Is my face OK? - #36

Or how to mutilate your mouth in the wilderness.

Last week I claimed to have written 14,000 words on beavers. It was 14,000 characters. Why was I suddenly so dense? 

Let’s find out.

I had braces for eight years as a kid, and now I will have had them for eight years and at least two weeks because on Thursday April 21, I smashed my face into the ground going 25 miles per hour.

It was late afternoon and Ben and I decided to head down to lower elevations to do a little mountain biking. We went to my favorite place: a trailhead off a dirt county road, a parking lot covered in pine cones. Dogs off leash, bikes abound. This trail system includes countless loops through multiple ecosystems — an easy place to spot all kinds of wildlife whether you’re whooping through the pines or bouncing rock to rock along the gorge ridge. I love it there. 

Mountain biking is a relatively new hobby for me. I’ve been a committed road and gravel cyclist for ten years now. As a teen, I used to put my Toys R Us mountain bike in the trunk of my Mustang and drive to the park system to ride by myself. When I moved to Boulder, Colorado from New York City, I bought a bike to commute with. Even through the winter, I rode that bike 8 miles each way before eventually being accepted into the Rapha Women’s Ambassador program that I was part of for six years. 

When we moved here, I added a mountain bike to the gear garage. Road riding isn’t exactly amazing here, and the best gravel requires dedicating your day to it. If I wanted a 2-3 hour ride that was enriching and fun and challenging, it was going to be mountain biking. 

Starting a new sport at 10,000 feet was, to put it lightly, humbling. There’s a local intermediate-to-advanced ride here that’s 9 miles long and it took me three hours the first time I rode it. I could have run it faster than that (and have.) But I want to be good at mountain biking because mountain biking, when you get it, feels incredible. I equate the feeling to being an F1 driver in the forest, to rewinding thousands of years to when running through the forest was required. Mountain biking, like trail running, makes me feel like the purest, wildest version of myself. 

But like any drug, it has its downsides, mainly the “down” on your “side.” 

We hit the trail and let loose. Rolling, re-trying features, hitting little jumps and catching air, unclipping and balancing through rocky sections, powering over grated gates. We’d completed every technical aspect of the trail, and all that was left was flowing singletrack back to the cars through the woods. We picked up the pace, gliding through the pine glade, faster and fas—

If you’ve crashed on a bike before, you kind of know how this goes. There’s no moment of “what’s happening.” It’s more like GROUND/FACE/AHHHHH. 

What actually happened is my rear wheel hit a rock at exactly the wrong angle and swung out from under me at speed. I went over the handlebars in the other direction at that same speed, and I went over so quickly that my hands didn’t even try to get out in front of me. The first thing to hit the ground was my mouth, then my shoulder, then my hip, then both my knees, and then my bike on top of me. 

I rolled over immediately, holding my face, yelling to Ben, “I’m fucked up!” 

I wish I could say I sat up and laughed, but all I could taste was blood and all I could feel was pain. Ben knelt with me on the ground while I hyperventilated, asking me to take my hands off my face so he could look at the damage. Watching Ben’s face as he examined mine helped me calm down. He has a good poker face, but I could see it in his eyes: it wasn’t as bad as it felt. So I took out my phone to see for myself. 

My “Walking Dead” audition headshot.

Looking my best, I know. 

I patted my helmet, intact. I bent my legs and arms, intact. I turned my head left and right, intact. And after Ben finished fixing my bike, I asked him to help me up. The next assessment began: was I dizzy? No — uneasy, a little wobbly, but not dizzy. Was I nauseated? No, though maybe hungry? How bad did my head hurt? This is where I was unclear — did my head hurt or was it just my face that hurt? 

It kind of didn’t matter, because I wanted to see a doctor either way, and I wanted to see one immediately. Not exactly a realistic request, because we had three miles left on the trail and the only way out was to — you guessed it — ride. 

So when you get bucked off the horse, what do you do?

You get back on. 

I dropped my seat (i.e., lowering it as much as possible), tested my brakes, and got back on my bike. I kept lifting a hand from the handlebars to hold my face, and Ben kept yelling at me from behind to put it back down, hold the bars, while I drooled blood and spit all over my top tube, staring wide-eyed at the trail in front of me. There were moments on that ride back where I could feel the speed pick up and my own desire to continue to pick that speed up. I’d clutch the brakes, an odd foot out here or there for balance, trying to move through the fear and the genuine and peculiar enjoyment of riding a bike while absolutely drunk on injury-induced adrenaline. 

When I saw the parking lot, my state shifted. Adrenaline started to drain as sheer relief took over. I nodded at the other riders in the parking lot, and they all gave me the look: unsure smile, eyebrows titled up in the center, a slight nod back, an even slighter side-eye to their riding partner. That trail system is not known for being incredibly technical or overly difficult, but it doesn’t have to be. Mountain biking isn’t an injury-free sport. If it was, what fun would it be?

In the car, I started to shake. The shivers took full control as we drove toward cell reception to figure out our next move. We were over an hour from home, which in this scenario, was actually a good thing. It meant we were an hour closer to a hospital. We headed toward the desert, toward care, while I trembled and dribbled. Thirty minutes later, we pulled into the emergency services entrance — fields surrounding every side of the medical center. We left the bikes on the back, unlocked, and Ben helped me limp to the entrance. 

The doors were covered in signs. “DO NOT ENTER WITHOUT MASK.” “ALL VISITORS AND PATIENTS MUST BE MASKED.” And thankfully, a mask covered the worst of it. I was dirty and limping, but with my face covered, I looked pretty good. We went to registration.

“Date of birth?”

“Twelf, irty-un”

Ben took over, giving the jaded woman my personal details. 

“What are you here for?”

I unhooked one ear from my mask, pulling it aside, and tried to smile. She grimaced.

“How did it happen?”

“Ountain iking.” 

She nodded. 

“Take a seat in the lobby. Someone will be with you shortly.” 

I tried to play Quordle but couldn’t focus. I leaned on Ben but couldn’t get comfortable. I sucked in the drool but couldn’t control it. I looked at the photos on my phone, zooming in to see my new snaggletooth, and I thought of all the times this had happened before.

1993, Disney World. I fell off a fence onto my face and knocked out my front teeth. Bleeding everywhere, people in white hazmat suits appeared instantaneously out of nowhere and took me to a nearby tree that wasn’t a tree at all when they suddenly opened the trunk to expose an entire hidden medical center. I was treated immediately. No one, and I mean no one, gets to have a bad time at the happiest place on Earth.

1996, the paddock in my backyard. I got bucked off my horse straight into the fence. My previously capped teeth were, once again, capless. 

1998, no idea. I had a chipped tooth from who knows what the day before picture day. I went into the garage, dug through my dad’s tools, and used his industrial file to file my teeth down so they would be even for the photo. A tiny psychopath.

2013, Washington, D.C. I was visiting friends, and after a night on the town, I left the bar to go back to where I was staying. A guy in a polo shirt and khakis followed me out, yelling at me because I wouldn’t engage with him. He shoved me from behind on the sidewalk, and I fell, yet again, onto my face. 

“Kelton? Kelton? Helloooo? Kelton!”

“We’re here! Here,” Ben caught up to the white-haired woman as she summoned us with her hand, like calling us in for dinner. I limp-trotted to catch up with her as she disappeared around corner after corner. 

“So what happened?”

Again, “ountain iking.” 

“You know you’re supposed to stay on the bike, right?”

“You on’t say.” 

At this point, it was clear to me nothing was broken. A lot of things hurt, but I’ve broken enough bones (nose, shoulder, elbow, wrist, foot) to know when something needs more than ice and time. My biggest concern wasn’t even the broken tooth — it was the tooth shoved back into my mouth meeting my tongue every time I tried to talk. 

The nurse told me about her injuries from horseback riding. The physician told me about her injuries from mountain biking. And the “been there, done that” in their eyes told me not only had every single person in this hospital treated this type of injury, but had endured it as well. That is the magic of living in the Wild West. People are often quite wild.

When the CT scan of my brain came back clear and the shivering had largely subsided, we limped back to the car, our dirty bikes still resting in their holds, our recovery smoothies still full and cold in their thermoses. We had a long drive home in the dark. I turned on my seat heater, an endlessly appreciated luxury in the dirtiest Subaru around, and shut my eyes. Jesus christ, Kelton. The bill for the hospital alone was $1,031. And all it told me was that I had to see a different type of doctor. Great.

Before we realized the dental bill would be more.

I sent some texts. “Hey, do you have a dentist around here you recommend? I fucked up my mouth.” I attached the bloody selfie every time for urgency. Almost everyone recommended the same guy: a tall, handsome (and of course) mountain biker. I called in the morning. The phone rang and rang, ‘til a familiar voice stated the inevitable: “You have reached the voicemail box of: Amanda. Please try your call again later.” So I double checked the number and then left “Amanda” a slurred message of what happened. 

I texted my neighbor. “No one answered.” To which he said, “let me try.” By now it was late afternoon on Friday. I couldn’t close my mouth, though the bleeding (but not the drooling) had stopped. And thirty minutes later, my phone rang. It was my dream, my lifeblood, my savior: the dentist. Amanda he was not.

“So what happened?”

“I it a rock ith eye ack eel, an en eye it eye ace.”

“Send me some pictures.”

“Un econd…”

Photos traveling through the ether.

“OK. Come in.”

“Uh.. ow?”

“Yeah, right now.” 

So I drove in a blizzard to his office that had been closed that my neighbor had hassled him into opening, and with no one there but myself, the dentist, and a hygienist who told me she hadn’t been an assistant to oral surgery in years, they began work on my mouth.

Above me, a flat screen TV was bolted to the ceiling for my viewing pleasure, but because the office was closed, it wasn’t on. Instead of watching TV, I watched the reflection of the restructuring happening in my mouth. The assistant commended my ability to keep my jaw wide open and I wondered if anyone would laugh. I did, and you could hear me gargling on my spit. 

“I think she’s drowning in there,” the dentist said.

“Oh right! Sorry about that,” and she sprayed my face with water before getting the tools in my mouth. Honestly, it felt good. I was still dirty. 

As they talked and I gargled, I learned the dentist used to own the lot between me and my “make things happen” neighbor. He’d lost it in his divorce. He loved this little town I call home, and I loved him. High on exhaustion and pain meds, I almost asked him why they got divorced, but shut my eyes since I couldn’t shut my mouth. 

In the end, I gave them something they’d never seen before: a tooth needing to be put back into position that had already been root canal’ed. I explained my history best I could, and they swapped their stories. Broken arm this, broken shoulder that, broken leg, concussion, knocked out teeth, on and on as we shared hobbies and horrors. I came out with one capped tooth, one tooth shoved back into position, a splint across my uppers, no change to the busted lip, a diet of soups and smoothies, and a full-face helmet in the mail thanks to Kask. 

A week later, and I can feel my heartbeat in my teeth. They’re at least attempting to heal before I go back to the dentist to see if any of them died in the accident. I am hoping to avoid another root canal, but some things are unavoidable. After all, I’m excited to get back on my bike and getting back on the bike includes risk.

Moments prior to jamming my teeth directly into mother nature’s hardest surfaces, I was having a ball. It was the first time I was getting air off jumps! It was the first time I felt fast in corners! It was the first time I really felt in control of that bike — right up until the moment I wasn’t. Sometimes shit happens. The last time I broke a bone, it was because I tripped getting into a bus. And if I’m gonna end up in the hospital regardless, I might as well be having fun first. 

I’ll just be wearing a mouthguard next time. 

Stay safe, wear a helmet, and if you need a high-altitude dentist, you know who to call: Amanda.

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