Jim Carson

Fellow rider Patrick Gray was riding the Cascade 1200 last week when he was hit by a car. Below is an update Patrick sent to the SIR mailing list on Sunday. I wanted to post this as there are many folks in the cycling community who know him and will want to convey their best wishes in his recovery.
Writes Patrick:

Monday morning [June 26] at about 1:00 AM, Thai Nguyen and I were closing in on the Cascade 1200 overnight control in Quincy. We’d ridden 425 miles in 43 hours, were feeling strong, but looking forward to getting some sleep. We were on a straight stretch of road, well on the shoulder, with our lights blazing and decked out in the standard levels of randonneuring reflective gear. I was in front of Thai, giving him a nice view of what happened next.

An overtaking motorist swerved onto the shoulder of the road and hit my bike near the chainstays, also striking the left side of my body. I don’t know exactly why this happened but I prefer to be more productive in using my strength to focus on recuperation and gaining my strength back. If other people want to speculate on the reasons, that’s fine for them, but I’ll leave it to the State Patrol to figure out.

After a short, acrobatic flight I landed on my back halfway off the road. The motorist drove off, leaving Thai to take care of me. I was apparently conscious but unresponsive for a few minutes, after which I began to provide some information on my injuries and whom to call.

Some other motorists stopped and gave a blanket to keep me warm. We were lucky to be in an area with mobile phone service, so calls were quickly placed to 911, my wife and Peter Beeson. A couple of Cascade 1200 volunteers en route to the Quincy control stopped to help direct traffic and to let any other riders know about the situation.

I had a fair amount of pain in my left hip and was scared I had rebroken the acetabulum (I broke my hip in 2000). My left arm, under the bicep, was bleeding profusely, but my head felt okay and it seemed that the ambulance arrived quickly (Thai says that it was 30-40 minutes).

I was strapped into a neck brace and a backboard and driven to the Quincy clinic. Thai was left behind to talk with the police. After riding 400 miles together, this was a tough way to be separated. I felt suddenly very alone.

In Quincy the ER docs began patching up the big holes while also taking x-rays of everything. Suddenly I heard a friendly voice say, “Hi Patrick, this is Rufus Woods.” Rufus lives in Wenatchee and had been providing support for the ride, but I just thought he’d happened to show up. I knew him from a few rides he’d done with SIR in the past. It felt really great to know someone was there to be with me! I asked Rufus to be certain no details of my accident were posted on the web until my wife had been reached.

The good news began to trickle my way – no head, neck or spine injuries. My hip was still intact – just a broken femur. The docs told me I would be sent to Wenatchee for surgery, but I told them I had a serious preference for Harborview here in Seattle. I made certain to tell Rufus also in case I didn’t stay conscious. I also told him that if Thai wanted to keep going on the ride he had my support and encouragement.

The EMTs bundled me back into an ambulance, drove me to the Wenatchee airport, stuck me in a medevac jet, flew to Boeing Field, and from there it was another short ambulance ride to Harborview. After Wenatchee I pretty much slept the whole way thanks to the pain meds I finally received after the x-rays. I might also have been a bit tired from riding 430 miles while sleeping only five hours.

Arriving at Harborview, the staff took a whole new set of x-rays, explaining that they don’t trust information from other hospitals. They confirmed diagnosis of a broken femur. Surgery would happen sometime soon, depending on whether or not there were more serious cases ahead of me. But next up they’d get me set up with traction. Now, I had some vague image of Curious George with a big cast on his leg and a rope attached to a pulley. That’s not really what traction is. Traction is a bunch of sadists working to break through all possible pain thresholds. After it was over I told them they were all on my S list (chuckles in response).

Finally I was off the backboard that I’d been on since Quincy and the last of the roadside dirt was brushed off my sheets. My wife Megan, and my mom appeared, which made me feel much better and I was soon back asleep.

The rest of Monday sailed by with me in and out of sleep. I had a nice morphine drip going into my arm, which made me forget most of the pain. The funny thing about Harborview is that your worst injury is treated as your only injury, so my other scrapes were pretty much ignored. I had some pain in my shoulder, but no broken bones there, so this was also ignored.

Tuesday morning I received a call from a detective with the Washington State Patrol. They’d caught the guy who hit me! The details are a little fuzzy, but it sounds like an easy case for felony hit and run. This made me feel pretty good, though I still don’t care to reconstruct the details of the accident.

On Tuesday at 2pm I finally had surgery on my busted femur. At the same time they cleaned out the cuts on my left arm and sewed everything shut in Frankenstein style. In my leg they ran a stainless steel tube the full length of the interior of the femur and ran four screws through the bone and steel tube to hold everything together. Surgery took about four hours and after a couple more hours I was awake and back in my room.

There was random unpleasantness over the next few days, but things got progressively better. It’ll be at least six weeks before I can put any weight on my left leg. On Wednesday I stood up with the help of a walker (my shoulder really hurt supporting my body weight). Later that day I peeled off an anti-blood clotting sock and was surprised to see my leg still covered in dirt from Quincy. On Thursday I got up with the walker again and this time made it over to a wheelchair. The real high points were visits from my daughters (5 year old Talia and 3 year old Iris) on Thursday and Friday.

On Saturday I told the physical therapist I wanted to try crutches, and that went extremely well as I made it around the ward and even up and down a flight of stairs!! The walker has been discarded and I look forward to getting around on crutches for awhile. I’m still draining a lot of fluid from my injuries and will be stuck here until that abates. Could be Tuesday, maybe later.

I hope all of you are doing well. Feel free to stop by (East Wing, Room 117, first bed by the door. Don’t be offended if I fall asleep while you’re visiting. I also want to thank everyone who helped out over the past week and to extend a big congratulations to Thai for completing the ride!

-Patrick

Update 7/6/2006:

Just wanted to let everyone know I'm home from the hospital! The femur is healing up and the road rash is doing what it does best - itch like hell. My lingering issue is an AC separation in my right shoulder. Using crutches seems to make it worse every day, but the alternative of sitting on my butt doesn't appeal to me. Anyone have experience recovering from this kind of injury? Advice?

Also, thanks for all the e-mails and visits to the hospital. They really helped cheer me up. The WSP is taking my bike away for evidence. I'll try to take some pictures of it for anyone who might be interested in seeing the devastation (I haven't actually seen the bike yet, but I hear it's in the garage).
-Patrick