I haven't really planned or thought this out, so it's all pretty off-the-cuff and I'm not sure where it's going. It's an important day for me, though, and it's not really something I talk about, or get to talk about, with most people in real life. Most people I know aside from my close friends, don't even know about it. And I guess I just want to talk about it a bit.
June 11th, 2022 was a Saturday, I was finishing up some work before going to meet my realtor at a few house showings. I'd been looking at houses for awhile, with the pandemic buying, money printing and plunging interest rates making buying progressively more difficult. It was a sunny, nice day, I remember that. I finished up what I was working on, realized I needed to meet my realtor, and since it was such a nice day, I grabbed my jacket, keys and helmet, deciding to take my BMW R1200RS. And that's the last thing I actually remember; I have a few memory fragments, pieces of seconds and poorly formed memories. The next thing I remember is coming to in the hospital the next day, or day after, I'm not exactly sure. My dad was there. I didn't know where I was, how I got there, or why I was there. I was laying flat on my back. I asked him why I was there, what happened. I remember telling him, "I'm so fucked." And then I don't remember much else for some time after that.
"Male 35 years old, helmeted single rider in high speed MVA, s.p. motorcycle vs car" is what the hospital intake form said. While I was on my way to meet the realtor, a Lexus pulled out directly in front of me from a parking lot, trying to cross two north-bound lanes to reach the two south-bound lanes. The driver told police he "never saw" me. When I say directly in front of me, I mean --directly-- in front of me. In what ended up being a lucky break for me, the driver behind me caught the entire thing on dash cam and turned it over to police.
Friday before the accident I was a strong, semi-jacked, outdoorsy type guy that loved to motorcycle, lift weights, kayak fish, had fished competitions, hike, camp, and had recently been skiing in Colorado with some good friends. I loved my feisty Brittany Spaniel more than the salt in food. I could squat 315#, bench 255# and deadlift 355# at 168 lbs and had previously overhead pressed 160# at 165 lbs body weight. And now, I was laying in a hospital bed, in the ICU, with no idea how I got there, or why.
I broke my left orbital, upper jaw, some bones in my sinuses and cheek. I broke my neck at cervical vertebrae C6, C7 in several places. I ruptured the ligament on the left side of my C-spine, and my C-spine had displaced a bit over 7mm. I had a spinal cord injury (SCI) at C5. My left distal radius was broken and badly displaced and my left ulna was displaced. I had broken my pelvis at the pubic symphysis, pelvic ring and IIRC had some separation or displacement of both sacroiliac (SI) joints. Thankfully, my pelvis did not displace. I also had a bilateral avulsion of the rectus abdominis --my abs tore off the bone. As I would hear repeatedly, I was absolutely lucky to be alive; I was told by more than one doctor and ICU nurse that most patient they see with my injuries don't survive them. In another bout of good luck, a prominent neurosurgeon was at the hospital and he was able to get me into emergency surgery stabilize my cervical spine anteriorly (from the front), put it back into place and relieve the pressure on my spinal cord.
Because of the broken neck and SCI, I was in a neck brace and entirely immobile. I couldn't move my legs, could barely move my arms and hands and was extremely weak. I would later learn that my dad called my oldest brother and sister and they came to the hospital as well, and, that in spite of the success of the first spine surgery, the surgeon was preparing them for the reality of caring for a quadriplegic and that it was highly likely I'd be in a chair for the rest of my life. In the next day or two, I'd have my second spine surgery to repair and stabilize the spine from the posterior (back). My memory of the first week or two is still pretty sparse from the head trauma and buckets of IV opioids, but one thing that does stand out clearly: after that second surgery when I was back in my ICU room, the surgeon came to check on me. I was half asleep and I have this thing I do where I rub my feet together to help me sleep. I was rubbing my feet together, a little bit but moving them nonetheless, when he came in and he stopped, looking at my feet and said, "oh my God, he's moving his feet." At the time, I didn't understand why this was significant, but according to this neurosurgeon, it was incredible.
A week or so later I was transferred to another hospital where my pelvis was repaired. This time only one surgery.
All in all, I spent three months in the hospital and in care facilities, recovering, rehabbing and learning to make peace with a different reality. I learned to rollover again, to sit up, feed myself and use a knife and fork, to put my socks on and get dressed, and to walk again --which is the thing people always ask about. I spent the next 9 months in day rehab and outpatient rehab for physical and occupational therapy, and had to completely relearn how to use my left hand. In the meantime, I lost my dream job that I had landed only 5 months before my accident. I still had my dog, though, and my best friend and her husband took me in for several months because I wasn't able to live on my own. And I learned a lot about myself and the human spirit.
I'm going to wrap it up here, for now, and get off this couch and get some pistol shooting in. There's so freaking much I could say on this, hell I could probably write a book on it. Maybe I'll add more to this later. But for now I need to step away. Anyway, for anyone that stayed until the end, thanks for reading my story.
If anyone has any questions about my injuries, the accident, SCI stuff, rehab, whatever, I'm pretty likely open to answering them. I recall there was another thread on here dealing with a fundraiser for a shooter that suffered an SCI and there was a decent amount of questions about it, so I'm pretty willing to share my experiences.
But right now, it's my 3rd Life Day, and I'm going to go celebrate.
