The end of the story

So, to pick up where I left off, eventually they figured out what was going on with this whole stroke business. The MRI showed eleven separate events; five more major, six less so. The five more major ones showed brain tissue death of areas ranging from the size of a large pea, to the largest at the size of a marble. The smaller ones ranged from the size of a bb to the size of a small pea.

Here's what happened: Somehow I developed a dissection, or small tear, in the right side carotid artery going from the heart to the brain. As near as I can tell, it may have happened when Cece jumped on my back at the same time I was standing up. Apparently, it doesn't take much force in a certain way to cause injury to the artery. Anyway, this little tear started to allow blood clots to form, which then would break off, float up into my brain, and get stuck there, causing the strokes. In the investigation of why this was happening, they asked me a series of questions looking for the cause. The first was asking whether I had been in an accident recently, but the second question threw me: had I been to a chiropractor? The answer was no, why? The neurologist explained that this type of artery injury, while not exactly common, can be caused by upper neck manipulation. Hmm, I think I'll stay away.

In the end, the prescription for fixing this problem is to thin my blood long enough for the dissection to heal. That means a few weeks of twice daily Lovenox injections while the regular stuff, Coumadin, gets normalized in my system. Every third day, I have to go to Froedtert for a blood test for the Coumadin until the dosing is nailed down.

All of this goes back to why I can't race this summer: thin blood. I actually rode with my doc yesterday and he said as long as I was riding with him he'd be able to plug the leaks if I crashed, but that he'd much prefer I didn't do that. It would be difficult to plug a leak inside my skull...

So try not to crash me on the Beat Down as I'll blame it on you if I bleed out.