Crashed my motorcycle on Memorial day. Ended up with a broken collar bone, dislocated shoulder, a sliced up leg and foot and copious amounts of road rash. Honestly, I’m lucky to be typing at all right now.
I was travelling eastbound on KY 18, a divided 4 lane highway. I was approaching a section where the divided lanes were joined to form a center turn lane. Both center turn lanes were full with traffic. A large truck was in the turn lane in my direction that obscured a view of me from the white truck in the oncoming turn lane (and my view of him). He flashed out in front of me, saw me and then stopped. I was going to dodge in front, then saw how fast he was going, decided to go behind him, then I saw he stopped, so l laid down the bike on the left side. The kick stand went through my shoe and my foot (and left a nice gouge in the pavement). Somewhere along the way, a roadmarker tore a hole in my left thigh.
I hit the vehicle, and then I’m told I took flight for 20-30 yards, skidded on my face for a few yards (thank God for helmets), and then hit dirt on the side of the road and started to roll. I came to rest face down in a pool of mud and water, with my arms crossed in front of my chest.
After a few moments, several people were surrounding me with plenty of advice about staying still. A few moments later, a Boone County police officer showed up and took charge. A few minutes after that, the EMTs showed up. At this point I knew my left foot was messed up and told the EMTs such. They braced my neck and then rolled me over onto the board. It was at this point I realized my collar bone was broken (although at the time, I could’t come up with the word collar bone, so I just told them it was my shoulder). They loaded me in the ambulance and told me that they were taking me to University hospital. I questioned them a little bit because I knew that there were several hospitals that were closer. They told me that University had the best trauma unit, which made me feel a whole lot better!
I’ve been on two ambulance rides in my life, and both of them were awful. I swear they ride over railroad tracks as short cuts. The EMT in the back hooked me up on an IV and called in an order for morphine. Luckily, it came back quickly and I got some relief. It’s odd how these pain killers work on me – it still hurts, but I just don’t care. Somewhere along the ambulance ride, I brcame aware of my third injury – my left shoulder could not support the weight of my arm. Wasn’t sure what was wrong here, but didn’t think it was good.
I arrived at University and was swarmed by about 15 doctors, nurses and technicians. The team almost broke out in song when they saw I was wearing a helmet, which was a little different than what I expected. They immediately cut-off all of my clothes and started checking for internal and spinal injuries. Fortunately nothing they did hurt, so they moved on to taking a series of x-rays, starting with my head and going all the way down to my left foot. Then suddenly everyone was gone.
I think one of the problems with going to a world class trauma center is that unless you have serious trauma, you get low prority. So, while sitting there I did manage to make constructive use of my time. My left shoulder was still really uncomfortable, so I kept moving it around. I flipped it up on my stomach and made it pop loudly…for a split second I thought it was broken too! Then suddenly I realized that it felt a whole lot better! It seems it was just dislocated and by flipping my arm up, I had popped it back in.
More later…getting tired of typing with one hand!
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