I had a fall...what damage did I do to my back/kidney?

Yesterday before my ride I slipped on a wet ramp, and landed flat on my back. I had my allen wrench in my back pocket, and it jammed right into my right kidney area. My back was sore on the ride, but not unbearable…I rode for 4 hours, and it really was only bad on uphills when going hard. I did a brick run and it hurt pretty good then, but I finished the run. Later that night I did a swim and it loosened up. TODAY, I was ok for a 60 min run, except when going really hard, and on my ride I was ok…but on the swim I couldnt swim much because of really bad pain, that was taking my breath away, when breathing to the opposite side of the injury.

So I have pain when bending over that is pretty bad, and when sitting up from being on my back. I haven’t peed blood or anything, but the area (right kidney area) is really tender to the touch, adn slightly swollen. I dont know if this would be muscular, or kidney bruise?? OR someting else?? What is my outlook?? I have IM Florida coming up, and am in freakout mode with this!!!

at least you’re saving all that money by not having health insurance. oh, wait a minute…

Did you bruise your kidney with a direct blow like this?? What were your symptoms like?

also what is typical treatment for a bruised kidney…if this is possibly what I did??

I had my allen wrench in my back pocket, and it jammed right into my right kidney area.

Was this a folding allen wrench set that was closed, or a single key? Did you get a puncture or more like a stone bruise? Physical diagnosis of a kidney injury is not likely to be conclusive - a CT scan is the gold standard. The vast majority of significant kidney injuries involve peeing blood. Given that you’re not doing that, and that you have been able to do hard workouts without disaster, it seems unlikely that you have a serious abdominal injury.

If your abdomen is tense, you run a fever, or you did get a puncture from the wrench, you’ll need to be seen right away, though.

If as another poster mentioned you don’t have health insurance, you should go to a “doc in the box” minor emergency clinic and have them check you out just to be sure there’s nothing simmering.

Try doing another brick back to back tomorrow and then see how it goes.

fell down a ravine during a duathlon a few years ago. Next day ribs were sore, doc said to take 2 weeks off as probably bruised/ cracked. Exactly 2 weeks later i did a 50 mile mtn bike race and ended up peeing blood, went to emergency room and admitted to hospital overnight.

turned out to be a blood clot in kidney and as someone else said- a bad thing to ignore. I had an MRI but was out of my network area (in Show Low AZ) so ended up with the whole thing as my responsibility but that’s another story.

I’d get it checked…

i did a hard and fast double somersault over the bars of my mtn bike last year, landed on my head/back and had what I diagnosed (backed up by a PT but never did any actual scans) as a pretty bad kidney bruise along with the obvious back strain and concussion. anyways, it was a good three weeks or so with pretty bad pain with certain movements, and then about five months until the pain finally went away.

anyways, be careful with it and although I didn’t I’d say get it checked out if it’s really bothering you.

I basically did the same as Tai. The pain was not too bad right away, but it turned out to be quite painful for several weeks. However, the pain was mainly associated with certain movements like running downhill, getting out from bed, putting on socks and so on - not so much just sitting still. No bruises or blood. I reduced both the intensity and the amount of training, but swimming was not too bad (avoid pushing hard off the wall). I never went to the doctor and after about six weeks I was fine again, but that was after making the stupid mistake of doing some hard running intervals before being completely recovered. I also tried some pills to make the back muscles less tense.