Not so happy anniversary

On January 29th I was headed home from work around six o'clock. It was my anniversary and Helen had made a special meal. At the intersection of Big Bend and Shrewsbury, a car headed in the opposite direction made a left turn directly in front of me. I yelled when I saw what he was about to do, but it was a cold night and his windows were closed so he couldn't hear me.

My bike struck the right side of his car, around the front wheel. My left side must have then hit the car. I was wearing a helmet but I don't think my head hit anything. I was lying on the ground and I heard the other driver get out of his car and walk around the car. "Shit," I heard him say. Maybe I was just in a bad mood, but it sounded to me like he was more concerned about the inconvenience to him than the injuries to me.

"Call an ambulance, call an ambulance!" was my response. He or someone else said than an ambulance was on the way. I knew that I was hurt and I suspected that my left leg was broken because it hurt a lot and I could not straighten it. I just lay on the cold pavement on my right side with my head resting on my arm.

The police arrived very soon after that. I heard the officer talk to a witness and the other driver. The other driver claimed that he had a green arrow, a fact that I disputed. At some point a woman asked if I wanted her coat. I said, "No, because then you would be cold." I did not actually see any of these people because I wasn't facing them and I wasn't about to try and move.

After a few more minutes, an ambulance arrived. The paramedics strapped me on a back board and loaded me onto a stretcher. I asked if they could please bring my yellow bags (my panniers with their rain covers), and the did. The police officer asked if he could call anyone for me and I asked him to call Helen.

The paramedics asked what hospital I wanted to go to and I said St Mary's. That is the closest hospital to my house. That ER was on diversion so they started checking around to find one that was accepting people. I ended up going to Barnes-Jewish. In the ambulance, the paramedic asked me if I wanted morphine for the pain. I told him no. I thought about it for a second and then said, "Yes. Who am I trying to impress?" He gave me some morphine but I don't know that it helped much.

Once we got to Barnes-Jewish, they unloaded me from the ambulance. We seemed to spend a long time (probably only a few minutes) in what looked like a parking garage. I eventually ended up in an ER "cubical" (I don't know what the proper name is). People asked me the usual questions and they did their usual medical stuff. They gave me more morphine and took some X-rays.

One of the nurses said that they were going to try to get my clothes off without cutting them. I told them to feel free to cut the tights because I thought it would be too painful to get them off. She said that they would try, but if it hurt too much, they would cut them. Actually the tights turned out to be pretty easy to remove and they didn't have to cut any of my clothes.

I was able to call Helen at some point, I'm not sure of the timeline. I expected her to be freaked out but she was actually very calm. She couldn't come to the hospital because she was at home with the kids. I told her that even if she came she would just be sitting in a waiting room.

Eventually a doctor told me that I had a dislocated hip. At first I thought that this was good news. Then he explained that for hips, dislocated pretty much means dislocated and broken. The gave me some other drug and I fell asleep while they put my hip back in place. Eventually I got to my hospital room about 3:00 am.