Bicycle Crash

The story describes one of the many bicycle crashes that I've had.

Okay I'm going to tell you a story about a bicycle accident that I had on Friday September 10th, 2021. I'll tell you another later one that's more comical than this one which, even though I tried to be funny, was not so funny . I truly believe that this accident was the result of Karma getting me back for all of the stupid things I’ve done in the past.
So here's the story:
I'm coming up this road on my bicycle to go to the house I lived in. I had just went to the store. I used to go a different way because these people had these three cedar trees spaced about 10 feet apart in front of their house and they didn't trim them so the branches lapped over the sidewalk. Now I had gone underneath them before with no problem, but I hadn't done it for a long time because I didn't like going that way because I usually had plastic grocery bags hanging off my handlebars and I didn't want to have one of those branches catch me and throw my stuff all over (like happened in the other wreck that I’ll write about later). I thought to myself "all right I'm going to just go under the branches”. I don't know why I decided to go that way that day, but I did. I could have just went off into the sand around it, but I didn't because I had gone underneath these branches before with no problem.
There was like a little hollow where I thought my head would fit close to the edge of the sidewalk. I put my head down and as I went under the branches I saw my front tire go off sidewalk into the sand. Now where I live it's basically ancient beach sand, very fine grained, and if it hasn't rained in a long time it gets really fluffy. If you run into it and you don't have any momentum, you're going to the ground. I was only going about 2 miles an hour. I just had the thought "I'm getting ready to fall." I fell and I left the bike behind and I tried to reach out and do the tuck and roll with my right shoulder. I didn’t make it. I had the sense that I was falling them bam, I hit the ground. When I hit and all of my weight landed straight down on the ground. I didn’t slide or roll. I just went to the ground in an instant and landed right on the lower portion of my right rib cage. OUCH!!! If you are familiar with the body, you know that underneath the ribs on your right side is your liver. Talk to people who know and they will tell you when you take a shot like that in the liver it will stun you. Based on my experience, I can tell you it definitely got my attention. So I was stunned a little bit. Nobody saw me wreck because I went right in between these two cedar trees. There was a couple sitting down the street they didn't see it. I should have called the ambulance from right there because I probably could have sued the people because they didn't trim their trees, but I wasn't thinking about that at the time.
When I worked as a geologist, I had to get certified in CPR and First Aid training so I knew to evaluate my injuries. It's supposed to be on another person not yourself, I guess, but I did it to myself. I was thinking “all right I didn't break my arms, didn't break my legs, didn't hit my head. I’m not having trouble breathing.” When I hit it felt like it just barely knocked the wind out of me. I’m in pain with my ribs in the front and in the middle of my rib cage, but I don’t feel any bumps or anything that would suggest that I was bleeding internally. So I decided to try to stand up with my bike and walk back to where I lived which was probably approximately a mile and then go the hospital.
I stood my bike up and I when I stood up gravity made its presence known. Let me just tell you, it's just like Eddie Murphy said about a mind being a terrible thing. Well gravity is also terrible thing because when I stood up it hit me pulling down on all of the muscles around my rib cage. The pain was horrible. Also when I landed I was trying to twist and turn it felt like something touched me like right in the middle of the back of my right rib cage . So the pain was not just from my ribs in the front, but also where I felt that little touch in the back of my rib cage, it literally felt like someone was stabbing me with a knife every time I moved. People would say oh yeah that sounds like BS, yet my doctor described it that way before I did, so I know it’s a proper way to describe what I was feeling.
I didn't know how bad I was hurt so I was going to try to walk home I stood up I started walking with my bike. I kept stopping because I was crushing with pain. Again, I should have just called the ambulance from right there, but I didn't want to do that because I didn't have any place to leave my bike, and also I'm an idiot. Anyway so I try to walk and I had to keep stopping. I turned the corner to go down the road that I lived off of. I probably got only a hundred yards walking like that. I kept putting my head down on my bike people are driving by in their cars. They can see I'm having a problem, but I had my phone with me so I could have just called the ambulance right then. The pain was too much and I knew I couldn't make it. So I had to think of who I could call to pick me up.
My landlady was having new flooring put in. She had also just bought a new SUV. I didn't want to put my bike in her new car, and plus she was going to have to be going to pick up her kid from school soon. Fortunately at the time I was working at a convenience store. So I called the convenience store which was about 2 miles or so down the street on the same road I was on. I called and asked to talk to my manager Kayleigh. I said to her " Kayleigh. This is Robert. I wrecked my bike and I'm hurt and I can't make it home. Is there somebody that you can send up here to grab me and my bike and I can go to where I live and then I'm going to have to go to the hospital because I know I'm hurt”.
She asked where I was. I told her and she sent this woman named Maria, a short, tough, stout woman. She drove across the median to get to me (I didn't see that part because I was leaning down on my bike). Anyway she arrived and I stood there in horrible pain (did mention that already?) and I said “I'm sorry Maria, but I'm not going to be able to help you put this bike in the back of your SUV. I can't even hardly move”. She did not say a word. She just grabbed my bike like it was nothing and threw it up in the back of her SUV closed it. I guess it was kind of sexist of me to think she couldn’t lift the bike without my help. Oh well. Anyway then I had to strUUUgle to get in the passenger seat. So we drove to where I lived. At the time I rented a room in a gated community and of course I didn't know the gate code, but there is a walk-through gate that's always open. So I told Maria if she would get my bike out, I'll get it, and then just hold that gate open for me I only live three houses from the gate and I can make it on my own. She asked if I was sure I could make it. I told her yes. So I walked and now I'm crushing with pain, struggling to get to the house. I just dropped my bike in the yard. The garage door was open because the flooring guys were cutting the pieces of it out there. I walked into the garage and one of the guys walked past me and said “Hey how's it going?” I said “Not good. I'm hurt. I just wrecked my bike” and then I told them and my landlady Dee what happened. I was just hunched over crushing with pain and they could see that I was struggling mightily. My landlady said “You're scaring me Rob. You're scaring me.” I said “Dee, relax. I'm all sweaty. I'm going to go upstairs and change something dry. I'll call 911. They don't need to come in.” I walked up the stairs to my room and put on a pair of dry shorts (commando), but I couldn't get a t-shirt on because I couldn't raise my right arm because it hurt too much. So I got a button down short sleeve shirt that I used to wear to work and kind of halfway got it on. I went down the stairs and as soon as I came out of the bedroom door the Medics were knocking on the door. It just so happened this same crew had visited two weeks earlier and took my landlady to the hospital because of she was having a blood pressure issue. They said something like “oh nice to see you again”. I walked out and went straight to the stretcher and got on it somehow and they put me in the ambulance.
There were two Medics who just happened to recognize me from a previous wrecks and other times they had picked me up in the past. One medic said “Yeah I remember you from over there on Northcliffe. We came and patched you up and another time when you passed out in the Speedway.’ I told them “yeah that was me”.
So one of the Medics is listening my lungs with the stethoscope and I'm trying to belly breath so that it wouldn't hurt so bad. They put me in the least painful position and he made me lean up so he could listen to my breathing. I was complaining about how bad it hurt and just said “I have to listen to your lungs. You don't have to breathe in very hard. I just have to listen”. He listened for a second and told the other medic “I don't hear anything” and I thought well that's good he doesn't hear any blood gurgling around in there or anything so that's probably a positive thing. Unfortunately that's not what he was talking about and he didn't say a word to me about what that meant. I guess they didn’t want me to get scared, but all of this time I was totally calm. Not scared or nervous at all because I knew these Medics were taking care of me. Except for the pain I felt fine. Not dizzy, not nauseous, not having trouble breathing, but I'm in a serious amount of pain (did I mention that before?).
We arrived at the emergency room and someone immediately gave me a little shot of morphine. My memory of this is a little fuzzy, but I know they immediately took me for X-ray and then I remember getting the CAT scan because the guy asked me if I ever had the dye injected before and said yeah. He asked if I was allergic to it and I said no.
So they run the scan and I could hear the guy behind the window calling out my organs as the scan is going down he was saying neck looks good (he didn't say anything about the lungs), heart is good, not enlarged, spleen looks good, kidneys look good liver looks good, all the other organs look good, prostate looks good etc.
They took me back to the regular emergency room with just the curtain. I had been talking to these two intern dudes. They had like Scrubs on. I was joking around with them about contact a veterinarian and that I had to help put a horse down once with and I told them that I knew that she could bring some medicine over to just put me down for good. They didn't think that was funny. One said “Man that’s kind of dark.” I laughed. They didn’t. I'm thinking well you're not as much pain as I am right now either. Even with the pain I was joking around. About 10 minutes went by and I was in that room with just the curtain when I one interns came in he said “Robert we are going to take you to this other room” (which should have been a dead giveaway for what was about to happen). He told me that the doctor was going to come in and talk to me about my x-rays. I was not worried about anything because I had no idea what was wrong. I know I'm hurt but I don't know how bad. The main doctor comes into the room dressed in street clothes and there were about 10 people going in and out of this room at one time or another. I don't know what the hell they were doing in there. The doctor had two other doctors with him and he said “Well Robert you have six broken ribs on that right side and they're not just fractured they're broken, but they're not displaced there's really nothing we can do about it that'll just have to heal on their own.” He walked up toward me and said “But you're right lung is collapsed and we're going to have to put a chest tube in.” My immediate words to him were “that's going to hurt” and he said “well how you doing on pain?” and I said “You tell me you know what's getting ready to happen here” He said it's up to you and I said give me some more pain medicine. And let me tell you something, they could have gave me elephant tranquilizer and it wouldn't have mattered.
While I was laying there on this table and they were telling me what they're going to do. They put my right arm out same side as my broken ribs they're going to go right just below my armpit and they have to put the tube in between the ribs and through the chest cavity to get in there to that space then put the tubing in there after which they would hook me up to a machine it's called a bubbler that they said that draws the air out of the pocket that was left by my lung collapsing and by doing that the pressure drop would allow my lung to re-inflate.
They explained that they we're going to come in and numb up my side, slice me open, and then the female intern was going to put the chest tube. So a younger woman comes in. I'm sure she was like a resident or an intern or something. She was laser focused. Even though she was new to this procedure, I have to give her credit because she was super focused and she was not messing around. She was dressed for surgery and had on a regular face mask she and a face shield. I'm laying there and I'm just expecting this to really hurt. I'm trying to stay as still as possible and not look at any of the equipment that they were using. They numbed me up let me cut me open. I'm just preparing myself for it to really hurt.
I figured out later that the reason they put me back in this other room was so that the people out in the regular emergency rooms with just the curtains couldn't hear me yelling when she was trying to put the tube in. I was trying not to yell too loud because I didn't want to scare nobody out there in the emergency room like some little kid hearing me yelling and get scared thinking that's going to happen to them.
So she starts to push the tube in and I cant describe the pain. They say on the Pain Scale with if you reach a 10 you pass out. I was at about 9.56 but didn’t pass out. I wish I had because she couldn't get it in. I could sense that she didn’t know how hard to push and maybe she was afraid of hurting me somehow.
She'd stop for a second and then push again. I was yelling as low as I could and I'm just trying not to move. She couldn't get it so she tried a second time. Same thing happened. I’m yelling and she stopped. Then again she pushes a the third time she couldn't get it in. These main doctors were standing behind her talking to her and I noticed that. She stopped and they were talking to her and I said ‘Is this first time she's ever done one of these?” And the main doctor lied and said “Oh no. She's done a bunch of them’” and I said “yeah okay so how come you guys are standing there telling her what to do?” They said they were just making sure she does it right. Then someone who I couldn’t see walked through the door and said “first time for everything.” Now I don't care if she was inexperienced. Everybody has to learn but why on Me? That’s kind of how things go for me. I know it happens to other people too, but it just seems like if something bad is going to happen, it’s going to happen to me. So she got to practice on me so what. If the main doctor would have done it would have been like okay get ready bam, and It would have hurt like hell, but it would have been over quickly. It took her, I want to say, more than 5 minutes make it go through the ribs and through the chest cavity into where she was trying to get to. After she finally got it hey wrapped me all up with bandages and hooked me up to the bubbler machine that I mentioned earlier.
Okay so then they one of the interns came in and he told me to give him my phone so that he could take a picture of my X-ray showing that chest tube going into my chest. I showed him how to use my phone, which was about to die, and he took a picture of the X-ray and brought it back showed it to me and he said “Here’s the tube coming outside of your chest and here it is going into your chest cavity. The good news Is it’s in there. The bad news is it’s not in there far enough we’re going to have to unwrap you and she’s going to have to come back in and put it in further.” Great!!! So they unwrap me with all this tape they put on me, unhook me from the bubbler machine, and the lady came back in. I wasn’t trying ng to be a jerk, but as she sat down I jokingly said “So you’re a rookie at this huh? You’re a rookie?” She didn’t bat an eye. I mean she was laser focused on the side of my chest and what she was doing The main doctor came in and he said to her you just need to be a little bit more aggressive just a little bit more aggressive and I knew for sure then that she’d never done one before. He told her to go in about another 3 or 4 cm and it turned out that she just had to feed some more of this plastic tubing in so that part didn’t really hurt. After that they hooked me back up to the bubbler again.
They then transported me to a trauma center the next county south the name of which I will not mention because it was the worst care I’ve ever had in my life. For 3 days they barely even talked to me and didn’t manage my pain at all. I had a DO as my doctor who gave an appearance once in a while and acted like she was on a TV show. And I a new young nurse who didn’t know. I asked for pain medicine the first morning because I was having eight or nine pain level. She said okay I’ve got extra Extra Strength Tylenol and Tramadol. I said are you kidding me right now and she said well if it doesn’t work I’ll bring you something back in an hour. I said where you’re going to be coming back. It wasn’t her fault. She was new and she was just doing what she was told. I was feeling really depressed because I knew I wasn’t going to be able to work and so I shut down and hardly spoke. Plus they were trying to get me up and trying to get me to do exercises (trying to milk the insurance in my opinion. I said I’m not moving from this spot until you guys tell me I can get up and leave. I’m in a tremendous amount of pain they kept coming in and do an X-rays and it was killing me. I understand that I got the B team because I wasn’t in critical condition. In fact I looked at my medical records and my lung had already re-inflated most of the way before I even left the emergency room. It was originally collapsed 70%, but by the time I left the emergency it was only collapsed 5%.


I had to sit in this trauma hospital for 3 Days to let my lung heal a little bit so that it wouldn’t collapse again and then they could unhook me. So, as I said previously, I shut down and I did not say hardly a word to anybody the whole 3 days I was there. I didn’t watch TV. I didn’t listen to the radio, and my phone was dead so I just sat there. I heard one of the nurses say ask if I could speak and my nurse said “He can he talk. He just chooses not to.” Like I was being just being a dick. She didn’t even ask me if anything was wrong and she ordered for a psych consult. I said “why did you call for that?” and she said “well you seem like you you’re a little withdrawn. I refused to speak to the psychiatrist and they left me alone after that.
A 3 days they finally unwrapped me and took me off of the bubbler machine. They said after like 3 or 4 days take the bandage off and clean it and then re bandage it so I did that. They also gave me aftercare instructions that recommended sitting in a recliner to sleep etc. They assumed that I had a recliner to sit in. I did not. So I had to stack pillows in my bed to get in a comfortable position so I could lay flat on my back without being in a horrible amount of pain, but every time I would get up out of bed and moved at all, the pain in my ribs and the stabbing pain in the back it was horrible (I think I mentioned that before).I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy that I don’t have.
About 2 weeks later I was in a lot of pain still and I guess I had what they determined was a panic attack. My left side of my chest started hurting and I thought I was having a heart attack. I don’t usually panic about stuff, but I was worried about it so I went to the emergency room they said I was fine and that I was just having a panic attack from the pain. They discharged me and I walked and it’s about a mile to the bus stop (did I mentioned I was in the mirror serious amount of pain? I think I did if I didn’t). I get to the bus stop and I started feeling around for my wallet to pay the bus fare. I couldn’t find my wallet so I had to walk back down to the hospital and asked the security staff if they had found it. They told me that they didn’t have it.
My phone was dead of course, so I couldn’t call anyone to pick me up. So I had to walk from the hospital to where I live which was about four or five miles and in the worst pain that you can imagine. I was walking as best I could trying not to act like I was injured. It took me about three or four hours to get home I home. I immediately put some ice on my ribs and plugged in my phone I had a voicemail and it said o “this is so and so from so and so Hospital. You left your wallet in the emergency room we’ve got it here if you want to come pick it up. I called him and I told him I couldn’t make it until the next day because I was worn out. The next day I had to walk to the bus stop again, take the bus and retrieve my wallet.
This incident was horrible. For about so for about 6 weeks I was in hell I couldn’t hardly sleep because I can’t sleep laying on my back so I was getting like an hour sleep here an hour sleep there for over 5 weeks. I ended up getting some nerve block injections from my pain doctor in the back part where I was feeling that stabbing pain and then I started to heal. After about the 5th or 6th week that I was finally able to lay on my left side and I went to sleep immediately and slept for like 10 hours. I slowly continued healing healed was much improved about 8 weeks after the accident. I went back to work and I was still having some pain, but I was able to do all my chores like sweeping and mopping and stocking and running the register and all that good garbage.
That’s the story. It’s kind of funny to me now, but it wasn’t funny at the time believe me. I’ve spoken to other people that have had painful situations that make my little broken rib story sound pretty weak, but like they told me “pain is pain. It doesn’t matter what it’s from. If it hurts, it hurts. And, I think I may have mentioned this already, but it really really hurt.