Notes from a bicycle accident.

So yes, it's true; last night, for the first time ever, I had a mishap on my bicycle in Chicago, pretty much my worst nightmare because I'm 38 and have no health insurance. It's a boring story -- I hit a pothole, at night when I didn't see it, which brought the bike to an immediate stop but not me, and ended up launching me over the handlebars and onto the pavement with an unceremonious thud. Thank God, thank GOD, I was only going two miles per hour when I flipped; can you even imagine what kind of shape I'd currently be in if I hit that pothole at 10 or 20 mph? Now, that said...

--I currently have a bruised rib.
--I currently have a bruised thigh muscle.
--I currently have two sprained wrists, one bad enough that it needs a wrap.
--I currently have six or seven abrasion wounds covering the entire right side of my body (which is what I landed on during my accident, and skidded a little bit), from my knee to my shoulder.

And this, needless to say, is...ouch, fucking ouch, fucking ooh man am I in a lot of whiny 38-year-old no-health-insurance kind of pain. And it was right in the middle of having these thoughts that my friend Kate texted me; and we ended up getting together and smoking up, and trading humorous stories like always, and watching the latest episode of The IT Crowd, as well as a bunch of trailers and opening credits for a bunch of Joe Swanberg video projects, because I'm doing a feature on him right now at my arts center, the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, and I figured he's the kind of moviemaker that Kate would be into. And sure enough, she is.

Okay, enough for me tonight; time to lay down and nurse my wounds. Man, oh fucking MAN, am I in a lot of whiny achy pain these days, and of course with no doctor around to give me a prescription for the good shit (i.e. Vicodin). That's probably the worst thing about this all; not the pain itself, which is manageable, but the knowledge that I'll be literally dealing with this pain for the next two months straight, with barely any days off that entire time. When I injured my knee this summer, after all, that took an entire month to get over; and that was a much less intense injury than the bike crash I had last night.

Sigh. Sigh, sigh, sigh. Well, you accept the good with the bad, right? That's what it's all about; understanding where you are in life, of what freedoms in your particular life are important to you, and what kinds of things you're willing to give up for that, like regular health insurance. The pain of an entire half of a body full of bruises is an ordeal; I just keep trying to keep in mind how glad I am that it wasn't worse, that I didn't end up in the hospital against my will, by (God forbid) breaking one of these fragile bones in my body. Always try to look at the bright side of things,  that's what I always say. Or, actually, I never fucking say that; I always urge people to embrace the most pessimistic option possible. Oy vey, my wrists! I gotta go fuckin' lay down now and give 'em a rest!