Its been about 30 days since i had a head-on crash between me on my carbon trek and a 1980 Honda Gold Wing motorcycle. The biker was treated and released from the hospital shortly after the wreck. Impact speed was at least 50 mph.My injuries include a gash to my left forearm, puncture to my right thigh on the outer side (i guess from something like a brake lever), a gash to my left knee on the outside edge, and a cracked joint of my left hip ball/socket joint. All seems to be healing well. i have a tender spot under my right shoulder blade which is painful when i breath deeply and it also sends pain to from my left shoulder to head and it causes my left arm to go numb sometimes. My physical therapist knows this problem and is working on it by using pressure to the nerve under the shoulder blade. I get home PT 3 times/week and see the doc on Thursday, probably to remove some of the staples from my knee. I'm taking pain meds to keep the shoulder blade thing from bothering me too much.
What happened?
It was a beautiful Saturday, so I left for a ride at about noon, planning to do about 30/40 miles on a loop that goes thru farm land and woods and crosses the Wicomico river at two places via small ferries. After about an hour, I was on a straight section of newly surfaced narrow road with open fields on either side. The road approached a left bend into a wooded section. Out of the wooded section came a motorcycle. He and I were fine. I smiled. Then a second biker broke out from behind the first bike. I guess that he looked to the inside of the turn and saw open road, then rolled the bike to his left to pass. We had been in each other's blind spot! Neither of us knew of the other before his breakaway move. There we were, maybe 150 ft apart. I thought of reacting but had no time to do anything. I seem to recall the motorcycle starting to lay over on its side. I was knocked unconscious and awoke after what I though was about 30 seconds. The motorcycle landed beside the road in the 4 ft deep ditch. The bike was on its side and my body was on top of the motor, with my leg on the exhaust pipe. The burn from the pipe is what I think brought me back to awareness. The smell of gas was around me, so somehow I pulled myself off the bike and lay beside it till emergency folks arrived in a few minutes. Given that there were 15-20 people around me when I awoke and that it was a rural road, I probably had been out for 5-7 minutes. As a friend said, they probably thought they were looking at a dead man.
I talked to the MD state trooper and asked him to call my wife; Kathy came to the hospital around 2pm. I was in the ER from 2-9 having diagnostic treatment. The room stunk of gas because my clothing was saturated with it. I asked and they removed the trash! I told the anesthesiologist that I'd had oral cancer and that my jawbone and teeth needed tender treatment because any problem there could be life threatening to me. He told me later, that it was good that we talked because there were complications and he used special equipment on me (normal incubation probably would have killed me). They cleaned my knee cut and sewed up the rest of my wounds, and I was off to the orthopedic ward for a few days. There I responded to treatment well and was released on Tuesday afternoon.
I continue to improve since being home. Yet the shoulder blade thing that had recovered in the hospital re-occurred on Friday. However it is again recovering. On a training bike, I can now make about 3 /4 rotation with my left leg. I'm getting around with the help of a cane. Thankfully none of the wounds hit an artery, thankfully no fire, thankfully I talked with the anesthesiologist. The hospital staff was excellent.
I am glad I was on a carbon bike that broke the top and down tubes. I have a large back & blue on my right inner thigh. I think that the carbon tube snapped before the bone! If it had been steel or AL, I think I would have a broken right leg.
Since the accident, I have often thought and said that 'On Saturday I was bless with Grace.'
I called many of my friends and family members on Sunday. It was so good to hear their voices.
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Any other bike/motorcycle accident survivors out there?
