Part One: Pain
Pain is pain. Pain is relative, and there is always something worse right up until death where a vast spectrum may be levied. Every part of the body has a unique and specific litany of cruel sensations to hand out. Stinging, burning, crunching, throbbing, broken, shattered, separated, dislocated, fractured, twisted and bruised. The face
is a vital, breathing circuit of nerves and parts covered by
a thin sheath of skin. Getting hit in the face hurts…. even
a little bit. Remember reacting a fraction too late to a basketball or football, a perfect pass buzzing right through your hands into the noggin. It feels like all the glorious contours have been leveled, totally flattened out, like a cartoon character colliding with the A.C.M.E. steamroller. Running to the mirror thinking the teeth are gone and the nose is sideways it is a surprise to see a standard fat lip. The stinging and ringing is loud and deafening, but quickly diminishes
to a low level burn and then is gone.
In the case of a bonafide face plant, onto pavement no less, multiply by hundreds, bite the bullet and hope a morphine drip is not far away. It is a sensitive area…. the skull, protector of the brain, for without, this analysis would not be happening. In a way the skull and facial bones are bumpers for the eyes and cranium, like the big front end of a late sixties Impala, absorbing impact while being pressed upon, although at a certain point physics take over with mostly critical results, but until then the structure is incredibly resilient.
What did it feel like? It hurt… a lot. A relentless, continuous, high-pitched, piercing blanket on my head. My face got a fat lip!
Part Two: (Silver X’s) EMT
Location: Independence Ave. and 1st SE near the Cannon House Office Building.
I’m lying down on a stretcher in the back of the EMT vehicle, lifted up and wheeled in on the bumpy, silvery metal surface that composes the shell of the truck. There are symmetrical, little raised X’s, which are there to provide grip, and footing I suppose. I don’t know, maybe they are textural design, or help the metal breathe unhindered by temperature change. I do know I am messed up and lucid. I
am not seeing stars, just a bunch of shiny metal X’s.
I can look out the open back doors down the Independence Avenue hill. To my left is the Cannon and on the corner are concrete road barriers. The National Guard and Capitol Hill Police stand post protecting our country and occasionally glance over at the situation that has dropped
in front of them.
Before I am taken to the hospital (not of my choice) there are reports and details to complete. I wait and watch. Mostly I want to lie calm and quiet, concentrate on my breathing and remember that at some point the pain will decrease. This is not eternal. There is chaos around my stillness. Though I can barely speak I have already given detailed instructions on what to do with my bike (a well worn but super smooth teal blue Trek OCLV with a Spinergy and a Helium… a somewhat deluxe courier bike). It is a big effort because my lock is user specific and I need to know exactly where they will put it. I suggest the Library of Congress bike rack a few hundred yards away and return to pain management hoping it is tethered and secure. Shortly there after, while the EMT technicians are taking my vitals, a DC police officer appears in the doorway with my water bottle and is about to drop it into my courier bag, which is filled with extra clothes, books, papers, etc., my mobile office. Luckily I see this motion and summon my remaining energy to stop him. He is confused. The bottle is filled with sticky Gatorade and leaks from the top (can someone invent a foolproof water bottle). Even while engaged in immediate concerns the idea of scrubbing a gummed up, stained bag in the future is unappealing. If he can be stopped that is one less obstacle in what will be a challenging recovery. Call it foresight or an aversion to preventable clutter…. it doesn’t matter. Unfortunately my friend is determined and he starts to open the bag. Gathering some more of my remaining strength, I call a halt to the operation. He is startled. I think of the collection of bottles I have at home, falling out of closets and stuffed into boxes, and tell him to do whatever he wants with it, but this will not make him go away. Maybe it is procedural. Summoning my very, very last bit of energy and straining my condition for no good reason I give him detailed directions to the bike rack after I realize he cannot interface with anyone else on the scene.
As he leaves and the EMT doors shut, fresh pressured water pounds the surface outside. While we drive away the DC Fire Department hoses down the corner of Independence and First SE, purging the area of blood stains.
Inside the ambulance the EMT lady sticks an ice pack
on my mouth. I know that ice is supposed to help the swelling go down, but my entire face is shattered. X-rays are not needed for this initial self-diagnosis. I put the pack on my lap and when chills set in I swipe it to the floor. She yells at me, “That’s my ice pack, don’t you throw it on the floor, it’s my ice pack.”
Closing my eyes I wait for the bumpy transit to end cursing my situation while dreaming of simple pleasures, ones that an hour ago were there for the taking. Simple……pleasures.
As I go from the ambulance to the emergency room, the EMT tech fixes her glare on me. She is in charge of her turf, and lets me know who is in control for I am just some dude on a stretcher. A frivolous bike rider with blood on his jersey (and from New Jersey).
Part Three: Emergency Room—(The Cutter)
The emergency room is where my lengthy collaboration with medical personnel will start. The people who will put things back together. Trauma teams, ear nose and throat, oral surgeons…. different concerned and serious young folk appear and reappear to ask me questions. An assessment must be made. Do I know where I am? How many fingers do you see? What happened to you? You mean a bike, the kind with pedals, not a motorcycle? They need to be certain there is no internal bleeding, brain damage, spinal injuries, etc.
It is very thorough and I fully appreciate the process, on the other hand having been in previous accidents and having
a firm grasp of my body’s workings I am reasonably certain my damage is confined to the face. As severe as it appears, no other parts were affected. Lying in the center of a room busy with activity I try to volunteer information and move the process along.
Soon the nice lady with big scissors arrives. I know why she is here, she knows why she is here, and there is nothing that can be done to stop her. The clothes must come off. This is where my pleading begins…..or rather my desperate attempts at logic, trying to pluck an angle out of thin air. She is looking and listening…. maybe just maybe? “There is nothing wrong with my body, I assure you, just slide the tights and shorts off, and check this out…. the jersey is full zip, it doesn’t have to go over my head!” She is so kind, she sympathetically hears me out, scissors in hand, until I run out of resolve. Maybe she is amused, or maybe she knows
I will become exhausted so she waits.
I know this may sound trivial, but like the water bottle, it is an attempt to rebuild, to even from the darkest part of an ordeal collect small victories for hope and color, minor signifiers that collectively add up to bolster the body with mental strength.
She goes to work. A pro—smooth and deliberate. First one leg, then the other. Brand new sleek tights, now lycra ribbon and my old Metropolis shorts, no longer available, are gone, but more heartbreaking is….the long sleeve, full length zipper, pre-Pantani, Cippolini era Mercatone Uno jersey, now split into bright yellow thirds and lastly a special item from the then-defunct small manufacturer of wool jerseys, Swobo. Not only is the company out of business,
but this crafty purple short sleeve was a special issue item from my former courier company—that shafted me.
Stuff, just stuff. Now so many fancy rags. I’m lucky to
be alive. Maybe they can be sewn back together?
Part Four: Well-wishers—(Voice Food for the Soul)
The hospital (intensive care) is white, beige, gray, thick, and transparent…. it is not soothing. A soundscape, which gets distorted further by the morphine, made up of tics, beeps, buzzes and hums, complicated by odd random
song snippets, piped through the staticky PA, and overlaid
with announcements. Factor in the groaning, moaning
and intersecting television noise from adjoining rooms and the grand sum is a heavy swelling sea of data, which cannot be adjusted externally. At times I would need to confirm particulars with my watchful girlfriend: “Is that really Lou Christies’ “Lightning Striking Again?” Twas not an audio hallucination, no, that unusually exuberant song from another era was indeed leaking into the room, albeit so low that it faded in and out as the hospital machinery bubbled and gurgled around it.
A person in ICU is in a compromised weakened state. Sometimes too tired to pick up the phone, but it is worth it, no matter what the speaker can offer, and that varies too, since there is the awkwardness of not knowing exactly what to say. A little is a lot, and from the heart is better…. it is voice food for the soul.
It is an electrical signal from physical drabness to a pulsing, vibrant external world full of life. It is hard to explain why this can be felt so dramatically, but each and every well wisher has something vital to add whether they know it or not. It is like acquiring shapes, colors and patterns that cannot be gotten else where…. a surge of energy, a footbridge across a large tricky landscape…. a medicine all of
its own.
Part Five: The Event—
(Steady Rollin’)
Early on as a bike messenger I decided that all accidents would be my fault…. not literally, but as an idea because despite particulars any resulting damage is damage done. The hurt does not distinguish origins. If a harried driver makes a surprise U-Turn and I can anticipate, swinging wide and clear, a potential clash has been avoided. Likewise for parked cars. Though people should check their side view before opening a car door, most don’t and if one opens, what are you going to do… get mad? Hence when riding along rows of curbside parked cars, besides a three foot buffer,
I reserve a small portion of my peripheral to glance up the line searching for heads inside the vehicles…. ones that are about to throw me a metallic body block.
This mindset extends to monitoring physical and mental status…. gauging concentration levels and maintaining an awareness to the setting. Forty to fifty hours a week, on the bike, in traffic, in all kinds of weather over many years and mistakes will occur. A few little scrapes are a small price to pay for what can be an invigorating and expansive pastime. My spills have been few, but the results have been fantastic.
December 7th is a bright, clear wintry day and my courier company (QMS – Quick Messenger Service) offers up a seamless line of work, connecting the dots across the city. The race season finished five weeks ago. I am well rested and in a fluid rhythm. It is 2 PM, five and a half hours into my day and it seems like no time has elapsed….. pedaling …earning …. optimal. It is just one of those days. The harsh, slow, freezing rain marathons make a bold imprint, so when the cards read well, best to appreciate.
Maneuvering past the guard post at the Capitol Building, the sun is high and the traffic is low. Angling from the
Capital driveway at Independence and 1st SE, I straighten out to proceed east on Independence and immediately hit
a mogul-like ripple in the pavement causing my hands to lose their grip. This usually causes a slight loss of control, maybe an adrenalin rush, and a recovery where the machine is reclaimed. In a less fortunate scenario the rider may bounce off the seat, bruise a chin on the handlebar and perhaps suffer the indignity of a crotch to the top tube. Before
I know what has happened I hit a second bump and my front wheel goes sideways. The only place the bike can go is end over end. My face hits the pavement chin first. It is as if
I’d been held upside down by my ankles, ten feet in the air,
and dropped straight down. I did not call this audible, but an audible it is… a shift in plan, a new direction. My day and the upcoming months are suddenly altered.
Part Six: Surgeons—
(The Damage)
They bring the news…the raw data … pictures and graphs, assessments and suggestions. I listen confidently, bolstered by the fact that, despite my facial trauma, my body is unaffected. This will not hinder my cycling. A minor setback perhaps, but it is the off-season, a good time to rest. This line gives me hope but is naive when compared with major facial trauma. One doesn’t have to be a first year medical student to figure this out. It is in the faces of the doctors. They will not say, “Dude you got messed up,” but their expressions do not lie.
They come in and out of my room, teams preparing a strategy. Different ones for different things. Heads of departments, lead surgeons and residents, comparing and collaborating on me, their project.
It is in their faces because though this type of work
is common, it is never routine. There are variables and
speculations that X-rays, cat scans and MRI’s do not reveal… specifics that will be unknown until they are “inside.” Though relaxed, pragmatic and deliberate, they look serious because this is a serious situation. Inside lies nine and a half hours of surgery ,four days after the accident (so swelling could go down).
A broken jaw, snapped by the chin requires a plate and the mouth (missing two front teeth) is wired shut. The cheekbones have been smashed and the eye sockets have also cracked. These get small titanium pieces that are like brackets and the entire structure is pulled up so there is
no sag. Finally the nose, which had the cartilage pushed in, is reshaped and packed with material that will allow it
to maintain shape.
I am still recovering as I write this. I got onto a wind trainer two weeks after the crash, a ceremonial victory…. twenty minutes, a small building block in the return process. Remarkably, aside from some swelling, my face does not look much different. The skill of the surgeons and the advanced technology make incredible things seem commonplace. The incisions incorporated into the natural skin lines, are barely detectable.
After one is “out of the woods” as they say, there is
a better chance of getting a frank observation from the reserved, professional surgeons. On a follow up visit to
the hospital, I query my surgeon, who is all business, fishing for a context:
“You’re healing fine, he says, it will take some time….you’re lucky, you took a hard one.”
Though I don’t need someone to tell me that, it is good
to hear.
Part Seven: (Still Riding?)
People want to know what happened. They are concerned and worried. If they heard about it they want details and if they experienced it they register a higher sensitivity, looking at me like I just walked through fire. This is not stepped up drama or sympathy (maybe a dash of voyeurism). It is a gut reaction… a nod to our fragileness and mortality. I respond, reflecting their fears and quenching my own desire to piece together the incident and move forward.
There is a window of clarity and/or reflection immediately after a serious accident. You are forced to focus on specific matters. Being put into survival mode eliminates much of the optional exterior and highlights prime essentials. My adventure on the life/death scale—if there is such a thing—was minor in length and degree, yet the blunt force and quickness with which I was taken from a serene day and dipped into the thick hospitals’ Epson Salt, only to emerge bruised but safely home a week later is a signifier to say the least. On a basic level responses to common sights are ratcheted up in surprising ways. Immediately after being released from the hospital, the entire landscape seems to be sparkling… the colors bright and sharp… lights piercing the air with fresh vitality. I make my way home on a soft wind
of reprieve…. a current of possibility.
It is a choice to place the positives over the negatives… half empty or half filled…. smashed up face but eyesight
intact…etc. This is not a tough deliberation, just as riding again is not a difficult choice. Once I have reduced the accident to facts and satisfied my own questions about abilities and skills, the mishap becomes an unfortunate occurrence not unlike a slip in the shower or a fall down the stairs. Things can happen at any time or moment. Granted, cycling offers a certain amount of “calculated risk,” but that is dwarfed by the profound and pure pleasures of riding a bike.
Non–cyclists ask me about my future plans, hinting that, perhaps, it would be a good time to consider another
pastime, one with less “danger,” but cyclists simply want
to know the extent of my injuries and when I will be returning. The mind clouding givens, the bads that come with the goods, are not mentioned. It is fully understood that getting back on the bike means riding toward life, not risking it.