Posted by
Kile on August 24, 2008. Filed under [
General]
Tags: [
accident,
motorcycle]
The first thing I remember was everything being blurry.
I didn’t know it at the time but apparently after sliding across across the pavement and through the intersection I had hit my head on the curb. I peeled myself from the cold concrete of the gutter and panicked because I could only make out fuzzy details. After taking my helmet off I discovered that the impact of the crash had knocked my glasses off my face and up on top of my head inside my helmet. The glasses were bent but I was able to bend them back and put them on.
The first thing I noticed was a newspaper sitting next to a 10 speed bicycle that was badly mangled. The newspaper wasn’t crumpled but rather tented open like it had been dropped in a hurry. I looked up and saw my friend Jeff laying flat on his back in the intersection with a couple of guys bent over him telling him not to move because he may have injured his back. It was about then that the shock started setting in.
People talk alot about shock and how to treat it’s difficult to put into words what it really feels like. The best way I can describe it is “beyond fear.” Your body has reached and surpassed the fear threshold and has moved into a different realm where pure adrenaline seems to be pumping through your veins. There is no pain because your body and brain are too busy trying to assess the damage to feel any. It was then that the reality of what had just occurred started to sink in and my brain struggled desperately to figure it out.
Jeff and I had gone to see the movie “Spys Like Us” that night. Him and his mom were in town visiting and we decided to get out and do something fun instead of sitting at home. We hopped on my street bike and headed for downtown. I had never seen so many people out and about on an August night and I chalked it up to the price of gasoline that for some strange reason had dipped down to about $0.75 per gallon. After the movie let out the traffic was so heavy that we decided to parallel down main street and then cut over before heading back. The last thing I remembered was heading through the intersection of Main and Broadway and everything was black until I came to in the gutter.
Among the large number of people out enjoying the evening were 7-8 Emergency Medical Technicians who in that part of the country typically drove pickup trucks and were authorized to attach a single red flashing light to their vehicle in an emergency. In addition to the bicycle, newspaper, and my friend Jeff laying in the intersection were 7-8 of these pickup trucks with flashing red lights that were seemingly instantly on the scene taking care of Jeff, directing traffic, etc. They had parked in such a way to make a sort of half circle around the scene essentially blocking traffic in the northbound lanes so traffic was being diverted to one of the southbound lanes creating a bottleneck in both directions. A very short time after several police cars arrived on the scene which added even more lights and action to the scene. I stood standing for a few minutes observing all this while the shock slowly took over my body. The police were then talking to a woman who was crying hysterically next to an orange 70’s era Datsun car with the left front fender and front of the car heavily damaged. It was then my brain finally determined that the car must have hit my motorcycle and I let out a string of profanity that would have made a sailor blush. Some smart-ass in a truck stopped on the side street said something like “hey buddy just sit down and take it easy” but the shock had totally taken over at this point and I had very little control of my faculties. A woman and her teenage daughter were standing by Jeff and there was some conversation about if an ambulance should be called or not and it was decided that yes they shoudl call an ambulance for him.
Apparently nobody realized at first that the motorcycle had two riders especially since I was up and walking around. One of the EMT’s took a look at me and decided to come talk to me. He asked if I had been involved in the accident and I said yes I was the driver of the motorcycle. He noticed a small amount of blood on my pants. The ambulance came screaming up Main Street about this time so the EMT asked if I would step over the ambulance so he could examine my leg. They loaded my friend Jeff on a stretcher and had him in the ambulance before I walked over and stepped up in. The EMT asked me my name and started doing a standard assessment on me which I was familiar with since I had taken a course the previous year which covered standar assessments. He asked what I remembered about the accident and after telling him about being out and apparently hitting the curb he checked my head thoroughly and surmised that while there was no external damage that I needed to be monitored for internal damage. He also noted the deep abrasions on both arms and my back. He then inspected the small hole in my jeans and then became very concerned about the bleeding. They cut my pants leg up to the knee and there were several exclamations from others in the ambulance. I couldn’t see what they were seeing but they quickly immobilized my leg and put an air splint on. On the way to the hospital they asked me a standard series of questions every couple of minutes and monitored my pupils very carefully. I got so sick of amswering the questions and even argued with them about it on at least one occasion.
The memories of the wreck came to me at first in my dreams. Over the next several months my brain would conjure up the details of the accident and fill in the blanks. We had the green light when we entered the intersection. I saw the car driving somewhat erratically the other direction and saw it swerve over into the left turn lane. She never even paused to see if anything or anyone was coming through the intersection and took the corner nearly full speed at about 25-30 miles per hour. My brain processed the entire accident in slow motion and I remember clearly putting both of my hands on the hood of her car right before the impact. The impact was so hard and so sudden that we were instantly on the ground. I remember sliding through the intersection and turning over and over. The traffic light was in the process of changing from green to yellow to red as I was sliding and I remember noticing this. Where the pavement touched my bare skin it was cold and there was no thought of what it was doing to my flesh. Everything went balck for a few minutes then I woke up in the gutter.
The woman who hit me was on welfare and had no insurance on her vehicle. The police officers who arrived on scene assessed her and determined that she had been smoking marijuana and had a few drinks. She had also apparently just been in an argument and was emotionally upset.
The mangled fender of her car impaled my calf leaving a half dollar size puncture wound. Her bumper also impacted my calf just below the puncture. We were told to soak the leg several times a day in a warm bath and to let the wound heal from the inside out but the wound ended up getting infected anyway. Our source of water was well water and we found out a few months later that a water test from around the time of the accident showed a large amount of gram negative bacteria in the water which found my wounds a great place to incubate. Both wounds had to be debrided and we discovered that the puncture had actually penetrated deep into my leg and the fender had spread the two leg bones apart without breaking either one. I spent a week in the hospital in isolation and the doctor told me that if the infection spread to the deeper tissue they would have to amputate my leg. Luckily this wasn’t the case but the debridement had left a gaping hole in my leg that had to be skin grafted.
We received a copy of the accident report about a week later and the responding police officers had remarked how incredible it was that the car hadn’t just run over the top of us. They attributed this to the fact that the car sat low enough and hit us hard enough that it knocked us clear of the motorcycle. I attributed it to the fact that God didn’t want me quite yet.
