Sometimes even having eyes in the back of your head isn't enough to protect a bicyclist from the broken bones and bleeding body parts...
Sometimes even having eyes in the back of your head isn't enough to protect a bicyclist from the broken bones and bleeding body parts...
Busted shoulders and broken bicycles
Lance Armstrong, the world-famous, if now disgraced, bicyclist reportedly said, ‘If you’re a bicyclist, it’s not, if you break your collar bone, it’s when.” My when happened September 28, 2020, a sunny Sunday.
As a cyclist we all know we must have eyes in the back of heads. We never know when we’ll have an encounter of the wrong kind with a distracted driver. Or a huge truck get a little too close to occupying the entire lane. Or an errant school bus take a right turn disregarding us. Those are all good sound reasons to ride on a dedicated bike/walking path rather than city streets or rural roads.
But then bike paths have their dangers too. There’s the errant jogger oblivious to cyclists due to the blaring headphones. There’re the boisterous kids weaving back and forth across the lanes. There are the slick leaves littering the asphalt. All of which can lead to disaster for a speeding two-wheeler.
None of these caused my crash. Nope, it was my riding partner, who elected to take a shortcut.
We were riding along that crisp early autumn day at a good fifteen-mile-an hour, or so pace. I’d already ridden a dozen or more miles, warming up when Dan joined me. I was planning to get in thirty or so miles to approach my five-hundred-mile goal for the month. Dan only wanted to do eighteen, so he met up with me at the Belleville, Illinois, metro station.
We chatted amiably as we pedaled along the tree-lined asphalt path paralleling the Metro train tracks. We swung right at the Orchards Bike Trail spur, easily keeping our conversation going as we kept our steady pace. Each of us is usually a solitary rider. Dan rides occasionally and had just started riding again with the last year or two, while I ride frequently and occasionally do three-hundred-mile week long tours.
Dan was on my right, with his front wheel about even with my crank as we approached the baseball diamonds west of Belle Valley Grade School. Disaster struck, when Dan turned left to take the sidewalk shortcut behind the ball diamond as I continued straight ahead to stay on the longer bike path around the diamond.
When Dan’s front tire struck my left tire at fifteen miles an hour, my black carbon fiber Trek Damone toppled over as I went flying. In mid-air I twisted to the left to avoid striking a steel sign post, crashing to the asphalt path on my left shoulder.
Glancing to the left as I sat up, I could see that my left shoulder was broken as the bones were jutting up nearly ear level. The shock of the crash delayed the onset of pain, but I could tell it was a severe injury. Grabbing my left arm, cursing, I yelled at Dan, “Call an ambulance! Call Annette! My shoulder is broken!”
Dan, who’d also crashed, but had no apparent injuries, called my wife, Annette. Told her what happened and asked her to call an ambulance. I have him tell her to bring my Jeep so she can pick up my bike. I scramble over to pick up my mobile phone, then my bicycle. As I start to walk back to the bicycle path a couple hundred feet to the school access road, Dan’s phone rings. The ambulance company wants him to call as Annette hadn’t observed the accident.
Dan completes the call to the ambulance dispatcher and we evaluate the situation. My left hand is gashed open with blood running down, dripping on my cycling shorts and jersey. My left shoulder is obviously deformed and assorted scrapes and contusions on arms and legs. Dan injury free. Thank heavens my bike appears ok. No obvious damage.
Annette arrives in just a few minutes. Dan loads my bike into the back of the Jeep as we wait for the ambulance.
“I’m having them take me to Barnes Hospital,” I tell Annette. Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, or BJC as it’s now known, is one of the very top research hospitals in the country. If you have cancer or need a heart transplant it’s where you want to be. As I look back on it, it may have been overkill for a broken clavicle, but I wasn’t taking chances.
Neither did BJC. X-rays, CAT scans, MRIs. The works. When they told me they were doing an MRI of my skull, I asked why. My head didn’t hurt, I had a helmet on and there didn’t appear to be much damage to the helmet, other than a dimple. The emergency room doc, told me: “You are in great shape, but that’s still a seventy-one-year-old brain you’ve got in that skull and we want to make sure there’s no injury there.”
“That’s good enough for me,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
Multiple x-rays, CT scans and MRIs later, clavicle broken in two places, two broken ribs is the diagnosis. Oh yeah, then there were the stitches to my left little finger to close the wound exposing the knuckle joint. Otherwise, no problems.
“Okay, here’s some morphine tablets for the pain. You can see an orthopedic surgeon tomorrow to see whether they need to put a plate and screws in to hold that clavicle together.”
The next afternoon, the orthopedic surgeon says, “It’s a fifty-fifty chance it will heal without surgery. It’s your choice, but I’d get the surgery.”
Having had surgery on my knee nearly fifty years ago at Fort Buckner Army Hospital, I thought: “I’ll tough this out and avoid the surgery. I really don’t want them cutting on that shoulder. No matter how good the surgeon is they can’t put it back the way God made it.”
By Wednesday after little sleep and the unsettling feeling of having the bones moving about in my shoulder, it was back to the orthopedic surgeon. “How soon can we get this done?”
He replied, “We can do it Monday, but the way you broke this thing in two places and where you broke it, we’re going to have to put in a special stainless-steel plate with a hook on the end to hold it all together. Then we’ll have to operate again to take the plate and screws out or it will saw it’s way through the bone and that’s a real problem.”
“Ok doc, let’s get it done. When can I get back on a bike?”
Luckily the surgeon is also a long-distance bicyclist. He tells me about riding the “No Ride for Old Men Ride” in Texas. You ride 1,000 miles in 96 hours. Now that’s nuts.
In answer to my questions, “The plate and screws will be in for six weeks, then removed, then another six or eight weeks for the screw holes to fill back in with bone.”
“End of January or so?” I ask. “Yeah probably. After some physical therapy,” he replies.
In addition to anesthetic, they’d used a nerve block on my left arm, so for two days after the surgery my left arm was nearly completely without feeling. I imagine that’s what it feels like after a stroke. I couldn’t make a fist. I couldn’t lift my arm. I had to pick my left arm up with my right hand to move it. A week later, I’m out of the sling and in physical therapy.
December 28th back to the hospital to remove the stainless-steel plate and five screws. I asked the doctor to save them for me. The nurse handed them to Annette in a zip-lock plastic bag which she promptly left at the hospital in the confusion of getting me out the door.
Dr. Lehman, my new orthopedic surgeon, as the first one moved to a different hospital during the intervening months, stunned me, when he asked me, just before they wheeled me into the operating room, if I’d like him to pray with me before surgery. Not a terribly religious person, I replied, “Nah Doc, I’m good.” Wife Annette, clearly displeased, at my rejecting his offer.
As usual I thought of the perfect response later. I should have said, “No Doc, let’s pray for you.” After all, I only had to lay there, sound asleep under the anesthetic, he’s the guy who needed steady hands.
He’d assured me, before surgery, that the pain would be much less, the recovery time swifter, and there’d be no nerve block this time, so I wouldn’t have the disconcerting feeling of a paralyzed arm.
He was right on all counts. After taking one hydrocodone narcotic tablet the evening after surgery, I never again took prescription strength pain killers, relying on ibuprofen and acetaminophen. Ten days later and I’m back in physical therapy working to regain range of motion and left arm strength.
The physical therapists are delighted with my speedy recovery.
Although I’m pleased with my increasing range of motion, I’m troubled by the continued pain in my left shoulder and the x-ray report that shows the small piece of bone near my acv joint as still fractured. Seeking reassurance, I call the surgeon who tells me it’s nothing to worry about. The disunion occurs sometimes and it will in all likelihood scar into place. If it continues to trouble me, they can simply surgically remove it. I’m not pleased at the prospect of yet another surgery on my left shoulder, so I’m hoping that it scars in and holds together.
While I’m looking forward to climbing back on a bicycle, getting some fresh air and exercise, I must admit I’m considering getting a recumbent tricycle. I’ve been thinking about one for a while, but this latest accident has given the idea a fresh impetus. I don’t know that I’d like riding so close to the ground and don’t like the wide stance of one, but the greater stability and the much easier physical strain on back, shoulders, hands and arms is certainly attractive.
I am also concerned about the impact of these shoulder surgeries on my kayaking ability. That concern has led me to buy a kayak trailer, which also can carry bicycles or even trikes, for easier loading. Lifting a kayak onto the roof of my Jeep was difficult enough before the injury. I don’t need to be putting all that strain on my shoulder now.
Since it’s February 1st with a freezing temperatures and snow on the ground, I don’t think I’d be kayaking or bicycling anyway!
© William L. Enyart 2021
Rflections from the River
E-mail: bill@billenyart.com