At 8:00am on Sunday 29th January 2017 I ventured out for a 25ml training ride. It was a bright, cold winters morning.
It was very cold, at approx. 2°C, but with no frost or ice visible. I thought it was a good opportunity to get some winter miles in.
10mins into my ride, at a speed of 25mph (40kph), I hit a patch of Black Ice… And I don’t remember any more…!
I came ‘round, some 5hours later, in the Major Trauma Unit of Fazakerley (Liverpool) Hospital.
I had been brought in by ambulance and had been initially processed with an MRI scan and full body X-Rays.
Cyclist fall off their bikes all the time, generally, if nothing is obviously broken, they just get up and ‘ride on’.
Their first reaction is always “Is my bike OK…?” Unfortunately, I wasn’t so lucky…
I hit the road on the corner of my cycling glasses, which broke the frame and forced the lens into my eye socket.
Fortunately, the glass didn’t break, otherwise the nurses would have been picking glass out of my eye.
So what damage did I do to myself… in reality, very little…
- CT – L maxillary sinus #
- L lateral wall
- Fluid in L maxillary sinus
- L zygoma#
- possible L orbital floor #
- no intracranial bleed
- O/E – partial thickness 4cm laceration to lateral margin of eye which was closed with dissolvable sutures with LA
Which translate to:
- Eye Socket Cracked
- Cheek Bone Broken in 4 Places
- Facial Nerve Damaged (Frozen Mouth)
- Cuts & Bruises (all over)
And that was it… apart from finding out my right leg had ended up 1½” longer than my left leg, and that my Balance and Spatial Awareness had been ‘knocked out’.
The first think that happened was an MRI scan and full body x-rays, to see if I had any brain damage and any broken bones, (apart from my face).
I was unconscious for all this and remained so for 5 hours.
So, there I am in hospital a hospital bed, slowly coming ’round, while the doctors tried to decide when to operate on my cheek bone and put my face back together again.
Once I fully gained consciousness and was awake, with no signs of serious concussion, I was going to be kept in for a couple of days.
However, all my “vital signs” were good and the doctors were happy to send me home with a big back of drugs and an appointment to come back 10 days later.
My wife had been called by the paramedics and was already at the hospital.
I was discharged by 8:00pm and with the help of my wife and a taxi managed to get home and took myself to bed.
I slept for about 16hrs per day for the next week.
I was back to see the consultants 10 days later – it’s very odd looking at a 3D model of your head on a large computer screen, with the consultant pointing out all the breaks.
The surgery team wanted to operate there and then for full “reconstructive facial surgery” to put all the bones back together, however, the theatre operating list was full. I was scheduled for the following day – Wednesday 15th Feb.
But had to go down to the Pre-Op ward to have blood samples taken, height & weight measured and asked a torrent of questions, such as Smoking? Drinking? and “Do you take any recreational drugs?”
Turned up the following day and after more questions was given a full anaesthetic and the surgical team went to work.
I woke up in a ward a couple of hours later, with a few plasters and a few stitches on my face.
The surgeons had ‘gone in’ via a cut in my eye socket. I was now the proud owner of a couple of titanium plates holding my cheek bone and the left-hand side of my face together.
RECOVERY
And so, I started on the long slow Road to Recovery.
Most cycle accidents are either ‘road rash’ or a broken collar bone. Mine fell into the category of neurological; the physical damage wasn’t too bad, but the knocking out of my balance and spatial awareness was going to take some time to restore, if ever!