Lisa Morgan - Kiwi Mountain Biker

See, in the past I’ve only been in A&E for other people - usually bike related accidents, but the odd health issue with the parents of course (the fact that theirs were mostly cardiac made this all the more interesting, and yet also very routine and familiar).  I’ve been once as a patient, with a pretty disastrous experience - can you say OCCULOGYRIC CRISIS (neither could the nurse).

Anyway, post car v bike last Wednesday I spent a lot of time sleeping, eating, trying to watch movies without falling asleep.  I was very sore for a couple of days, then things started to feel a bit better.  Headache still comes and goes, but that’s pretty standard (I can say that, I’m becoming something of an expert on the subject).  So on Saturday I was only asked to spend a couple of hours in the shop which gave me a chance to see how I would go on the bike.  Not quite ready to take on the road again, and the bike not being fixed yet, I met Celia to join her on her sexy new Santa Cruz Superlight’s virgin ride.  I took things pretty easy, but was clearly not as sharp as normal with a few vision and reaction problems.

I was entered in a race on the Sunday but chose not to go.  Have since heard it was cancelled due to strong winds, but I ended up not getting out at all.  On Monday I still wasn’t feeling too hot, so it wasn’t til Tuesday I picked my bike up and fitted the new bars and gave it a check over.  I headed out for an hour.  The first few minutes I felt like I’d sat on a couch for a week after being hit by a taxi, but soon settled in and started to feel good.  Eventually all the niggles started to out themselves with a bit of back, knee and hip pain which kept me off the bike again on Wednesday.

By Thursday I was amping to get in a good ride - easy, but some decent k’s.  After approximately 187* hours of rain (*possibly inflated) the sun came out on my way home, the wind was light and I was ready to ride.  And then…:

First, I forgot my bottle - fortunately I remembered a couple of minutes from home.  I’ve been a bit forgetful lately, the concussion card is getting tattered!  After I headed out again I was really conscious I wanted to keep this one nice and easy as I’d still been getting headaches.  Within a few minutes I started to feel some sharp chest pains.  I didn’t think much of it so kept riding.  As it got worse I backed off a bit then eventually stopped and decided to take off my HR strap.  After a few minutes I decided to turn home but by the time I got to the intersection where left would take me home and right would put me back out riding the pain had eased somewhat.  Given my total lack of riding in the last week, I turned right.

After just a few minutes again the pain returned and kept getting worse.  By the time I stopped I was nauseas, very short of breath and in pretty significant pain.  I turned back home again with the pain getting worse - going in to my back, up my neck and getting really really weak.  So I called home and asked someone to come meet me to pick me up while I kept riding to meet them.  By that stage I thought if I stopped again I was going to collapse - if I could keep pedalling I was still in control.

By the time Dad drove up we were a couple of minutes from an after hours medical centre so he took me straight there.  They put me on O2 straight away (oh no! undoing all my altitude simulation training!) took a history and gave me some GNT spray.  Because the spray helped (it only helps if it’s cardiac) they ran an ECG which was fairly normal.  Not surprising since the GNT had taken the pain away.  They gave me another spray then consulted the registrar at the hospital who wanted them to send me in for further tests.  Cue compulsory ambulance ride… I asked them to put the siren on but they didn’t.

At A&E they took some blood, ran another ECG and about 5 hours later sent me for a chest X-ray.  All the results were clear but the symptoms were still pretty perplexing.  I’m in the super-low risk category with no history of heart problems and no obvious reason for the onset.  The symptoms and effect of GNT all pointed to bad squishies, but test results were clear.  The conclusion was that it wasn’t likely to have been cardiac, but they couldn’t explain it with anything else either.

Plan of attack now is to hope it doesn’t happen again for another 40 years or so, but in case it does I ride in the direction of the hospital with 111 on speed dial so they can do an ECG while the pain is present.

So, like I say - never a dull moment. 

I’m off to Napier this afternoon for the Tour of the Bay with next to no preparation in my lungs or legs and a bit of trepidation over what’s going to happen next time I ride.