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Sunday on the Slopes with Jon (well, sort of)
So, this weekend Tiger Boy and I went on a ski trip to Sunday River (in Maine) with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jon_libby and assorted friends. It's always nice to go on group trips, because it allows each of us to ski with other people instead of knocking around by ourselves all day (me on the babiest of the baby green trails, him on the black-and-blues. As it were). Normally I spend the entire first half of the day just getting warmed up to where I can comfortably ski anything that requires an actual lift instead of, say, a Magic Carpet. This time, however, we'd already been skiing once earlier in the season, at which I got some good practice in, so I was doing the easy green hills pretty confidently by the end of Saturday morning and took the Three Mile Trail with everyone else Saturday afternoon. (Then we knocked off around 4, tried out the unfortunately malfunctioning and therefore ICE COLD outdoor Jacuzzi, enjoyed the heated pool and sauna anyway, had a crockpot dinner of garlic chicken that couldn't be beat, played Guillotine, and crashed out before 10pm. Lovely.)
Sunday morning I took several green trails by myself to get from our condo (Brookside) over to the South Ridge Lodge for the 10:30am lesson... which ended up being actually boring because we proceeded to take 90 minutes to do the same three trails I had already just taken in about 20 minutes. >:-) Some good feedback for technique, though. In the afternoon I was continuing just to noodle around, practice leaning forward into my boots and keeping my arms and head up, etc., etc.
And then, around 3:15, I was coming down the Lower Lazy River (!) for at least the fourth time that day and, about halfway down... took a spill and bumped my head. Specifically, the back right of my head: in trying to lean foward, I panicked, overbalanced backward, got my skis tangled, and fell back onto my right side. *clonk* It wasn't a hard hit, but enough that it felt like an impact, all right.
There were two staffers in the immediate vicinity, one coming up on a snowmobile, another passing by on skis, so they both swooped over to make sure I was OK (no loss of consciousness, etc.). I said I was and even managed to haul myself back up onto my feet to ski the rest of the way down the (short) trail. But I did feel a little headachy, so I decided that those next few runs I had planned out were Not Going To Happen and instead returned all my rental equipment about a half hour earlier than anticipated.
Then I went to the restroom, where I noticed that I was seeing sort of a jaggy circle of bright light (or like the afterimage of a bright light, only I definitely hadn't been looking at any lights resembling that!) about 3/4 of the way around the visual field in my left eye. Hmm, I said, *that* doesn't seem comforting, and went off to find the Ski Patrol clinic.
I was feeling a teeny bit fuzzy, but generally well overall, and passed all my diagnostics (sensation tests, spine and neck eval; had I had enough lunch? yes, water? yes...) just fine. During the ~20 minutes I was in the clinic, the visual disturbance thing gradually started to fade out, though the headache came back slightly on the left temple side. Nevertheless, the EMTs thought I had best get promptly to a hospital for a head CT just in case. Promptly as in, "stop at the Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, don't even wait as far as Portland. Oh yeah, and make sure your fiance is the one driving, because YOU sure as hell should not be!"
So I calledladypsyche and let her know I was not in fact going to make it back for even the tail end of Menschen rehearsal. :-/
However, while Tiger Boy was duly driving us home, I phoned up my doctor's office, who said it actually sounded safe enough to wait until we got back to Boston for further evaluation. We got to the ER at Cambridge Hospital around 9:15, and they finally (around 10:15) pronounced me in tentatively good shape without requiring any CAT scan. Whew! Tiger Boy was assigned to stay home and watch me until 24 hours had elapsed, but that's just about past, and I feel perfectly well... modulo some neck stiffness that is actually worse than the stiffness in my calves and forearms! but still, I think, within normal après-ski limits.
The upshot is, now that I'm apparently picking up skill and confidence and therefore speed, I hereby promise to get a ski helmet. :-) Also, perhaps this would be a good week to bentsch Gomel.
jon_libby and assorted friends. It's always nice to go on group trips, because it allows each of us to ski with other people instead of knocking around by ourselves all day (me on the babiest of the baby green trails, him on the black-and-blues. As it were). Normally I spend the entire first half of the day just getting warmed up to where I can comfortably ski anything that requires an actual lift instead of, say, a Magic Carpet. This time, however, we'd already been skiing once earlier in the season, at which I got some good practice in, so I was doing the easy green hills pretty confidently by the end of Saturday morning and took the Three Mile Trail with everyone else Saturday afternoon. (Then we knocked off around 4, tried out the unfortunately malfunctioning and therefore ICE COLD outdoor Jacuzzi, enjoyed the heated pool and sauna anyway, had a crockpot dinner of garlic chicken that couldn't be beat, played Guillotine, and crashed out before 10pm. Lovely.)Sunday morning I took several green trails by myself to get from our condo (Brookside) over to the South Ridge Lodge for the 10:30am lesson... which ended up being actually boring because we proceeded to take 90 minutes to do the same three trails I had already just taken in about 20 minutes. >:-) Some good feedback for technique, though. In the afternoon I was continuing just to noodle around, practice leaning forward into my boots and keeping my arms and head up, etc., etc.
And then, around 3:15, I was coming down the Lower Lazy River (!) for at least the fourth time that day and, about halfway down... took a spill and bumped my head. Specifically, the back right of my head: in trying to lean foward, I panicked, overbalanced backward, got my skis tangled, and fell back onto my right side. *clonk* It wasn't a hard hit, but enough that it felt like an impact, all right.
There were two staffers in the immediate vicinity, one coming up on a snowmobile, another passing by on skis, so they both swooped over to make sure I was OK (no loss of consciousness, etc.). I said I was and even managed to haul myself back up onto my feet to ski the rest of the way down the (short) trail. But I did feel a little headachy, so I decided that those next few runs I had planned out were Not Going To Happen and instead returned all my rental equipment about a half hour earlier than anticipated.
Then I went to the restroom, where I noticed that I was seeing sort of a jaggy circle of bright light (or like the afterimage of a bright light, only I definitely hadn't been looking at any lights resembling that!) about 3/4 of the way around the visual field in my left eye. Hmm, I said, *that* doesn't seem comforting, and went off to find the Ski Patrol clinic.
I was feeling a teeny bit fuzzy, but generally well overall, and passed all my diagnostics (sensation tests, spine and neck eval; had I had enough lunch? yes, water? yes...) just fine. During the ~20 minutes I was in the clinic, the visual disturbance thing gradually started to fade out, though the headache came back slightly on the left temple side. Nevertheless, the EMTs thought I had best get promptly to a hospital for a head CT just in case. Promptly as in, "stop at the Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, don't even wait as far as Portland. Oh yeah, and make sure your fiance is the one driving, because YOU sure as hell should not be!"
So I called
ladypsyche and let her know I was not in fact going to make it back for even the tail end of Menschen rehearsal. :-/However, while Tiger Boy was duly driving us home, I phoned up my doctor's office, who said it actually sounded safe enough to wait until we got back to Boston for further evaluation. We got to the ER at Cambridge Hospital around 9:15, and they finally (around 10:15) pronounced me in tentatively good shape without requiring any CAT scan. Whew! Tiger Boy was assigned to stay home and watch me until 24 hours had elapsed, but that's just about past, and I feel perfectly well... modulo some neck stiffness that is actually worse than the stiffness in my calves and forearms! but still, I think, within normal après-ski limits.
The upshot is, now that I'm apparently picking up skill and confidence and therefore speed, I hereby promise to get a ski helmet. :-) Also, perhaps this would be a good week to bentsch Gomel.