Biking into the truck...

By now, most of you reading this probably know that I ran my bicycle into the back of a parked truck on Halloween morning...although I still doesn't remember how I ended up doing so. Anyhow, I'm playing on an intramural football team and put myself on injured reserve just in time for playoffs. I sent out the linked file to my team to inspire their play during the playoffs.

If you didn't get the full story by email, here it is:

For those who may not know, I was in a bike accident on Wednesday.
Below are the details. Feel free to read them when you have time. I'm
usually not a long email writer or a long email reader, so you can
pick and choose how far you actually want to go through this thing.

Thank you all so much for your concern and prayers on my behalf. We
are so blessed to have such wonderful family and friends. We have
received many phone calls and emails from all of you and are so
grateful that you are thinking of us. As might be expected, some of
the stories that some of you may have heard are...well....much better
than mine and I think I may adopt some of them instead. Here's my best
attempt to fill everyone in on what happened and on my current status.

You may have thought that only dogs are dumb enough to chase parked
cars, but...On Halloween morning at around 9 am, I was riding to
school on my bike and somehow I ran into the back of a parked
truck/SUV. The question that nobody can answer right now is exactly
how I ended up going full speed into a parked vehicle. I remember
riding up Broad St. passed the NC school of science & math. I got to
the stop light at Club and remember a series of cars turning right and
a series of cars going straight. I pulled up between these two lanes
to go through the light. And that's the last thing I remember before
waking up as EMTs were trying to get my clothes off to put on a neck
brace and get me on a stretcher and into the ambulance (about 200
yards passed Club). I'm guessing that I must have gone unconcious on
impact for 10-15 minutes--enough time for someone to report the
accident and get the EMTs over there and start working on me. I have
a vague recollection of looking up as I rode and seeing a maroon
truck/SUV about 5 feet in front of me and having no time to swerve or
brake. Nevertheless, I can't vouch for that story because we don't
even know if that's the color of the truck/SUV I woke up underneath.

Anyhow, I went to the Duke emergency department and received several
CT scans to check for damage to my spine, neck, and/or skull, as well
as to check for abdominal bleeding. The doctors were very thorough in
analyzing the scans and discovered a rare fracture to my occipital
condyle--the bone in your skull that connects to the top of your
spine. The fractured bone was stable and in a good position for
healing, so the only treatment I need is to wear a neck collar for at
least a couple of weeks. Looking on PubMed, it appears that it is very
rare for someone with my fracture who receives the proper treatment
(neck collar) to have any permanent nerve damage. Oh yes, and here's
my plug for bike helmets...the $15 I spent on a bike helmet saved me
from really serious injury, it well could have saved my life. The
helmet had a crack all of the way through the protective foam. In
addition, all of my facial lacerations were below the portion of my
head covered by the helmet.

While the doctors were deciphering my CT scans, an ear, nose and
throat (ENT) resident worked on stiching up my scrapes on my cheek and
just behind my ear. It was a pretty big mess and he took about 3 hours
to stitch it all together. I think that most of the time was spent
trying to figure out where to place the next stitch.

After 2-3 hours, the initial shock of the accident started to give way
to the realization that my body hurt a fair amount. Upon mentioning
this to the ER staff, they gave me some meds in my IV and it wasn't 2
minutes before I was feeling all warm inside and 100% better. I've
been taking Perkiset on a regular schedule since then and hence I feel
much better than I look. Unfortunately, I'm set to run out of Perkiset
in the next 40 hours or so and we'll see how things go after that.

The doctors released me from the hospital at about 5 pm on the day of
my accident and my prognosis is excellent as long as I keep the collar
on. Cami can remove it twice/day to wash my face and neck wounds, but
someone has to hold my head still while she does so. Cami's parents
made plans a couple of months ago to fly in on Halloween evening and
stay for a couple of weeks. They are indeed a Godsend.

Anyhow, I attached a couple of photos. The first picture shows my face
issues with the brace off just after Cami cleaned me up yesterday. The
second is just a photo of my super-hot neck collar. If you are
squeamish, you may want to steer clear of the photos.

Please know that I am doing well and that I am so grateful for your
thoughts, faith, and prayers on my behalf. I feel so very blessed that
things did not turn out much worse. And I feel so blessed to have so
many wonderful family members and friends Thank you all so very much!

Happy Halloween!

Here are the kids in their 'oh so cute' Halloween costumes. They had a great time at the ward Fall festival/trunk-or-treat, and made out with a lot of candy. Cami & I decided they needed some help eating it all, so we've all got stomach aches from candy overload.

Triathlon at Emerald Isle

We went with several other couples to race in a triathlon at Emerald Isle, NC. We had a great time, but they canceled the swim due to 6-7 foot swells in the ocean. Cami got 4th place in her age division!

Field trips

Jose and Sonlicious both went on field trips in October--Jose to Brown Farm and Sonlicious to the Durham Fire Department. Nano was fortunate enough to tag along with his brother to the fire station.

Photos from September

We've been lazy about updating our blog lately, so we just threw together a few pages with all of our pictures from September.