for those of you on other forums you might have seen this already, but pipedown suggested i share this again so here goes


on jan 24th of 07 at almost midnight i had an accident. i crackhead ran a stop sign and collided with my bike. i managed to keep it on two wheels and i stopped the bike on the right shoulder. out of luck i put my right foot on the ground. i looked down at my left leg and i saw my jeans turning red. i went to put my left foot down and it was dangling at the knee. thats when the pain hit me. i cant describe how if felt. it was just mind screaming pain. the crackhead didnt stop. he jus took off. he left me for dead. if i would have went off the road or i didnt have my cell on me i probably wouldnt be here today.

i pulled out my cell phone and called 911. i told the lady i had been hit and needed an ambulance. i told her where i was and she said ok and hung up, or maybe i did. then i called my lady. she was in her car about 5 minutes ahead of me, and told her she might want to turn around and come back to where i was.

after i hung up the phone with her i was beginning to lose my balance and was trying to wave down passing cars. no one would stop. i got a little overzealous and when i waved my arm the bike fell over on its left side with my leg under it. it had me pinned and laying out in the street at this point.

the next couple cars that came by all stopped and came over to help make sure traffic didnt run me over, and then pulled the bike off me and over to its other side. one motorist asked if i had called 911 and i said i had, and he went ahead and called agian. good thing he did since the dispatcher had sent the ambulance to the wrong place.

he tells me this and says they are now on the way. in the mean time my lady shows up and sees my leg bleeding out and applies pressure to help with the bleeding. (she is a respitory therapist) so she knows her way around a bloody body. the ambulance finally got there and strapped me to the cart and hauled me away.

on the way to the hospital the e.m.t. keeps talking to me and says i need to try and stay alert and that he knows it must be hard since i lost so much blood. well thats about all i remember, i passed out from blood loss. i woke up in a room my leg was heavily wrapped, and it again hurt like hell. my lady was there as well as my family.

i spent 7 weeks in the hospital and i had countless surgeries , to remove paint, plastic, and bone fragment from the wound. then i got v.r.e.(v.r.e is a staff infection that resists normal antibiotics) and the infection liquified what was left of my knee. so back to surgery to cut that out. then back to surgery for a muscle flap. thats where they take one of ur calf muscles and place it over the knee to that it will bring enriched blood to an infected area, and they had to do a skin graft since my skin wasnt big enough to cover my knee now with the muscle there. my body wasnt producing blood at this point and i had 11 blood infusions, with 2 pints of blood each. finally things picked up and my body started making blood. so i got to go home.

after the wound healed on the outside i had to go back to surgery again to get a tendon that was cut out from the v.r.e. replaced. its the main tendon the allows you to straighten ur leg. so now i got that replaced and then the doc says my knee has too much play in it and that im missing my l.c.l. my p.c.l. and a.c.l ligaments. he wants to replace my lcl and pcl.

thats where i am today. waiting for my ligament surgery. its been one year . i can now straighten my leg but with difficulty and a lot of popping in my knee. im still not able to walk without a leg immobolizer and a walker or crutches. i do most of my gettin around the house in a wheel chair.

i posted this so you realize there are risks to what we do. i always said no man not me, ive been riding since i was 8 years old. ive been riding bikes for 25 years. i had read all the books, took safety courses. believe me it happens and it can change ur life forever. i had a 7 year old son (at the time) and he had to visit me in the hospital, and he has had to live with this in his life also.

so be careful and wear ur gear, always think the car you see ahead is out to kill ya, cause it can.[/align]

 

ok so here goes the gore and bike pics.

bike b4 http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...1stdayhome.jpg


bike after

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...z/DSC00015.jpg

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...z/DSC00014.jpg

the bike was hauled away by flat bed wrecker and this is how my buddy found it when he went to get it for me.

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...z/DSC00005.jpg

the bike was good on the right side till the flat bed hooked up to it and drug it onto the truck and then drug it off. leaving this

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...z/DSC00009.jpg[/align]

 

[hr]


http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...z/DSC00002.jpg

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...z/DSC00003.jpg

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...z/DSC00001.jpg


[hr]



if you look behind the truck you can see a little dirt road. this is where the crackhead was coming from as i was passing on the highwayl

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...z/DSC00023.jpg

here is the puddle of my blood. sun baked.

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...z/DSC00022.jpg

there is the leg of my jeans. my buddy is pointing out the hole that was ripped into my jeans and my leg

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...z/DSC00019.jpg


[hr]



here is the x-ray of my leg shortly after the initial surgery, the doc was holding it up for me. i know its kind of dark but you can see i have a titanium rod and 13 screws and several anchors

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...01-07_0950.jpg

this is a pic of my leg after several of the surgeries to remove debris they had taken of all the gauze to change it and i took a couple of pics

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...02-07_2232.jpg

as well as this one and the next

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...02-07_2231.jpg

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...02-07_2230.jpg
this is after the muscle flap surgery and the skin graft. u can see jus up from the knee on my thigh where they took the skin. they kind of perferate it so that small pieces can stretch further. sorry if the pic is blurry was high on morphine and using a cell phone. so..... what do you expect.



http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...25-07_1227.jpg

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...25-07_1228.jpg

i dont know how many staples they used but it was a bunch. when they were taking them out i counted more than 30 before i lost count.

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...25-07_1226.jpg
and finally this is how my leg looks today

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...z/P1010010.jpg

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...z/P1010007.jpg

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...z/P1010006.jpg

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...z/P1010008.jpg

 

That is f'in crazy dude. Glad you are around to tell us about it.

 

Thanks for the warning. Glad to hear you survived that mess.

There's some good people out there like the people that stopped to help you but we've all got to watch out for the nuts out there like the school-bus driver that tried to run me off the road as I was passing it or the cop who pulled over into my oncoming lane to play chicken with me on the highway. They're everywhere and they're psychos. They'll send us all to an early grave 'cause they're so bored with their own lives that they've got nothing better to do than screw up other people's lives.

Anyway, hope you're fully mobile again soon and at least it looks like the doctors did a good jobpatching your knee back together.

Hope you're able to get back out there on a bike again before too long.

 

I want to hurl everytime I see pictures like that on the Internet, and yet I'm glad I see them everytime. Glad you can share that, I don't know if I could have done it.

 

well its hard to relive it, but if it helps even one person, its worth it.

 

shawn, man, i've told ya before, and i'll continue to say you're an absolute miracle.

 

wow man... glad your alive and here to tell us... like deej said, its a sad sad reminder of what can happen.... idiots.... how could you live with yourself if you hit someone on a bike and just left.... it would eat me up.... but im not that kinda person...[:@][:@][:@]

 

driver was probably intoxicated - not only do they cause accidents but they then don't have the mental capacity to stay and help - they are afraid and run.

glad you survived man, you'll walk and ride again one day.