemed to be what it wanted, because the color and most of the swelling subsided pretty quickly, and now its just a hard lump of healing flesh about 3" across.  It never has been very painful, so it was kinda tough hanging out in bed all day, doing work from home with a laptop - boring to say the least. 

But I can sit up for a whole day now without it swelling much, so I'm back in business - on Monday (July 9th) I'll try biking to work again - first time I've been on my bike in about a month, due to conference attendence, vacation with family, and injury... We'll see how it goes, but I'm looking forward to the exercise again!

The moral: if your floorboards are springy, replace them now!