That´s right, being injured sucks. At the current moment, I am out of commission, again. I´m PISSED, and feeling a bit insecure about it. Why, because I have already had to spend time off my bike recently. Now I have to take a bit more time off. Let me just tell you this, when you hurt yourself don´t keep riding on it, that´s exactly what I did when I sprained my shoulder this summer, and have now further injured myself. Which obviously makes me feel like a flipping retard.

In September I got black toe, as I call it. Barflips can definitely damage your toes in the learning process and I learned this the hard way. I somehow got my foot stuck between the brake and rim, the bike slid out on the slippery floor inside Chenga and I fell forward. All I felt was a crack and a sharp shot of pain go threw my big toe. I tried to keep riding, but something just felt wrong. Lucky me, I cracked the nail bed in my toe, which caused an infection and made my toe black, and I could barely walk on that foot for weeks. Now after so many months, I still have an awesome throbbing pain every so often and on occasion wakes me up at night... siiick. Through dealing with black toe, I also had to have my ta-tas redone, because my lovely handlebar hit me in the side of the tit and formed a ball of scar tissue in my boob which then formed a fold in my implant, so that was an expensive fall. So during these months of healing, I had shitty chest pain obviously, and a real shitty foot pain. Now this stint of not riding I thought would be the end of the injuries for awhile. Well I was wrong.

Now getting to my point of not riding while injured. I had sprained my right shoulder, so bad that it looked several inches bigger then the other. Working on carving switch handed steams, and during the time when the flat spot at Chenga was full of dust, because they were making a foam pit, I slid out. Down I went, hand still gripping the bars as I slammed my elbow and then annoyingly, my shoulder into the cement. So not only did my shoulder endure a slam jam from hitting my elbow but it also got a nice slam on itself. I went to a doctor that told me I sprained it, told me to stay off my bike for a bit. A bit to me meant, well, 3 days maybe. LOL WHOOPSIE. But I didn´t care, I would be off to ATX and ATL so staying off my bike was a NO. Little did I know what damage that was going to do. I am going to inform you that don´t know this, but a sprain in a muscle can stay sprained for months if you don´t give it time to heal. I didn´t know this. Throughout the summer and into winter, my shoulder would freeze up, pop, hurt or start to burn, but not consistent enough to make me stop and think, well maybe I should look into that. I should have. Now when I finally got on my bike after a couple months, doing new tricks on my first day back on, and being better at some tricks then I was before, I was pumped. Until I woke up one morning with horrible sharp pains in my shoulder. So bad I didn´t want to do anything with that arm. I figured give it a week it´ll be fine. NO IT WASN´T. I have been to the doctors and to the physical therapist now, who had a hard time with me because of my looseness from being double jointed, and trying to pin point the problem, discovered not only did my sprain not heal, but I tore some muscles in my rotator cuff, that didn´t heal properly. Now these little muscles, if triggered, begin to feel as if they are on fire. Now her advice to me, "If you are going to be at risk of sliding out or falling, I wouldn´t ride your bike because you can further damage your shoulder." Shocking to hear that you shouldn´t ride again. That´s like telling a fat kid he can´t ever eat cake again, FAT CHANCE. Obviously I am not going to completely stop riding, but I can´t risk severely injuring my rotator cuff considering my job as an Esthetician requires mobility. I can´t exactly do a massage or facial if I have to have a surgery that takes 6 months to heal. So, I will compromise, and when I have had more physical therapy and feel as if my shoulder is stronger, ride a couple days a week. It saddens me to think of not riding all the time, but I have damaged my shoulder already in a short period of time, and due to my lack of care for a sprain have managed to injure myself far enough. I´m writing all this to tell all those new riders, and even some of those stubborn vets that when you are injured, stay off the bike until you are healed. The damage that comes from not healing properly is irreversible in most cases. I ,like many of you, love my bike and love riding to the point were I road threw the pain and didn´t pay attention to what I was advised. Looking back I would have taken the two weeks off to let it heal if I had known the repercussions. Not even two years of riding, and because of my stubborn self have hurt myself, and it will most likely affect me for my entire life. No I am not going to stop riding completely, but will I try and prevent further damage by riding less, yes. I can´t afford to tear anything else or further in that shoulder. I hope the riders that are stubborn like I was, and the new riders that are so full of passion they could careless if it hurts like I was, take my advice. Of course a lot of you will say how you were injured more and got surgery and now ride crazy hard and I know others will agree with me. What I know is, ruining your rotator cuff and having surgery is serious, and a lot of times people end up needing more than one surgery and their shoulder never being the same. Take what you want from this, say what you want, I just want to spread the story, and vent a bit, to inform of what you can do to your body from not letting yourself heal.

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Ride on Ladies and Gents

Lea Dobrowski