It was last Sunday, Feb 5th, [2006] Superbowl Sunday… I just knew those ER docs were bored and maybe even trying to watch the game. We can’t have that, so I hatched a cunning plan.
I was out on a 60 mile ride Sunday, at the halfway point, out in the middle of nowhere—just cows and horses for company—when I went into a left hander, not fast at all, when my front wheel skidded in some loose tar on the apex and I hit the deck. I was okay and jumped to my feet but noticed I couldn’t see at first out my left eye and that scared me. I glanced and down there was blood “pitter pattering” in the road.
I washed my face with my water bottle a couple of times and wished I had a mirror to survey the damage. Then I realized I did have a mirror—my camera phone—so I snapped a pic. It really didn’t look bad at all, my eye was still there and I could see – phew! My bike was okay and besides a cut on my left knee and a little graze on my wrist and hands I was good to go.
I rode home with thoughts of suing the NC DOT in my head. I met Deb at the door grabbed my keys and drove straight to the Urgent Care hospital a couple of miles from our house. They cleaned my wounds but said my eye needed specialist attention and for that I needed to go to the ER. When I said “ok I’ll go” and got off the table to leave the nurse said, “no we’re calling an ambulance crew to take you.” Huh? I said, “Guys, I rode 30 miles like this, I think I can drive 2!” They insisted on checking all my vitals then reluctantly let me go.
When I walked into the ER they were expecting me and shepherded me straight to the ER room. I was there 4 hrs which was thoroughly boring so I took pics with my cellphone and emailed them to friends from the ER trolley. My friend Jim replied to my photo text msg with, “If you look that bad I bet the bike is fine.” He was right, bike was ok. The doc gave me 8 stitches under my left eye, they’re actually under the top layer of skin, then 2 stitches on the upper layer to close the “y” flap. After 4 hrs of CAT scans, xrays, and mostly just hanging around they discharged me.
I took Monday off the bike but spun for an hour Tues and suffered as the sweat streamed down my face and into the laceration under my eye. Wed I went out on the bike during lunch for a hour, felt great to be back out there.
P.S. Coincidentally, in a letter last year I defended the ER hospital against an attempt to get it shut down by another local hospital on some regulatory technicality. Thankfully that despicable attempt failed.
