I had someone wishing me a happy birthday ask about the healing progress so I thought I’d let you all know.

These days I talk a lot and I tend to talk mainly about myself, so if you’re not inclined to wade through it feel free to skip it and move on.  I won’t be offended.

It has been nine months since the incident.  Sometimes someone will call it an accident and I tell them, “I have no memory so I can’t know for sure whether it was accidental or intentional.”  I call it the incident.

There is about a two and a half week gap in my memory beginning with the incident.  To say I have no memory of it is not entirely correct.  I have about a seven second memory of the time leading up to the incident.  According to witnesses I was approaching a freighter and was within a car length by their observations.  What I recall was the handlebars beginning to violently wobble.  I don’t remember the progression into a full tank slapper.  I’m sure it occurred.  I assessed the problem as a high speed wobble induced by the air flow off the freighter and recall consciously deciding I needed to avoid rapid deceleration.  It was the wrong decision.

I had left my Saturday meeting early to ride south to meet the Kansas Valkyrie riders for lunch in El Dorado.  My path would lead me to join the Kansas Turnpike at Emporia about an hour and a half into the ride.  I was wearing a half shell helmet, summer gloves and a Joe Rocket armored mesh jacket.  I was carrying a pair of leather chaps in the saddlebag. 

The first Kansas State trooper on the scene beat the EMT team there.  He commented, “He kept trying to turn over but I was afraid he would drown in the blood.”   The helmet had one snap ground away, a slight scrape on the side evident and some disturbance of the rubber liner across the front above the face.  I tell my friends that if you want to save your equipment the proper strategy is to land on your face.

I apparently hit the pavement on the right side of my face at something at or around eighty miles per hour.  After impact I did some sliding and rolling.  Witnesses say the bike passed over me, but I don’t fully trust their observation at distance.  The trooper on scene noticed a blood sugar kit among the contents of my saddlebags scattered over the road.  When the EMTs arrived he asked them to measure my blood sugar.  It registered forty-eight.

That’s it, he decided.  He simply went into a diabetic low sugar reaction and lost control of the bike. When my friends picked up the bike they found it would not hold air in the rear tire and discovered there a hole that looked as if someone had inserted and retracted a good sized bolt.

I was transported by helicopter some sixty miles to Stormont-Vail Hospital in Topeka.  The doctors there assessing the damage came up with a long list.  The flesh was worn through on the backs of my hands and both knees.  They listed multiple fractures in the hands.   The middle finger of my left hand was broken above the knuckle.  The left arm was fractured lengthwise.  The right eye socket was shattered along with the sinuses, the nose and other facial bones.  There was a chip of my chin bone missing.  The nose appeared to be out of place and the left half of the lower lip had been torn away but not completely disconnected.  There was a laceration on the inside of the mouth and the neck area was significantly swollen.  The flesh of the face was badly scraped, bruised, and torn.  C1 vertebrae was fractured with minimal displacement.  There was a concussion and brain bleed on the right side and a brain shear between the frontal lobe and the main part of the brain.  There was a laceration on the inside of the mouth and the neck area was significantly swollen.  Added was the comment that, “He has a broken toe.”  This was despite the presence of steeled toed boots.

Lori was on her way to our son’s girlfriend’s daughter’s birthday party with our granddaughter in the car.  Her cell phone rang.

“Hello.”

“Hello.  Is this Lori Beth?”

“Yes.”  There was a problem.  Only her husband calls her Lori Beth and it was not his voice.

“Has anyone told you that your husband was in an accident?”  

“No.”

“He was in an accident on the turnpike and was flown to Stormont Vail in the ER.”

“Stormont Vail?  Where is that?”

“Stormont Vail in Topeka.”

“Is he okay?  What is his condition?”

“I can’t tell you that.  He’s in the ER at Stormont Vail”

She asked him repeatedly where is Stormont Vail?  She was having trouble concentrating or processing.

She finished, or at least ended the conversation in time to arrive at the birthday party.  Our youngest daughter, the granddaughter’s mother met her and must have seen something troubling on their faces.

“Are you okay?”

“I think so.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Paw Paw has been in an accident.”

“I have to go home and clean out my car so I can bring him home.”

“Forget cleaning your car.  You have to go.”

“I have to go tell Tim.”

“Okay.  Hurry, you need to go.”

“He needs to stay at Lina’s party.”

“You need to go.  Call us when you know something.”

Lori was experiencing some shock and fighting to pick out the thoughts that made sense.  It’s sixty miles from Olathe to Topeka and about an hour and a half’s travel time.

Lori started out toward Topeka and during that time was almost constantly on the phone.  She talked to people far away and near.  She talked to the riders in El Dorado who wondered why I hadn’t shown up.

When Lori arrived at the hospital she was greeted by our friend from Wamego, an EMT, who was there to meet her with a cold drink.  My boss from work was already there and they were joined sometime later by Joe and Teryl, our friends from Topeka.

Over the next few days half of my eight children, my wife, several of my friends, and as a pastor locally in Topeka spent time in and out of my hospital room.  I am told that I interacted with these visitors but I have no recollection of what was said or heard.

The medical people and Brian, the EMT, early on advised Lori of the expected result of the brain injuries.  “He has no filter,” they explained among much other information.  That has reference to how most people deal with social interactions.  People carry in front of them an image that they present to everyone around them.  Before saying or doing anything, the last question that occurs to them is, how will this make me look?  The brain injured person has no such image or question.  I told my friends that that means whatever bounces between my ears comes out my mouth.

I was apparently in a lot of pain those first few days.  There was a lot of morphine involved and my throat would not allow any food to pass for the first four days.  The doctors were involved with stitching my face back together, wrapping both hands to the point of unuseability, and watching very closely as to whether the brain bleed would stop or need intervention.

There was a conflict arose after the first few days at Stormont.  The trauma surgeon was intent on dealing with the wrist and arm but the throat was still very swollen.  He began to schedule surgery and the first anesthesiologist he contacted responded negatively to the risk of the swollen neck.  The surgery was cancelled.  The trauma surgeon then approached a different anesthesiologist and received a second refusal.  His third selection gave him a positive and he scheduled the surgery for the next morning.

When Lori heard that the surgeon had scheduled surgery on my hand despite the refusal of the first two anesthesiologists she was greatly displeased.  She expressed her displeasure.  Among her complaints was that the doctor in care of my condition had not conversed at all with her.  What information she had was from attending nurses and a friend, Joe’s mother, that was working at the hospital.  I think that friend may have been pressured to retire over the help that she gave Lori.

Lori requested that I be transferred to the hospital closer to home sixty miles away.  At first the hospital administration pushed against the transfer.  They explained to Lori that the required ambulance ride would be very expensive and would not be covered by insurance.  Discussion continued and those holding the power of the decision were made aware of the lack of communication to Lori and her discomfort with the medical decisions pursued without her input or approval.  The hospital agreed after some discussion to transfer me to the hospital near home.  The Topeka hospital picked up the charge for the ambulance ride.

I was especially hard on Lori those few days.  The oxygen mask on my face was irritating to me.  I would move or try to move it off my face and Lori would put it back.  I would try to get out of bed and Lori would prohibit me.

That first night at OPRMC was particularly stressful.  Maybe it was the change of environment.  Maybe it was just that time in the process.  Lori sat with me in the new room.  I was treating her harshly with more intensity that night.  After some time I said to her, “Why don’t you just go home.  You’re only stopping me from doing what I want to do.”

She was crying.  She stopped by the nurses’ desk on her way out.  “He’s going to try to get out of bed,” she told them.   She was greatly concerned about my getting out of bed as much of my body and especially my knees were not functional.

The charge nurse that night was a male.  He told her, “You don’t need to worry.  His room will be right next to the nurses’ station.  The alarms on his bed will alert us anytime he starts to move.”

That night I found myself in a hotel room in Washington.  Washington was where I went to pick up the Valkyrie Interstate that I had purchased some three years prior.  From my bed I could see the window.  It was night and dark but I wanted to see out the window.  The next thing I knew I was on the floor and there was a man on one side of me and a young woman on the other.  The floor was slippery and I wondered what these people were doing in my room.

“Stay down!   Why don’t you just stay down!?”  The male was hollering at me.  He didn’t want me to get up off the floor.

About 02:00 that morning Lori got a phone call.  It was from a female nurse.  “I didn’t want to have to make this call.  He got out of bed.”  Apparently I had landed forcefully on my head.  Previous diagnoses had indicated a concussion and bleed on the right side of my brain.  After that night diagnoses indicated concussions and bleeds on both sides.

The next many days are without notation in my memory.  I had been at OPRMC some five years prior  and this time  I was served by my favorite doctor and nurse from that visit.  They put plates in my arm and my left middle finger.  No surgical action was taken to deal with the C1 but I was required to wear a neck brace for the next several months.  My face had been stitched back together in Topeka.  Apparently, the concussions began to heal without further incident.

The only other memory I have of the time at OPMRC is being loaded into a van to be transported to the rehabilitation unit of St. Luke’s hospital some four miles east.  I was transported sitting in a wheelchair.  I don’t recall whether I was belted to the chair but I suspect that was required.

When I was released from the hospital there were two bits of advice that Lori got from the doctors that stuck with her.  One was, “Don’t let him blow his nose.  His sinuses are shattered.”  The other was, “Remember he has no filter.”

When we arrived at St. Luke’s West there seemed to be some delay in getting me into a room.  I was left alone sitting in the wheelchair in a room that had a large glass window behind me and a wall with several televisions in front of me.  They were playing Steve Harvey’s Family Feud.  They broadcasted one episode after another for what seemed like a very long time.  Through the window behind me I could see it was storming outside with repeated sheets of rain hitting the window.

Lori tells me there are large portions of that memory that simply are not true.

I healed well over the next week.  My mind and memory began to return to near normal.  Each day I was visited by multiple medical technicians.  Of course, there were the nurses.  I had a sessions with a physical therapist, with a speech therapist, and with an occupational therapist.  There was a wound specialist, a man near my age, who came each day to apply treatment to the backs of my hands, my knees and to my face.  Meagan, the occupational therapist washed me each day.  It seemed not disturbing  for her to be in the shower when I was.  I was normally seated in the shower and when it came time for my more private areas to be washed she would toss the washcloth into my lap and step away.  I don’t know what she did before I was healed enough to remember or to participate in washing myself.

Every day Lori and my youngest daughter would come to my room and sit with me.  They were a great comfort to me.   Lori’s devotion was above and beyond as she cared for me.  It was a great encouragement for me to be visited by my daughter.  I was not a good father to her as she grew up but she was my best friend.

One day I advised the physical therapist that I did not respond to pain as do normal people.  The instructions to do something until it hurt didn’t work well with me.  Faced with pain I usually push to see how much of it I can take.  She tried to kill me that day.  I went back to my room so worn out I just laid myself down and went to sleep.  My speech therapist came in that day but decided I need my sleep more than I needed her session.

One day my motorcycle riding friends came from far and near to surprise me.  My friends came from Texas, Kansas, Missouri, Minnesota and Nebraska.  They parked their bikes where I could see them from the window.  It was a group of more than fifteen loving friends, a genuine  emotional uplift in my healing process. 

The time came for my release from the rehab center.  That day some of my motorcycle riding friends came again.   We went by the barbeque place on the way home.  They prepared and modified my home to provide for my needs.  We celebrated together for awhile and then I went to sleep that night in my own home.  I was in my own home but I could not yet be trusted in my own bed.  It was too high for a man needing the support of a neck brace.

They had placed a twin bed in my home office on which I could sleep alone.  Actually, almost everything I needed was either in or brought to the office.  The twin was not high off the floor and was one I had built for one of my children many years before.  That first or second night home Lori awakened to see me standing next to our queen sized bed in which she was sleeping.  After that she made a pallet on the floor next to the twin and slept there so I would have to step across her to get out of bed.  She complained that I would sleep for forty-five minutes and then talk for two hours.  This cycle repeated all night long.

I had spent eleven of my formative years, seventeen to twenty-nine, as an active duty Marine.  It had an impact on my verbiage.  As I grew I chose to remove the profanities from my mouth but I had never removed them from my mind.  My children were shocked to at times hear coming from my mouth words and phrases that they had never before heard from me.  It was through that experience that two paths took place.  One was a deep belief that it is not how a word is spelled that matters but what the word means.  We have as a culture separated some words into buckets of good words and bad words.  Some of us will only use good words while we’re in certain companies.  Some of us will never use bad words.  In the using of the good words we are sort of pretending that we don’t talk about things that bad words indicate but we do.  I see a certain amount of hypocrisy in that.  It’s not how the word is spelled that matters but what it means.

The other issue was the realization that I had held the use of profane words and phrases in my mind but short of my mouth for many years.  It was through that experience that I learned that it’s not enough to change the outside, the appearance, but we must change from the inside, from the heart.  If there is something wrong that comes off my hands or from my mouth it is not my hands or my mouth that have a problem.  It is my heart.  I have worked hard at removing curse words from the inside.  I have worked hard to eradicate the word that refers wrongly to what should lovingly take place between a husband and wife.  Sometimes that one comes back but it is becoming more and more rare.  For many, many years I never used the obscene hand gesture.  It came back.  These days I am tempted often, most often in traffic.  I’m making progress but these days if I go for a month without violating my standard I consider it a victory.     

After the brain injury  I became more aware than ever before of the need for a Christian to surrender himself to the will and use of God.  We had long used the term surrender when describing the salvation experience but it was usually just a word.  We most regularly focused on ourselves being snatched from certain disaster and looked past the concept of giving oneself over entirely to be used and completely owned by our Heavenly Father.  In my prayer of thanks for a meal I, as many, regularly used the phrase, “bless this food to our body’s good.”  After the experience I have added, “and bless our bodies to Your purpose, Lord.”  I work each day to make that surrender complete.  It is an ongoing and ever learning experience.

There would be more adventures.  There was the visit to the plastic surgeon to remove the stitches, or at least most of them, from my lip.  One hasn’t experienced the wide span of life until someone has stuck a needle into his lip to inject lidocaine. There was also the struggle to get past the requirement of a psychological exam to determine that my mind was adequate to allow me to practice the privileges of a driver’s license again.  There was the journey of healing enough that I could take off the neck brace and ride in the front seat of the car again.  There was the trip to South Texas to retrieve a replacement for my destroyed Interstate.  There was and continues to be the journey back to near normalcy.  There is growth, some away from the injury experience and some learning from and retaining some parts of the injury experience.

Life goes on.