Crash on Hatfield Sportive

I am writing this several months after events before I forget any more detail.

The day before

Edith at the start of the ride (me in reflection)

On weekend of May 21st I had a jam packed schedule. Edith and I were doing a chunk of the Maple School Charity Marathon from the British Library to Maple School in St Albans. Edith isn't old enough to run or probably even walk that far so she cycled her bike and I jogged behind her. We didn't do the full route as I wasn't happy about the safety of some of the sections for Edith. We did managed twenty two miles which was pretty impressive. 

We then went to the event BBQ, where I avoided over doing it because of what I had planned the next day, fifty seven miles of hilly cyclo-sportive.

The crash

I turned up late at the sportive, just making one of the final groups to start off. The rigours of the day before had left me pretty tired but I was on the road by about 10:30. I wanted to take it pretty easy rather than push myself too hard, especially on the early stages. Everything went pretty well. The weather was warm enough to be pleasant but not too hot. Its quite a hilly course but everything seemed to be going pretty well with no sign of pain from the day before. I have quite blurred recollection of the ride but as far as I can remember it was pretty pleasant.

Then disaster. I have no memory of what happened other than a vague bath water style vision of my front wheel slipping off the edge of the road into some deep grit and an even more dodgy image in my head of a large van coming the other way. I suspect I have super-imposed later events and that the van in question was actually the Evans support vehicle which arrived much later. 

My next clear memory is of lying on a grassy bank at the side of the road. I dont know how I got there. I remember some people being there and them talking and using my phone to call Helen to tell her I had been in an accident. I don't remember being in any pain but I do remember not being able to move or see (blood in my eyes) and most of all the feeling inside my mouth of broken teeth and great chunks of flesh that should have made up my mouth wall but instead were floating and flopping around. I remember a distinct feeling of massive regret that I had well and truly messed myself up.

Full map of ride

You can see my runkeeper track of the ride here. The map opposite from my phone shows the 28 miles I managed.

Zoom in on the crash site - see pause and move

You can even see me being moved to the edge of the road after coming off the bike at almost 30mph (months later I was going downhill and glanced at the spedo which showed a similar speed, its fast on a bike and no wonder I did such damage). The power of GPS logging. I only wish I had had a helmet cam.

There were some guys milling around and I think I remember other riders stopping to check with them if I was okay. I remember the sun was warm on my face and there were birds singing. Pretty perfect late spring day other than the blood, teeth and flesh everywhere. I asked about my bike and was told it was pretty badly smashed up and would need some new forks and bar at the very least. I wondered where my front teeth were and somebody said they had been smashed out of my face above my lip and that they couldn't find them. I don't know how true the statement was about the teeth coming through my face was. It did look like that certainly but from comments in the hospital I think that the teeth were smashed to bits and the flesh of my face ruptured simply from the impact. Who knows.

I am not sure exactly when but about this point I realised I had smacked my head pretty hard and been unconscious and from the comments of the guys looking after me, that I wasn't making any sense. At that point I don't think I could remember any details of how I got there and was super confused about more medium term memory. I had been away on work in Warsaw that week and I remembered that sort of in a weird, 'could I really have been in Poland' way. I also got super confused about whether I had resigned from my job. I hadn't but was looking around but somehow got ahead of myself and mixed up the past and future plans. I think I went on about it a lot. It was a lot like when I got into a fight when I was a teenager and got a concussion. It was the Easter holiday but I convinced myself I had already finished by GCSEs and had left school when in fact that was several months away.

Then an ambulance turned up and I have a jumbled recollection of being strapped to a board and put in a brace in case of spinal injury. Being held in the brace was the only time I felt like I was in unbearable pain. The ambulance guys were great and I made a big effort to remember their names which I managed just for a few minutes. I remember feeling very nauseous laid out flat in the ambulance as it twisted round the country lanes back to Stevenage. I would have thought that lying down in large van would have been quite pleasant but it wasn't. I almost puked and told the guys. They stopped and put me at an angle on the bad and gave me an injection to stop the nausea. They said they couldn't drive with me in that position so they waited until I was feeling a bit better then we were on our way.

Resus

We got to Stevenage hospital and went into resus where the doctors started talking to me. I remember thinking that resus sounded like a big deal but I think its just the way they were organised there. A&E is the whole department and if you need immediate attention, I guess you go to resus. The nurses started sorting me out and I recall telling them they were all so nice, which they were. I think it was at this point I decided a selfie was in order but since I couldn't move that wasn't happening. I asked the nurse to take a picture on my mobile which she happily did. I wanted have a picture of me at my worst so I could see how bad it was.

Picture from resus

The doctor was prodding and poking my chubby tummy with an ultrasound and making jokes about looking for a baby. They said they were concerned about abdominal bleeding given the nature of my injuries. I wasn't concerned about that. I could feel my head and face were a mess but my torso was fine. 

The board and brace I was strapped into was getting really uncomfortable by this point but they said they couldn't take it off until I had had a CAT scan. The ordering of events is jumbled up in my head but I must have gone to the scan at this point. I remember being wheeled around and expert sounded people looking at something on a monitor. I was expecting them to say I had fractured something round my eye socket but there was nothing that worried them and finally the brace came off.

The doctor made me get up and walk over to the mirror. I am not sure why. Maybe it was to judge how concussed I was and whether I was now with it? Whatever the reason he made me look in the mirror at my face and the massive gaping wound running from below my nose off to the corner of my mouth. It was verging on the incomprehensible. I had that bad feeling again that I had done some damage which was going to take a long time to sort out. After looking in the mirror for a bit I shuffled back to the bed.

Things happened and I was aware of some passage of time but then Helen was there with her Dad, who had driven her over as I had taken the car to the start of the sportive. Helen said she was sorry it had taken so long to get there. I was quite jolly and said not to worry, I only arrived a few minutes before. The nurse said I had been in resus for several hours already. Having Helen there made it harder somehow. I was keeping it together with all these strangers and suddenly that seemed much harder with her there. I dont know whether thats because I didnt want to be worrying about her as well or whether it was easier to act tough with people who didnt know that I cant even bear to watch Casualty on TV. 

There was some weird stuff now which I didnt understand at the time. The doctor was saying that he was going to sew me up and he had done loads of this sort of thing before. He also seemed to be explaining this again and again to the nurses who, even though I was concussed, seemed dubious. He then told me that if he sewed me up, it could be done right now and then I could go home (up to that point everybody had been saying that I would be in for observation overnight, which I hated the idea of). That was all I needed to hear and I told him to go for it. Helen told me later that the nurses had been trying to get the doctor to call the plastic surgery team and not to do it himself but he refused. This has repercussions for me later.

Stitching time! I really didnt want Helen in the room at this point and asked her and her Dad to wait outside. I didnt realise at the time but Helen snuck back and watched the whole bloody thing! Helen's Dad was relegated to the waiting room which with hindsight was probably a lot less pleasant than spending 45 minutes watching them sew my face up.

I wasnt keen on the next bit. It was painful but not unbearably so. They kept on injecting my face with local anaesthetic as they sewed and chopped off loose flesh. It seemed to go on for a long time. They put some sort of paper mask over my eyes and rest of face as they did the stitching. That did seem to help. I remember tensing every time the pain became too much.

Then it was done. Doctor finished his shift and went home. The nurses immediately called the plastics guy! By this point the show was over though. He looked at me and gave me an appointment for four days later in the dressing clinic.

I was given intravenous paracetamol which seemed very effective. I remember the nurse asking how I felt on the pain scale 1-10 and I said 4. I really meant it. They all thought it was bravado but I genuinely wasn't in that much pain. 

Glasses took the punishment

Then it was just clean up and butterfly dressings on the remaining wounds. I had really bad lacerations on my arms, shoulder, legs and knees as well as a horrendous cut at the corner of my eye where my glasses had caught me. I was glad I was wearing them as I think they saved my eyes from the worst of the gravel. They was ruined but that could have been my eyes instead.

They put dressings on my leg and elbow then I was allowed to go. They had cut all my clothes off apart from the lower half of my cycling bib and my socks. I asked to keep the hospital gown and they were very kind and let me have a new, clean one. I then had a painful few minutes whilst Helen's Dad navigated through the horrid multi-storey and I hung around, half naked in the A&E waiting room. Then, it was back off home. I remember feeling anxious on the A1(M) about crashing. My nerves were shot.

The lost week and not opening my mouth

The next week and a bit was difficult and the memories blur. I remember being so very tired. My head and neck were so heavy that I would sit up for a few minutes then need to rest my muscles a bit. I would drop to sleep immediately and wake up hours later. 

Day after the crash (note hospital gown)

I reckoned in the first couple of days I slept for 22 out of every 24 hours. Oddly, when I was awake I seemed to have plenty of energy. I was annoyed that the roast chicken I had planned for Sunday night was about to go to waste so on the Monday I cooked the family a full on roast dinner. I couldn't eat it since I couldn't open my mouth wider than a crack and my teeth on one side of my jaw, which were worrying me greatly, we very very sore. Helen liquidised some sweet potatoes and I drink it through a straw. It was so damn good.

Wear a helmet

Me after a few days all swelled up

Back into theatre

Well, that bodes well

Almost better but not quite

Aftermath 

The Marlow Red Kite Sportive in September