When We Make Plans and Then Someone Else Changes Them For Us

So I just had my 35th birthday. I always plan time off from work for my birthday, because let's face it, nobody wants to ever have to work on their birthday. My birthday is on St Patrick's Day (March 17 in case it's a holiday that doesn't really matter to you) and it happened to fall on a Tuesday this year. Not that that is significant in and of itself, but I figured it would be an easy excuse to take a 4 day weekend from work. I also decided this year that I would ACTUALLY do something for a change. (Normally taking time off just means vegging at home and maybe going out for a very long bicycle ride, if I can motivate myself to do so.)

Well, this year I decided I would take a trip to Utah and visit some old missionary companions and other friends or former missionaries that I served with in Costa Rica. So I made all of the necessary plans, at least as many as I ever make for any sort of a road trip. I'm really not very good about planning anything, as I've learned through various experiences, primarily my experiences student teaching, which I failed miserably. (That is a whole different story, about which I could probably write a book literally but won't here.)

I had sent messages and emails to several people and had planned to take off for my "mecca" on Saturday, March 14 early in the morning in hopes of getting to Utah in early afternoon, and maybe having a BBQ with some of my friends before going to a wedding reception for an old family friend. (Not that the friend is old, just from a very long time ago. In case she might be reading this.)

I picked up my luggage out of storage a couple of days before and was going to pack the night before I left. I decided that, since I wouldn't be back for 4-5 days and wouldn't be able to go for a bicycle ride in at least that long, I would take advantage of the later sunset and go for a quick spin of about 35 minutes here in Greeley, on a route that I typically ride at least 2-3 times a week. It was a great bike ride until I was just about finished and was approaching an intersection. I was coming down a gradual downgrade/decline in the road and approaching an intersection with a signal light. (I would say stoplight, but that would imply that it was a red light, which in fact was NOT the case.)

As I approached the intersection, I saw that the light was green and, as a matter of habit, started watching traffic closely as the road narrows and sometimes complicates car vs bicycle relationships, if you know what I mean. I made a point to look and see if there was a "walk" signal or if it was changed to a flashing hand, a sign that indicates to not cross the street or to finish crossing if one has already started. The point of this was to know whether the light was likely to change as I approached the intersection. I saw that in fact it was a "walk" signal, indicating that there was plenty of time to get through the intersection. Still approaching the intersection, I also saw a dark minivan on the opposite side of the road, meaning that it was coming from the opposite direction. This minivan was stopped in the left-hand turn lane and was waiting for traffic to clear before making a left-hand turn to go south. (The street we were on was east-bound/west-bound 16th street in Greeley.) As soon as I saw that minivan, I started saying to myself, "That minivan is not going to turn in front of me. THAT minivan is NOT going to turn in front of me! THAT MINIVAN IS NOT GOING TO TURN IN FRONT OF ME!!!!!!" I was moving with traffic and, based on my previous memories of riding the same stretch of road, figure I was probably moving at about 25 mph approaching the intersection. By this point, I was close enough to the intersection that had the light changed to yellow, I would not have been able to stop and was already committed to going through the intersection. I'm still saying to myself, "That minivan is not going to turn in front of me."

Sadly, I was wrong about the minivan and it turned in front of me, leaving me about 4-5 feet of distance to stop myself, while still moving at about 25mph into the intersection. I was of course not able to stop myself, so I crashed into the minivan, broadsided, and hit it at about the middle or towards the back of what should have been the sliding door on the passenger side. I remember hitting the van with my bicycle and I remember my upper body slamming into the side of the van, but do not remember anything after that until I was in a sitting up position in the middle of the intersection. I tried to stand up by pushing myself up with both hands. I was unable to get any leverage with my left hand so I was unable to stand on my own. I asked for someone to help me stand up so that I could get out of the road and out of traffic. When I got to the side of the road, I noticed that my bicycle had already been moved and was leaning against the SW corner light pole. I remember looking at my bicycle and noticing that the left-hand brake lever was bent severely towards the inside of the handlebar. (That's all I remember noticing about my bike at that time.) I stood at the street corner in a daze, while I heard people around me talking, not really understanding most of what people were saying. I remember hearing a woman nearby saying, "I didn't see (the bike) coming." (Parenthetical "the bike" because I don't remember if she said she didn't see the bike, the man on the bike, or other words.)

I remember a man standing nearby that seemed to have an idea of how to handle accident situations, maybe an off-duty police officer or something, but don't remember what he was saying. Within 1-2 minutes, I remember seeing the ambulance coming and someone asking me to sit down on the ground, which I didn't resist at all. The ambulance arrived and shortly I was being assisted by the paramedics in putting on a neck-brace (precautionary I am sure for all accidents with injuries) and was guided by the paramedics onto a stretcher.

I must say while this was going on, that although I was really "in a daze" I still had many of my normal mental faculties about me, at least as near as I could have told at the time. I remember being grateful when they told me that they already had the back of the ambulance heated. (I was grateful because I remember thinking I had been racing, not literally, just riding very hard, on my bike.) I knew that by riding hard by body was producing lots of heat and that now that I wasn't riding, I would begin cooling down, and likely getting very cold, although the paramedics were probably accustomed to doing this to prevent a patient/victim from going into shock. Much the same phenomenon, just different perspectives mostly I guess.

They loaded me into the ambulance, started an IV of what I think was the first painkillers, while checking vitals and doing their normal paramedic stuff.

Back up a little bit. I didn't know the extent of my injuries, but I knew there must have been a problem with my collarbone based on the fact that I had tried to stand up and couldn't get any leverage with my left hand. I remember a paramedic or police officer (don't remember which it was) asking if I had any pain anywhere. I responded that my left shoulder was sore. I don't remember any severe "pains", just soreness, probably because my body was already going into some stages of shock and, with the adrenaline and all, I figure now that it was probably just sort of shielding the pain. Before we even arrived at the hospital, I remember them asking me the normal "pain" question, "On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being mild and 10 being severe, how bad would you rate your current pain?" Well, I've never as far as I can remember ever experienced any pain that I would call a 10 and couldn't possibly be any worse, so I told them it was probably about a 7-8.

The paramedics were very kind and informative about telling me everytime that we were approaching any bumps in the road (gutters, speed bumps, etc), for which I was very thankful 'cause it would have hit a 10 had they not said anything and just taken bumps at normal speeds.

Within a few minutes of arriving at the emergency room, which luckily was only about 1 mile from the scene of the accident, everything pretty much started becoming a blur. I'll tell what I remember of it, but it will likely be in very random bits of information and not necessarily in the order that things happened.

Sometime in the ambulance or after I got into the ER observation room, they informed me that they were putting me on some morphine. As soon as they said "morphine" my mind raced back to a TV show I remembered watching growing up titled "Tour of Duty", a TV series that reenacted what it might have been like for soldiers fighting in the Vietnam War. No specific scenes, I just remember that morphine was commonly used then as a painkiller for soldiers when they received severe injuries from gun-shot wounds, land-mine explosions, and other war-related stuff. I was grateful for the morphine because by then I was pretty darn hurting and didn't really enjoy it very much.

After being moved from the stretcher to one of the ER beds, I remember people asking if I had emergency contacts in my pocket or anything. I gave them the name of my sister, Annelise, and told her she would be listed in my cell phone directory. They called my sister and she, Howard (her husband), and little Benjamin (their son, not named after me, but after Howard's middle name) were there in the ER within a few minutes. Having them there really helped things go better in the ER. I might've been miserable had nobody been there.

As normal procedure, in order to check for injuries, I was slightly saddened by the fact that the paramedics had to cut my clothes off that I was wearing from bicycling. These mainly being my bike vest, a compression jersey (think Under-Armour type shirt), another short sleeved shirt that I was wearing, and the straps of my bib-shorts. This meant of course I would have to buy new clothes to replace these. I wasn't really saddened at the time about having to replace them so much as just the fact that they had to cut them. I didn't resist though.

My sister was able to use my cell phone to call my Elders' Quorum president and he too was at the hospital seemingly very quickly. I thought of having her call my home teachers, but I didn't think that I had them both listed in my cell phone directory and I didn't want people to have to make like 3-4 calls to get my home teachers there. My EQ president also was employed at the hospital so I knew that he knew his way around and could get there more easily then anyone else. Les Adams (EQ president) was kind enough to stay there for several hours with my sister and her family and, having the medical background that he has, he was also able to explain much of what was happening, monitor the systems that were monitoring my oxygen levels, blood pressure, and so forth. Most of the time in the ER was spent just laying there in the bed. Not really very exciting.

While paramedics and ER doctors and nurses were inquiring about allergies, medications, etc, I advised them I had been in the ER before for a "portal vein thrombosis" in October 2008. As part of their checks, they carted me off for a cat scan for my portal vein, to make sure nothing had been damaged in the accident in case of issues, and I think the cat scan also checked my shoulder, neck, and other areas for other trauma that may have happened. **Background: When a person does a cat scan (it's probably actually called a CT scan, but I'm not sure), they give you an IV of some "contrast" that helps identify parts of the body and identify things that may have happened. I know that's not a very good description of it, but this again is only background info for part of the story.** When they give you the "contrast" for the cat scan, and then send you through the machine, it makes your body feel warm. Apparently in some people it ends up causing them to wet themselves, to put it mildly, but not in everyone. Luckily, I've not had this issue. It does nonetheless cause the warm feelings all over the body. Kind of weird feeling, you might say, but I told them of my experience before when I had to drink another form of the contrast and these warm feelings previously actually caused me to vomit what seemed like the entire contents of my stomach, when I previously had to do a cat scan because of my blood clot (the "portal vein thrombosis"). Among the warm feelings, the IV fluids for the cat scan also cause a weird metallic taste in your mouth. It's very gross and I don't recommend it to anyone. Luckily, this time through the cat scan I had no issues with vomiting, though it almost seemed that at one point I wanted to.

After spending about 4 hours in the ER, it came time for them to discharge me to go home. Part of this meant having me sit up in the ER bed so that somehow I could get out of the bed and get out of the hospital. I might have to have someone else tell this story though, because by this time I was so outside of my mind that I have no idea what was happening. I do know that while in the ER, I was on oxygen where I had a tube in my nose to get oxygen flowing into me and I know that when it started getting low, I started getting a little bit "loopy" and unresponsive. (This was one reason I was glad Les was there because on at least one occasion he had me specifically focus on breathing in through my nose, using the oxygen supply, and breathe out through my mouth. One of the machines was monitoring my oxygen levels and he noticed apparently that my levels were getting low. Thanks, Les.)

I remember, at what I think was between 8:00 and 9:00pm, one of my missionary companions called me. He was calling to figure out final plans of what we were going to do the next day. In fact, I was going to be staying with him for the weekend when I got out to Utah. Sadly, I had to inform him of my accident and cancel all of what we had planned. Naturally, he was very understanding and wished me well. It was just kind of odd to me to be sitting in the ER and to have him call me while I was there. We talk on the phone occasionally, but not all too frequently, so the timing was a little bit odd. I asked him to let everyone else know and apologize to them for me.

The ER observation room that they put me in had another woman in there. She seemed to be an older woman and luckily, after a couple of hours, they carted her out to do her own cat scan or something. While she was out, Les and Howard were able to give me a priesthood blessing, which I had asked them to do if we could ever get a brief moment of quiet time there. (The woman in the other bed, while sort of "masked" by a curtain that separated us, was really loud and I remember her being kind of annoying.)

I remember sitting in the bed and thinking, "My knee really hurts. Why haven't they done anything for it yet?" I asked them if they could dress it or something because it was really stinging badly. (I got some "road rash" on my left knee when I fell to the ground after hitting the minivan.) They promptly cleaned it and dressed it, but I'm still kind of surprised that they didn't do that before.

Some time later, doctors came back and informed me that, based on the cat scan and x-rays, my injuries seemed to be limited to just my collarbone, which they informed me was broken in two places, which explains why I was unable to stand up on my own, as explained previously.

Within an hour of arriving in the ER, the policeman that responded to the accident came to see me. He informed me that we (myself and the woman driving the minivan) were getting tickets. He said he was citing me for failure to dismount at a crosswalk, which he said was not a city code, but rather a state code, but that hers was "three times as bad" as she was being cited for failure to yield to a pedestrian. My impression of bicyling laws were that bicyclists were supposed to follow all of the same rules of traffic that a vehicle/driver should be following, so I asked about this. He responded, "Yes, except apparently at crosswalks." He advised me that my ticket would carry a $22 fine, but of course no points against my license because, logically, I wasn't driving. (I have since looked up the state bicycling laws, and I believe he is wrong in his interpretation of the laws, per the Colorado state website that outlines these.) He also came to the ER to get pictures of my shoulder and knee injuries for the accident report. By this time, I still don't have my glasses, so you might say it was kind of humorous because every 5 minutes someone was asking me to sign one form or another, all while I'm drugged up on morphine and can't see more than 6 inches in front of my face and can't move my whole left arm. Luckily, I'm right-handed, but that doesn't help to see the "dotted line" on everything I am supposed to sign. So for the ticket and all of the hospital forms, I just had to hold the pen and they had to hold everything literally within 4-5 inches of my face so I could see it, and even then I wasn't completely sure of where the lines were to sign.

Hours later, it came time to leave the ER. Les was still there and probably could give a better version of the stories of me trying to stand up to get into the wheelchair, but I'll do my best.

With a broken collarbone, which some people have since told me is the second-most painful bone to break in the human body, second only to the thigh-bone (whatever it's called). Because it is so painful, I could not do anything by myself, including sitting up or anything. On top of this, I'm drugged up on morphine and then to get out of the bed, they had to take my oxygen tube out of my nose, which brings me back to the point of being totally "loopy". They had me sit up in bed, which they did for me because of the motorized beds and they simply had to raise the bed enough that I was in a sitting up position. I was so uncomfortable and in so much pain from this, that I couldn't move my legs enough to sit on the side of the bed, so Les and the nurses helped with this. They grabbed my feet/legs and swung them to the left so that I was sitting up and dangling my feet off of the bed. Since I was so "loopy", they were constantly talking to me to keep my attention and keep me from nodding off. Not an easy task though. Howard tells the story and just says I was just sitting there with my eyes wide open but then when they would talk to me it was like "the lights are on but there's nobody home". I apparently wasn't responding to them at all or anything. After what was probably 5-10 minutes of my feet hanging off the side of the bed, they were finally able to get me responding enough to help me stand up, turn enough only so that my back was to the wheel chair, which allowed them to position the wheelchair, then help me to sit down, and then they lifted my feet and rotated the foot rests to set my feet carefully there. Once in the wheelchair, I think the hard work for everyone else was complete. It then just became a matter of Les pushing the wheelchair and Howard and Annelise carrying all of my stuff.

Getting out of the wheelchair and into the car was almost as difficult as getting out of the bed and into the wheelchair. It didn't take long for the morphine to seem like it was wearing off and the pain to start kicking in. The doctors gave me a prescription of Percocet for the pain but warned that I needed to take it on a full stomach or it could cause nausea. The problem with that is that when your body is hurting so much from a severe injury, it's not easy to eat and get a full stomach. I was hurting so much that I knew I wouldn't be able to eat anything solid. Howard and Annelise were kind enough to let me stay with them for the weekend. We got to their place around 11:30pm Friday night. I remember asking Annelise just to fix me some light soup. I asked her not for anything heavy, even just like some chicken noodle soup, mostly of just the broth was about all that I could handle. I had a couple of mugs full of that and that's all I could handle that night. I took the percocet and with that went to bed for the night. They were even nice enough that they offered to let me sleep in their bed and they would sleep on an air mattress.

Getting into bed, like the previous experiences of getting into and out of the wheelchair, was also very difficult. You don't realize how much your body uses certain parts, until you lose use of some of those parts due to an injury or something else. Since I was now not in the ER bed, we couldn't take advantage of just raising and lowering the bed for me. Raising and lowering had to be done either through my own power or that of someone else. By then I was so uncomfortable and in so much pain, I could not lay down by myself. Enter Howard into the picture. I was able to get up the stairs fairly well, but getting into bed was just painful. For me to lay down, I had to have Howard get behind me and, using one hand to support my whole left shoulder (because it remarkably has a lot to do with supporting your head when you're in the motion of laying down I've now learned) and using the other hand to lower me into bed, he and my sister helped me get into bed and lay down. I was still also in enough pain that I couldn't move my legs by myself. Eventually with their help, I was in bed and they helped get the blankets over me and get a body pillow under my whole left side, to support my left shoulder and keep it high enough that it wouldn't stretch the muscles on the front side of my shoulder.

The next morning worked exactly in reverse of the night before to get out of bed. I won't repeat it for fear of this getting too long and boring. I had to rely on Howard and Annelise all of Saturday and Sunday for getting in and out of bed the next two nights. I stayed with them until I was finally able to return home Monday morning to my own apartment.

Sunday I was unable to attend church, though I had hoped to do so, due to the pain of moving around and everything. My hometeachers were able to come visit me Sunday afternoon as they had just learned of the whole experience that day. (I'm glad I have the home teachers that I do. They are very entertaining, but more importantly are very caring.)

That's probably enough details of this experience, perhaps more than anyone else might wish to read. Of course, if you've read this far, then I guess that point is probably moot.