Tuesday, November 1, 2011

11-01-2011, the day of the wreck.

 
J was involved in an accident involving two cars on his morning bike commute. He has two six broken vertebrae and a broken hip. The fractures won't require surgery. He also has lots and lots of road rash. He's expected to recover fully, and should be back to work in 6-8 weeks (maybe sooner).
 
 
The accident happened at about 8:00 AM, when J was riding in a bike lane, in a school zone. A man dropping his child off for school was leaning to unbuckle his kid's seat belt, and when he sat up, J yelled for him not to open his car door. When the door swung open, it caught the handlebars of the bike. J was catapulted 10 feet into traffic and landed on his right side.

Just before reaching the car that threw him, J had passed a Ford F150 at a stop sign. When he landed, the right tire of this truck was lined up to hit J's abdomen. He lunged for the bumper of the truck, locked his left arm around it, and held on. The driver of the truck locked up his brakes for 14 feet, and J was dragged for 18. The forward motion of the truck rolled J's lower half over, so that his left leg and back were abraded.


 
 
J was transported by ambulance to Stanford Hospital's trauma unit. For several hours we were unaware of the fractures (and he was nearly discharged from the ER), because they didn't show up on the x-ray. He had abdominal/rib pain, so the trauma docs ordered a CT scan, and this imaging showed the broken hip and vertebrae
 
 
 
J spent the night in the Stanford Critical Decision Unit. When we were about halfway home, O asked me where his biking clothes were. She cried over his clothes the rest of the way home, and promised me she would make him some new clothes with her toy sewing machine. 
 

3 comments:

  1. On the first blog entry I couldn't help but notice the remarkable similarity between your tire-marked inner thigh and that meat-like product they served you for dinner at Stanford.

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