“Family sunset walk tonight”, Sunday @ 6:44PM
Quick summary: the cycling community is amazing, the Samford community is amazing, the UAB trauma center and all the workers there are amazing. My wife is incredibly amazing. My friends are amazing. I have determined from this one accident that I am officially the luckiest person on the planet based on the collection of family and friends that are in my life. I’m thankful to be alive and already on the mend, although my jaws are wired shut for the next two weeks. I was in a bike-car collision this past Monday, April 28th on my way home from work. I do not remember any of the details of the accident so rather than trying to speculate/make guesses about what might have happened, I’m just going to take you through a run-down of what I remember.
The timeline is out of order below to reflect the order in which I started remembering things.
- Monday morning – teach two classes. spend third class and lunch working with seniors on their projects.
- Monday afternoon – wake up in the emergency room, doctor trying to stitch my forehead, me saying “I don’t remember anything,” “I don’t remember anything,” “I don’t remember anything,” over and over again. Then I remember saying something like “I was coming home from Samford”. In what seemed like very little time, I started piecing things back together to fill out the missing time between the end of my classes and waking up in the emergency room.
- Monday shortly after 1pm – leave Samford out the back entrance. Straight across Saulter to merge with my normal Homewood – Smyer – Vesclub route. Do my normal route all the way until Rocky Ridge Rd where I decide it would be nice to do some easy climbing over in Georgetown so I’ll take an easier flatter route to get over to S Cove, then out the back of that neighborhood to get over to Georgetown.
- Monday @ 2:29PM – I take a picture from the Vestavia Hills High School parking lot of all the cars – presumably because Vestavia was in the process of letting out early. If I had not taken that picture, my phone would have been locked and Kristine wouldn’t have found out about the accident until much later.
- Monday about two or three minutes later – I turn left onto Panorama. At the South Cove stop sign I turn left. I remember making the left turn and then my memory abruptly stops. No recollection at all of anything between that moment, the accident which happened about 20 seconds later, and then waking up in the emergency room maybe an hour later.
What I have been told by others is that I only lost consciousness very briefly at the scene. I was awake, confused, and agitated, but I don’t remember any of that. I took a direct hit to my face somehow cutting open my forehead and cracking my jaw in two places on both sides of my jaw but no damage to my nose or chin. There is some deep annoying road rash on my neck and two sore (but not broken) elbows. I had lots of neck damage, the bruising right now a week later is insane – my body is yellow from my chest up to the top of my neck. I consider myself very, very fortunate.
My friend Boris rode back out there on his way home from work the day of the crash before the rain started and found half of my Di2 shifter, two of my sunglass lenses, and blood splattered on the ground. Also, one of my shoes is lost – no sign of it. Think it might be stuck in an EMT vehicle somewhere. I don’t think the impact was enough to knock me out of my shoes.
Monday night I was mostly out of it from pain meds. By later in the day Tuesday, I was starting to feel better – still a lot of neck and jaw pain. Heading into surgery on Wednesday, the plan was to screw two plates into my mouth — one either side of my jaw to keep the jaw bones in place to allow the two cracks to heal. This went well on the rightside of my mouth, but during the surgery the doctor discovered that the crack was much higher and farther back in my left jaw. This would have meant coming in from the outside through my left cheek – a much more invasive surgery. The alternative was to wire my mouth shut and let the bones heal on their own. They had mentioned this was a small possibility that they would have to do this during surgery, but me being my optimistic self assumed that it wouldn’t happen.
What now ranks as the absolute scariest moment of my life was waking up from that surgery to find my jaws wired shut. The doctor explained to me later that I woke up fighting like a teenager. What I remember is waking up and being unable to breathe. I realized very quickly what had happened, but I was still in a panic because I do not breathe through my nose very well. Plus the surgery involves placing a breathing tube through your nose so there was all kinds of blood and junk still in my nose. I remember feeling like I couldn’t breathe. I was fighting for breath. But I was also very tired, so I remember falling mostly asleep again – then waking up in a panic – falling asleep – waking up in a panic – over and over again. I heard one of the doctors say that my heartrate kept going from low 40s up into the 80s – that was me falling asleep, waking up, panicking, and falling asleep again in somewhat rapid succession.
I think I eventually communicated that I didn’t breathe well through my nose, and they got me calmed down. I remember being awake some and then asleep some throughout the day eventually spending 8 hours in the recovery area. They asked me at the end if I wanted to stay in recovery or go back to my room, and I opted to go back to my room — primarily because of the frustration of trying to relax enough to pee into a bottle while laying at a 45 degree angle and lots of activity nearby.
The one good thing about the jaw surgery is that I no longer felt any pains anywhere in my body other than the Level 10 pain in my teeth and jaws. Imagine grinding your teeth together as hard as you can – not for just a second, but permanently. This is how tight my jaws were initially clamped shut. I think the wires have loosened a bit, but I have also lost all feeling in my lower lip and lower jaw and teeth thanks to unavoidable nerve damage during surgery that should heal up fine.
Wednesday night was horrible because I couldn’t sleep well, being in one position on my back for nearly 24 hours a day was just making my back and skin hurt everywhere as my jaw and teeth pain started to die down. I took this picture and posted it to instagram with a lot of help from Kristine who was there with me all night. This pretty much sums up how Wednesday night went.
“Status update, please send me as many well wishes and rayers. Only way to communicate is to write or type maked it difficult to reposition since I can’t move myself.”, Thursday morning @ 4AM typos uncorrected
Things started to improve a lot on Thursday because I was gaining a tiny bit more mobility and able to reposition myself. Prior to that I was entirely dependent on other people to move at all – which is bad in itself, but when you also are dependent on the right position to breathe well and not gag, it makes it really, really scary as noted on the clipboard I was using to communicate with Kristine. Many people visited on Thursday and Friday – and that was a huge help too as I started to move around a bit more and realize that I was no longer constrained to a single position or asking other people to help me move.
Friday, we got the quite unexpected news that I was ready to go home – we figured at least one more day, and instead I was home after spending all week in the hospital. Things have continued to improve since I’ve been home with my neck and knee starting to be the dominant pain. Enough about that, though, I’m thankful to be alive, which is why I’ve started with all the good pictures first and then included those closer to the accident at the bottom.
“Beautiful sunset walk with @ktoone”, Saturday @ 7:30PM
“Welcome home from the kids”, Friday @ 8PM
“Me and luc during my hot lap. @rapha @strava”, Friday @ 1PM. Luc had come down to visit me on one of his PT walks after being involved in a bad crash in the Tour de Blue over the weekend. I set that as my goal to return the favor – just barely caught him as he was about to be released!
“Ready for a hot lap around the 9th floor tomorrow I’m going to @strava it!”, Thursday @ 12:30PM
“On my way into surgery this morning. Little did I know how rough things were about to get.”, Wednesday@ 10:30AM
“Me and my beautiful wife @ktoone at UAB in a lot of pain but hanging in there. But in a lot of pain.”, Tuesday @ 11:39AM
Knee injury – my knee is in this picture somewhere towards the middle. Tuesday @ 11:39AM
Damage to my neck and face – Monday @ 7:40PM
ABC 33/40 news footage showing the bike and the car. Monday after I was on my way to the hospital
First responders – the car I ran into was driven by a doctor. I believe that is him on the left in scrubs attending to me from the beginning. This picture was on my phone taken by the person who called Kristine to let her know about the accident. Monday @ 2:45PM
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