On Monday, Valentine’s Day, I was riding home. I was going to ask Georgia to go out to dinner with me. Because of the busy street, I was on the opposite side of the road against traffic, riding on the sidewalk. I was watching the traffic, in and out of the subdivision. I made sure that no one was turning left into the street. No one was turning right. There was a truck waiting to drive out and make a right turn out of the subdivision.
I was just in front of a pickup truck. He had been looking at the oncoming traffic. He attempted to make the right turn, hit the rear tire of my bike, and boom I was on the ground. Fortunately he stopped immediately and there was no other traffic. I quickly got up. I was a little scraped up but otherwise in good condition. Quite a number of people stopped and made sure that I was ok, including the driver of the truck.
My bike was not damaged except for a small chunk taken out of the saddle, so I figured we didn’t need to report what happened to the police. I felt fine. I took off down the sidewalk where it went into the bicycle/walking path. It would take me to the bridge across a canal then onto the dirt road that I would take for two miles - rest of the way home. I felt fine, really.
When I got home, I took off my riding gloves, went into the house and asked Georgia to get the first aid kit and clean up my road rash. She was proceeding to do that when my right hand began to be really painful. My private nurse figured that was not a good sign. We decided to take me to the Emergency Room to get checked out. This is the hospital that I work for.
It did not take long to get checked in. Georgia had brought our Nooks with us to read while we waited. I had a bit of a problem working it since my dominant hand was out of action. Soon my name was called, more information was taken, but we were still outside a treatment room. We finally got to a room where my vitals were taken and the nature of the problem was asked. I found it interesting that they did not pay any attention to my bruised and scraped up knees. My knees were worse when I crashed in the sand a few months ago.
The doctor came and checked me out. Soon after, they brought a hand splint and sling. I was also given a pain pill which helped a great deal. Then the wait started for the X-ray. I was placed between people with extreme flu symptoms. I was worried for Georgia, so I talked her into going and getting something to eat.
So I did take her out to dinner, but it was the hospital cafeteria and she had dinner by herself. A real Valentine’s day to remember! I was at least not seriously injured. It could have been much worse.
After an hour and a half of waiting, I finally got a trip to the X-ray room and the machine that would magically show if I broke my hand or not.
It brought back memories of when my father slipped on some icy porch and hit his wrist on the cement. He came home, in pain, and mom talked him into going to get it checked out. It was broken. Unlike me, he could not perform his normal job.
I got back to the ER results waiting room and rather than going back to sitting with the flu crowd, I just walked around the area. I was contemplating how grateful I was that I was not badly injured. The doctor came over and showed me the X-rays and said that I did not have any broken bones. I had a sprain instead. I was told to keep the splint on for a couple days. With that, I was let go after signing a few more papers. As we left, I noticed that the number of people in the waiting room had increased to where all of the seats were taken. It would be a lot longer wait now even though it was now 9PM. We had arrived at 6PM.
I did end up taking Georgia out to dinner the next night. We were both very happy to still be together. I could have been “singing with the angels” rather than being with her.
These photos were taken a couple of days after the crash. Notice the dark bruising on Randy's right hand and forearm.
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