Saturday, July 26, 2008

Motorcycle Crash

Free Fall on Highway 1 (recorded the night of the accident, July 21, before the real pain set in).

I was following the fog line when my front tire lipped over the asphalt and climbed the shoulder into the bushes. I rolled off to my left and tumbled to the road until I lay on my back, groaning. I must have hit my left shoulder first, as I feel a partial dislocation and acromioclavicular separation there. It pops as I type. The right is equally sore, more a blunt injury, I think. I haven't looked in the mirror for external orthopedic markers as I fear I can't remove my shirt with shit for shoulders. Inside each scapula is an ache so deep it wraps around my chest like an iron band around a barrel. Rhomboid strain, slight radiculopathy at the fifth thoracic vertebra. My neck burns stiffly; I wrapped a towel around it for a chin rest. I'm creaky and sore but breathing. My left little finger is numb from disk compression in my neck at C7-C8. My helmet spared my skull. As I said, I was following the fog line when I got too close, lipped off the asphalt into the brush. I saw a tree; I don't think I hit it. I didn't get a good look at the bike but it didn't appear too mangled. I feel a generous raspberry on my right knee, I don't know if it bled through, but my kneecap pops in a new way from a partial dislocation. Strangely, before the accident, I was talking to a friend who had fallen from a height out of his truck and suffered a severe concussion that took him five years to recover from. He was misnaming things, calling a stove a refrigerator, calling his employees by the wrong name. I think my brain's OK, it's my neck and shoulders that sustain the agony--worse with movement, of course. I have now cheated death nine times. That doesn't mean I don't have damage, At 53 the human body doesn't bounce anymore, it slams without rebound. Were I six again, running with a football, I would recover quickly. I don't know which impairments will remain. I've doubtless added to my chronic pain.


CE


p.s. I just noticed in a previous comment a challenge to a meme; what work among these media most impacted you in your adult life?

the book:

The Brothers Karamazov


the film / network series:

"Altered States" directed by Ken Russell, written by Paddy Chayevsky


the music / spoken word recording:

Bob Dylan "Highway 61" Columbia


(challenge by Sam Rasnake)

5 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:12 PM PDT

    Well CE, Kim and I are glad to hear you're alive. Though you may be less enamoured of your survival in the coming days as the pain asserts itself. Good luck and God Bless.

    norm

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sorry to learn of your accident, CE. Get yourself well.

    Great list - Especially like Russell's Altered States. That's an amazing experience of a film. The Dylan, of course, is great.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sorry to hear about your accident. Hope your recover quickly with no lasting effects.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous6:22 PM PDT

    Damn, CE. Glad you survived. After all you've been through, to be taken out by a few bushes and a tree would have been a real downer for everyone.

    About 5 years ago Pennsylvania actually rescinded our state's helmet law. Weird legislation when everything with government is moving in the opposite direction toward hyper-regulation. In your case, it sounds like it saved your brain.

    Hope you mend nicely.

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  5. Good grief! I go away and see what happens!!

    Here's wishing you a better recovery than you anticipate and I"m glad you weren't more seriously injured!

    shann

    ReplyDelete

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