How and why my accident happened and the injuries...

I misjudged a bend  high speed on a motorcycle partly because the verge marker posts at the edge of the road were gone, partly because the chevrons that should warn of tight left hand bend had previously been knocked down and put back up too far around the corner.

This was because it was easier than digging the old concrete foundations out I suppose!

And partly because I was having a lot of fun on big seriously tuned bikes for about 20 years. Looking back it was inevitable. I just didn't see that at the time though. When your number is up then that's it! 

I started to brake hard on the straight for maybe two seconds and pulled across to the centre of the road to allow me to go in wide and "straighten out the bend" so to speak.  Then as I lean in and look for the apex and start to start to corner fairly hard I see that it tightens up hugely a few yards in!  Oooops Now I am going massively too fast for the corner. 

Not wanting to go wide onto to opposite side of the road and meet something coming the opposite direction I elect to go for a gap in the hedges that looks like a "flat" escape route into a field.  So I straighten up and aim for the cheapest softest safest option at the time and have now got little room to brake. Expecting a slightly bumpy ride into a field I stand up on the foot pegs.

Anyway I hit the opposite bank of a huge but hidden ditch. The long grass both in it, and in front of it, made it invisible until I hit it at a very good speed.  I never saw it coming and was in fact looking much further ahead at the gap in the hedges and the field.  The bike flipped upwards and over backwards bouncing off the opposite bank.  I went from unknown but fairly high speed to zero.  At this point my legs went under the bars, my head smashed into the front wheel and my right femur was broken (I think) and the lights all went out...

I was thrown into the bottom of the ditch and the flying 500lb hot hard 1200cc bike landed rather heavily in top of me after falling about eight feet...  At that point I was unconscious. I came too for a few minutes while my mates were trying to get the bike off me with a fork lift truck borrowed from a nearby farm and could hear the rescue helicopter coming in to land in a nearby field.  Nothing hurt. I wasn't very conscious. I remember bits of being examined and struggling to breathe. I remember someone saying doesn't that hurt? Pointing to my leg.  It was my thigh. Femur. Broken rather badly with the bone sticking in the ditch mud and my leg shaped like a Z. Couldn't feel that. I remember being stuck in the helicopter and being given oxygen and that's about all I remember.

Apparently I had a chest full of blood, all my ribs broken (in many places from the bike landing on me and the crush) they were trying to stick tubes into my chest to drain the blood that was causing my collapsed lungs (gallons drained over six weeks) and were sitting me up to do so in the nearest casualty which was Lincoln.

Apparently I wasn't very keen and caused rather a fight/battle!  Don't remember myself but I spent the next six weeks in a coma (partly opium based drug induced to save shock and multiple organ failure).  They were literally pouring blood , plasma, odd white food liquid, as well as antibiotics and tons of other chemicals continually by tubes.

I had tubes in every orifice, including my nose (stomach) and all the other places you can imagine and then some! As well as oxygen, machines that beep all the time, . It was like a bad trip, nightmare where I couldn't understand where I was or what was happening. My lungs were full of fluid and breathing and choking were the same thing. It was dark/light/dark in sudden spasms. Absolutely no sense of time or reality. One of the chemicals was an opium based drug controlled by a machine. I had broken neck (no spinal cord injury here) broken back with full spinal cord injury here meaning complete paralysis from chest down with all the toilet, and other problems that causes! 

Even during the times of consciousness I couldn't speak because of oxygen mask, and tracheotomy (an extra hole in my throat I never used to have for draining fluid out of my lungs every 20 mins so I didn't quite drown). Also had an operation on my bowels caused by a blockage caused by a doctor that didn't know enough who fed me... and broken toes etc. And a huge metal bar in my right femur. (6 hour operation).  I have had better days.

After this period I was stable so they shipped me to a special spinal injuries unit where you go through a full years production line style recovery. Before coming to terms with all the problems life now has. Anyway it was an experience I could have done without!  But hey, shit happens doesn't it...

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