Broken Bones

When I attended my Chief's interview, the assistant chief chided me for being slightly reckless. "Stay off the snowboard. When you're on probation, you won't have sick leave and you can't afford to miss any shifts if you get injured." At the time, I lived 25 minutes from a ski area and had just purchased another season pass. I was able to hit the slopes 3 or 4 times a week. His words haunted me and I haven't been snowboarding since that interview.

I continued to mountain bike, however, usually on a singlespeed. I had always been an avid cyclist, and had never experienced any injury worse than road rash. I considered cycling safe and myself a skilled expert.

One fine day, a couple of months after fire academy, I took the hardtail and drove out to one of my favorite trails and climbed 3000'. I was in fine shape from the running and stairs and heavy lifting, and the hills felt great. The weather was perfect and the view from the top was lyrical. I was coming down the hill, dodging and jumping, working very hard. I'll spare you the details, but I wound up falling at slow speed, my closed fist beneath my ribcage.

"OOOOOoooooooooof" The wind went out of me and wouldn't come back. I rolled onto my back, my bike still clipped to my left shoe. Ouch, I thought. Ouch ouch OUCH. I'm hurt, and who's gonna find me? My diaphragm finally worked again, and that first gulp of air hurt in a strange way. "Owww" Every breath hurt. I disentangled myself from my bike and did a quick self-assessment for other injuries: just a scraped knee. I slowly rode down the hill to my truck.

Some Internet diagnosing revealed broken ribs, a costochondral fracture in the junction of my ribs and the cartilaginous costal arch. Also learned was the lack of specific remediation available for busted ribs. True, I hadn't actually fractured a bone, but at least two joints were flopping around when I breathed, it clicked and popped in a most disconcerting way. There was no way to affect or predict when the free end of a rib might grind loose, so no way to avoid it short of breathing. That was not an option.

When you are hired by a fire department, you enter a probation lasting from six to 18 months. It can be a scary, stressful time. You move around a lot, you meet a lot of new people, and if they know anything abou you, it's probably not something you're proud of. When you are a probationary firefighter, your career is literally in the hands of your brothers and sisters. In many departments, you are treated like a slave and the slightest misdeed might jeopardize your continued employment. If there are dishes to wash, or toilets to clean, the probie better do it, and with a song in his heart. If there's a drill, and someone needs to crawl into a muddy, shitty pipe, it's the probie who volunteers. And probies, in my department, don't have sick leave.

The first week of broken ribs is bad. The second week is horrible. It takes at least six weeks for a costochondral fracture to mend. I didn't tell a soul. Every shift, I'd show up early, scrub and polish, wash and wax, endure the minor humiliations, and smile. And I'd pray there'd be no fire that day, because the exertion was torture.

Nothing happened to expose my injury. I chalked it up as a lesson learned and vowed to a bit more careful in my old age. I got back on the bike as soon as I could tolerate the discomfort of heaving respiration.

Less than a month later, I was goofing around post-ride, in a paved parking lot. I was trying to knock some of the mud off the tires and the asphalt was slightly damp, and I went down. Hard.

I only broke one rib that day.