Nike, the Goddess of Victory, Speed and Strength
In March of 2022, I bought an electric bike. It wasn’t what I would call an impulsive decision. Borgotaro is situated in the Alta Valtaro, and our part of the valley is very narrow, with only a small portion being flat. You don’t have to pedal far from home to find hills steep enough to make casual cycling an athletic event, and I am not training for the Olympics. I had owned an electric bike in the US (a lovely thing named Zippy) and I knew how they worked. My new Italian bike (which I named Nike) arrived, I assembled her (not as bad as IKEA instructions, but it took a minute!), the weather cooperated, and I took her out.
Nike wanted to kill me.
It took me an embarrassing amount of time and a YouTube video to figure out why. Nike had a throttle (technically designed to turn her into a scooter) which is disabled in Italy because you’d need a license. But the pedal assist had defaulted to 75% on the display, which meant that regardless of how gently I pedaled, Nike was determined to hit 25km/h, always, immediately, and on every surface.
I eventually sorted this out, made my peace with the display controls, and Nike and I reached an understanding. I began taking her out regularly — along the river path, across the river to the “big stores”, and eventually up the hill to the cemetery to photograph gravestones for Find A Grave.
That last one is where things got interesting.
The Cemetery Run
It was April, and we still had Covid masking protocols. I loaded up my camera, got on Nike, and headed up the steep hill toward the cemetery.
I almost made it. Just short of the top, I hit a patch of gravel. Nike, still in pedal assist mode on a still-ascending road, made a decisive 180-degree turn and headed back down the hill at her preferred speed. We reached the embankment where Nike stopped. I, however, did not stop cleanly.
The left side of my face made firm contact with the asphalt. My hand took some of the impact. My Apple Watch lit up asking if I had fallen and needed assistance. I dismissed the notification — which felt both efficient and slightly humiliating — and slowly sat up.
My knees were trembling, so I sat on the road for a moment, taking stock. Thankfully there had been no cars on the road. Nike, I should mention, did not have a scratch.
I could stand. I could walk, shakily. I decided I could get back on the bike. We have no car, and calling Joe would have meant he walked up the hill to find me, which would have been sweet but logistically unhelpful.
I had my mask with me due to Covid protocols, as I mentioned, so I put it on, reasoning that it would cover most of the damage. As I rode home I passed Giacomo Bernardi (RIP), a local elderly historian who had become a friend largely because of my enthusiastic interest in the town’s past. I waved. He waved back. He looked faintly puzzled.
I waved at a few more people on the way home. They also looked faintly puzzled.
What Went Wrong
Joe and I are, as anyone in Borgotaro will confirm, a single unit. When one of us goes out alone people ask where the other one is with mild concern, as though a separation of more than two hours suggests illness. And Joe has a ritual: when I return home without him, he asks, without fail, “What went wrong?”
I folded Nike up, got her into the elevator, wheeled her through the apartment door, and put her in her corner.
I waited.
Nothing.
I waited some more.
Still nothing.
Eventually I walked to the door of his office. “Aren’t you going to ask me what went wrong?”
He looked up. Then he saw my face. The mask, it turns out, had not been covering as much as I’d assumed. I had looked in the elevator mirror by then — even covered mostly by the mask it was, as I later described it, a road-rashed mess.
My eldest daughter, consulted by Messenger, was insistent that I see a doctor. So I walked around the corner — literally around the corner — to our Centro Medico. My doctor wasn’t in, but another doctor saw me, confirmed that my face looked exactly as bad as it felt, and wrote me a referral to the emergency room to give me priority.
I walked from there to the hospital. Uphill, naturally.
An MRI showed a small cracked orbital bone, so they sent me to Parma the next day to see an ophthalmologist — just to confirm my eye wasn’t out of alignment. It wasn’t. I was asked to come back in two months, just to be sure.
Fine. A cracked orbital bone. Inconvenient, painful, excellent material for a Facebook post, but manageable. Of course, I had to tell my daughter that “I broke my face”, but otherwise I felt like I could handle the situation.
I went home and life continued.
The Missed Call
About a week later, I noticed I’d missed a call from Parma.
Italians, as a rule, do not leave voicemail. I say “as a rule” because I don’t want to say “never,” but in the six years of living here I had yet to receive one. So: missed call from Parma, no message. Presumably the ophthalmologist’s office following up. Surely they’d call back if it was important.
They did not call back.
Two weeks after that, I received a registered letter from the AUSL Parma.
Here is the thing about registered letters in Italy. It is a procedurally significant piece of mail, and it arrives with a certain weight. When the postina rings the intercom and says “qualcosa da firmare,” there is usually a certain dread. Did I forget to pay the trash bill (again)? What needs my signature. I went down and signed for it.
It was not from the ophthalmologist.
The week before my bike accident, I had had my annual mammogram at our local hospital. Just a routine test that they send me a notice for every year. I hadn’t thought about it since. The letter was asking me to come to the breast center in Parma right away.
What Came Next
I will tell you what happened in Parma in an upcoming post. The short version is that it was caught very early. Everything that followed was hard but ultimately okay. I am writing this three and a half years later, and I am doing extremely well.
I do want to tell you the full story, because it is relevant to every single person reading this who has a “but what if I get seriously ill abroad?” fear sitting somewhere in the back of their mind.
That fear deserves a real answer that isn’t just a reassurance. It deserves a story.
Continued in: Cancer, Rome, and the Covid Plot Twist That Delayed My Surgery →
