Bike accident…No car involved?
I now bolster the statistic that shows the majority of bike accidents resulting in hospitalisation are not the result of cars or their drivers.
Whilst I live in the Los Angeles area, I am currently in San Francisco until Thursday 26th for the Oracle Open World Conference. Like many dedicated bike racers I brought my bike with me; the plan being to get in some early morning scenic miles on either side of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Sunday evening at 4:30 pm, taking a casual ride through the Presidio of San Francisco, descending on a left-hand bend, my wheels got fixed in a narrow depression/groove in the road. Slowing, slowing, still slowing, I ran out of road before being able to pull out of the rut, striking the steel roadside barrier. Even though my speed had been cut, it was not enough to prevent me from being tossed onto the barrier with the right-side of my back / chest striking the top corner of one of the 8 sq inch wooden blocks that support it.
The impact was traumatic. Gasping for air, unable to move, focusing only on remaining conscious, breathing and seeing my kids again, I lay in the ditch hoping the rescue services would be there soon. The car behind me witnessed the entire event and was able to call 911 immediately. Incredibly they arrived within two to three minutes. (Thank you SFFD). Within a frantic few minutes they had taped my head down, secured my neck and back and hauled me out of the ditch and into the back of the ambulance.
A 10-15 minute ride in the back of the ambulance still concentrating on trying to breath in a regular pattern and remaining conscious seemed like it would never end. Having arrived at the San Francisco General Hospital Trauma Unit I was diagnosed (after x-rays and CT scans) with 6 fractured ribs, 2 fractured vertebrae and a collapsed right lung. (Road rash and cuts don’t rank sufficiently to warrant mentioning).
When a lung is punctured it usually sucks in blood or other fluids; in my case both. An surgical procedure to cut through the chest so that a tube could be inserted into my right lung was performed. The tube in fact served two purposes; draining the lung and also facilitating the natural re-inflation of the lung once drainage was complete.
Now as you might imagine, the Trauma Unit in San Francisco is not only a busy place but one that brings in all walks of life. Lying for three hours in the trauma unit corridor as ‘next-in-line” for a CT scan, I was bumped time and again by what seemed like a constant flow of pediatric emergency CT scans. I could not tell what was going on with most of these cases though there was one kid that had been attacked on the back of the head and neck by a dog. Another case involved a patient in chains with two SFPD officers at his side. He had had his lips bitten off during an altercation with a fellow inmate. By far the most common admittance was of motorcyclists being separated from their motorbikes. These patients were usually the loudest as each underwent the removal of grit from their extensive road-rash.
Tuesday evening. I should be at the Elton John concert (apparently Oracle are paying him $6million to play for the conference attendees, of which there are about 50,000), but instead I am being discharged from the hospital to return to my hotel room. The insertion that was made to re-inflate the lung means that I cannot fly for 6 months. So tomorrow we will need to make arrangements for driving my back down to L.A. on Thursday.
Morphine, Percoset, Vocodin ... the wonders of pain medication. Fingers crossed for tonight……and a special thanks to some special people (you know who you are) who have stepped up to help both me and my wife though this unfortunate situation.
