1. Still high. At one point in the middle of the night, I thought the miniature Christmas tree my mom brought was rustling aggressively towards me. Turns out it was the sound of my IV drip, but I’m still keeping a close eye on that sneaky shrub.
2. The one thing I did not do in the middle of the night was sleep. I blogged, listened to a soundtrack of rain, listened to droopy music on Pandora, ate a Clif bar, counted the minutes until I could order breakfast and carefully typed a list of all the food I wanted, grimaced and winced every third minute, requested more Dilaudid, and got up to pee once. Sleep, however, was apparently not on the agenda, despite all of the painkillers and the extra dose of sedative.
3. Rufus Wainwright just dramatically and operatically sang: “Your nose was always too big for your face / Still it makes you look kind of sexy.” I’m sorry, but did he borrow Ke$ha’s lyricist? Come on, Rufus. I can do better than that right now and I’m writing about being intimidated by a small potted tree.
4. I am trying to download a movie rental from iTunes using the hospital’s painfully slow wifi. The current download time estimate is 247 hours, which is perfect because the movie should be just about ready when I am back in two years with another similar injury.
5. Not doing today’s scheduled training is stressful. It is the middle of December, so naturally these intervals are critical to my racing season and without them I will die and not be able to win. In that order.
6. It would be nice to maybe take a shower at some point, since I am still in my formerly sweaty gym clothes. A nurse kindly told me, “You don’t smell bad,” but that was last night and from my experience, these situations are prone to deteriorating over time if one does not take action.
7. A known side effect of narcotic painkillers is constipation. I am unwilling to add to my discomfort in any way, so I brought this up immediately in the ER yesterday and have reminded the nurses to drug me accordingly (“an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”…HA). My father jokingly wrote on my room’s whiteboard under the heading Things To Ask My Doctor, “When will I poop?” I only remember to erase this when I am settled back in my bed, so instead it remains in clear view of every visitor to my room. If I was less high, this would be awkward.
8. It feels uncomfortable to keep telling the medical staff, “I’m a professional cyclist…” But if I don’t, then it seems even crazier that this is my second weightlifting back injury in as many years. They also don’t really understand the urgency to get answers and develop a recovery plan. Their focus is on pain management, while I’m all about ‘let’s get back on the bike’ management. If I tell them it’s my job, then I feel like that’s a good cover for the real reason, which is that I am an obsessive masochistic nutcase.
9. Just took a 3-minute nap with my hands on the keyboard. This is not to be confused with the 5-minute nap I took less than 15 seconds into the series finale of Gossip Girl or the 30-second nap I took during my MRI (which led to my leg twitching and a stern voice over the intercom reminding me to not move).
10. Nevermind on the movie rental being ready; iTunes currently estimates it will take 6,007 hours to download. I shall count the seconds.