24. Another Spanner in the Spokes
I love running, but riding my bikes comes a very close second. I didn’t have a bike as a child. Well, I had a big three-wheeler until I was about 10 and then was given a scooter with pump up tyres. Deep down, I always wanted a real bike. I didn’t get one till I was 28 and it took a little while to learn to ride it. But I loved that aqua mountain bike. I loved the sense of freedom of riding and as we lived near the freeway, I could ride on the bike paths. Later I got a road bike and that is when I started getting involved in racing triathlons.
My husband had cycled for years and it was a interest we shared, though we didn’t always ride together. I avoided hills which he loved. Sometimes we did ride down Beach Road together on a Saturday or Sunday morning, turning back at Mordialloc and clocking up about 40 or more kilometers.
Six weeks after my surgery I felt I could handle a slow ride, so we put the bikes on the car and headed to the start of a trail along the Yarra River near us. We planned to ride a few kilometers to a suburb that had a real village feel and lots of cafes and restaurants. The ride was quite easy and I felt very comfortable, cruising along. The ride up the hill to the cafe was more of a challenge and my back didn’t thank me the next day. Despite being June, it was a mild sunny day and we enjoyed sitting outside in the sun, having a coffee and chatting for a long time. The ride home was just as enjoyable. Apart from my back, I didn’t seem to suffer any other side effects and the sense of freedom being back on my mountain bike was really encouraging and gave me a real boost.
That week my husband announced he thought he would do the Melbourn-Roobaix ride. This is a fun cycling event around Melbourne, which has been going since 2006. It has very loose connections to the famous Paris-Roubaix one day professional race held each year in France. Cobblestones are a feature of both races. It’s had a bit of a cult following in Melbourne and has a reputation for dressing up with retro cycling gear and retro bikes. ‘Fixies” or single speed fixed gear bikes are a favoured mode of transport.
The start location is advised by email a few days before the day of the ride and the finish is always the Brunswick Velodrome. A map is given at registration and numerous checkpoints are to be cycling to and the ‘pave’ or cobblestone sections are to be cycled over to reach these points. The famous race in France is known as the ‘Hell of the North’ so the Melbourn-Roobaix plays on that and is known as the Hell of the Northcote (where the race finishes).
I took my husband to the start and met up with a few friends we know from the cycling/triathlon community. One asked me why I wasn’t riding – they weren’t aware of my recent diagnosis and surgery. I would loved to have been taking part, I hate to miss the fun.
I enjoyed standing watching the passing parade. The drill seemed to be to arrive and do a ‘parade’ lap of the Hawthorn Velodrome, then park your bike and register. There were teams dressed in Where’s Wally outfits and girls dressed in coloured tutu’s and t-shirts and matching socks. Each colour matched their gorgeous single speed bikes. Green, pink, blue, yellow. They looked fantastic.
One girl was in full 40’s style gear. She had a beautiful traditional women’s framed bike with a cane basket on the handle bars. She was dressed in a tweed skirt, a cropped wool jacket, stockings with seams and sensible lace up brogues. Even her helmet fitted her outfit. I couldn’t imagine riding 30-40kms dressed like that. I only wear comfortable lycra when cycling. I even found it hard to cycle in normal clothes when I rode my commuter bike around Dublin while living there.
My favourite outfits though, were two guys who tore into the velodrome on a tandem BMX bike. They were dressed in suits, but with short pants, long socks and lace up boots. They had full faced helmets and their outfits were topped off with gasmasks!
My husband rode off for a day’s fun and he would let me know when he was at the last checkpoint and I would meet him at the finish line. He rode his single speed bike, a steel framed bike he bought in Ireland. I knew he’d have a lot of fun and was really pleased for him to be able to do something for himself after the last few months of worry over me.
He sent a text when he was at a pub for the lunch stop. (No, he doesn’t drink and ride!) He’d met up with a guy he had worked with previously and they rode the event together. As I arrived to pick him up, I saw him cycling towards the velodrome and was able to get some photos of him doing his ‘lap of honour’ of the old concrete veldrome. It was madness and mayhem and looked like so much fun. He was grinning like a kid and I was so pleased he’d had a good day.
The next morning his back was sore and he arranged to see an osteopath. The morning following that, as he bent down to do up his shoes, his back went ‘twang’ and he immediately had trouble walking. The osteo worked on him but his back seemed to deteriorate during the day . The next day it was off to the doctor for anti inflammatories and painkillers and a CT scan to find out exactly what was going on and why his foot was feeling numb.
In the middle of all this, the first week of July rolled around, so I rang Peter Mac to enquire if I had been scheduled for my treatment. Apparently not. This was a real blow to me and with everything else going on, I was very upset and distraught about my treatment still not starting. I emailed my breast care nurse, as I was starting to worry that any random cancer cells that had escaped could be somewhere else in my body, happily setting up camp. She assured me that they wouldn’t let me go any longer than the accepted standard, but I wasn’t really convinced. About a week later I received a phone call saying that my treatment had been scheduled to start on July 25th. Our son was ready to head off to Greece and we sent him with our blessing, telling him to have a wonderful time and not worry about his parents – we’d be fine!
The middle weekend of July, I came downstairs to find my husband stretched over a fitball, pain etched on his face. He had trouble speaking due to the pain. His back was spasming badly and he could barely stand, let along walk. He isn’t one to complain at all, so I knew this was serious. His medication was clearly doing nothing and obviously something else had gone wrong. I suggested it was time to head to the emergency department. It’s at times like this I find myself wondering ‘why does it never rain, but it pours?’
After some morphine based painkillers he was a lot happier, went through a series of tests and eventually referred on to St. Vincent’s Neurology Department for more investigation. He also needed an MRI to be done on his back, but the appointment was weeks away and at 10pm at night! Luckily we got a cancellation for an MRI at short notice the following day. The MRI showed a disc extrusion at L4-L5. This caused him to lose feeling in his right foot and lower leg. We had to wait a few weeks to be seen at the Neurology Clinic.
We managed to fit in a few days away at Philip Island before my treatment started and enjoyed gorgeous weather for July. There was lots of sunshine and very little wind blowing. As my husband couldn’t drive at all now, I was the driver for the duration. He tried driving on a very quiet road, but we decided his driving days were on hold until his back settled down. It was so nice to go away and unwind and relax. Breakfast by the beach at Rhyll; fish and chips at Cowes and we spent one lovely afternoon at a winery having a drink and a ploughman’s platter, overlooking the countryside to the sea beyond. It was just the break we needed before radiotherapy started.