Turning 40 with a Bang!

Rob had a pretty bad road bike injury the evening before the actual day of his 40th birthday.  Using his new triathlon watch he was travelling between 50 and 55km/hr coming home from work when another cyclist did not see him and cut across the road with no time to avoid.  Rob collided with the other bike and got launched off his bike flipping in the air and landing on his left upper back chest and arm.  Given his cracked helmet and the speed he was travelling, he had to be taken to the Emergency Department by ambulance as a major trauma and was taken to the Resuscitation Room to be looked after by all of his colleagues. You can see the cracked helmet below.

Those road bike shirts do a pretty good job of saving your skin.  It only wore through in a small area.  Maybe long sleeves would be better.

It was certainly an eye-opening experience being on the other side of the bedrail.  He received excellent care and was surprised at just how many people are involved in the care of one patient (we counted 25 individuals along our 5 hour ED journey).  The IV contrast for the CT is also quite an experience.  'You will experience some warmth and flushing' actually is more like 'your body will feel like it is approaching the sun and you will think you have peed your pants!'  

Summary of injures (all on the left): Broken 7th and 9th ribs, small hemo-pneumothorax, small area of pulmonary contusion, lacerations of his left knuckles and lots of minor abrasions on his arm, lateral chest and upper back.  Despite cracking his helmet, he did not lose consciousness and did not have any headache or amnesia.

So overall pretty lucky as it could have been a lot worse.  Then the recovery phase began.  He had to take a lot of pain medication and had to sleep on the couch.  He also used up a lot of energy just breathing and healing as one morning he made breakfast, then promptly fell asleep on the couch for 3 hours.  A far cry from his pre-accident conditioning.  

On his actual birthday, he got a celebratory song.  It was a little difficult to blow out the candles.

It's been a week now and Rob is essentially off pain medications and much more active.  He is hoping to go back to work soon.  He has certainly appreciated being an 'employee' as opposed to a 'contractor' as he had to miss a week of work, but still got paid.  Rob's first full triathlon is in a month, so that is the next goal, but we are being realistic that it just might not happen.  Thanks for everyone's warm wishes on his recovery.

Rob had to replace his helmet so he made a point of trying to be more visible!