A week and a half later...

...and the recovery is progressing.

Slowly.

The left side of my upper body is no longer just one giant multi-colored bruise. The colors have faded, and along with them, the pain is not quite as intense.

Thanks to a bunch of Vicodin, the first few days weren't that bad. But once the "vitamin V" ran out, the pain settled in. A steady diet of Tylenol and Advil have taken a bit of the discomfort away, but the constant painful reminder of the crash is always with me.

I'm pleasantly surprised that I escaped with very little road rash. The scrapes that mark the spot where I landed on my left elbow have sealed-up and scabbed-over, and they're on their way to normalcy. But the two gashes on my right hand, one on the index finger and the other on the knuckle of my thumb, continue to bleed. I'm a bit concerned about both, but I'll give it a few more days before I flip out.

Both hands are still very painful. For the longest time I couldn't figure out why, but today it hit me (so to speak). I must have had both hands up on the brake hoods of the bike, and the sudden stop jammed the hoods back in to the crook of my hand, between the thumb and index finger. The pain is the dull, throbbing kind, not the sharp and stinging kind.

Aside from the constant pain in my left shoulder, the biggest discomfort right now is my inability to take in a deep breath without experiencing a real sharp pain in my back, in that small area between the shoulder blade and the spine. The x-rays didn't show any broken bones back there, but I'll wait until my doc takes a look at it next Thursday before I come to any conclusions about the origin of the pain.

But, all things considered, I do feel very fortunate. A few feet either way, and the outcome could have been much different. I don't want to be overly dramatic about all of this, but I could have been killed in the crash. The fact that I wasn't, no matter what the injuries and current discomforts, is truly a blessing.