On Thursday 4th August I decided to have a play on the jump bike at gate practice, this was going well until I decided to show some of the guys how not to do the 3rd straight!!! I managed to manual the 2nd jump really cleanly then as I went to start the tap on my manual on the 3rd jump my foot came off of the pedal and hit my left hand which came off of the bar and caused the bike to drop throwing me over the bars to flat at the bottom of the jump. I remember hitting the floor and being winded and it really hurting to breath and then everything went blank, then I was dreaming for a bit and then I came around with everyone looking down on me! According to the people near me I was snoring with my eyes open so I definitely blacked out.
When I managed to get up and assess the damage, my little finger on my right hand was bent and blue so was definitely broken, my elbow was grazed and bleeding a lot, my right shoulder had full movement but was sore and a bit grazed as my body armour moved on impact and my left wrist didn’t move and was really sore but I had full movement of my fingers so I hoped that my wrist was just sprained not broken.
I wasn’t allowed to drive home so my friend gave me a lift home in my car and his wife drove his van and picked him up. When I got home I called my son to meet me on the way to the hospital and we walked to A&E for me to get looked at as I was worried about my wrist and finger, my elbow was also bleeding a lot still.
After a couple of hours I was seen by the nurse who cleaned up my wounds and get the story of what happened and assessed the damage and then I had to go and wait to see the doctor.
After a few more hours of waiting I had had enough so I told the reception that I was leaving as I had to go to work in the morning so we left and walked home.
I worked a little on Friday morning and then was told to take the rest of the day as I was in quite a bit of pain and my shoulder had lost a lot of movement movement and was really sore. I was supposed to go back to the hospital but I was in too much pain to walk so I just stayed in bed and reseted and slept when I felt like it.
I also didn’t bother going back to the hospital on Saturday either and stayed in bed all day again. I did buy some Savalon as the scabs on my finger were starting to go yellow and my finger was starting to hurt so it looked like it was getting infected.
On Sunday, I woke up about 7am and got into the shower and had a shower and then got ready and walked to the hospital to get looked at. I arrived at about 8am and gave reception my details again and they told me that there was an 8-9 hour wait to be seen but as I was there already and my finger was looking horrible I decided to wait and see what happened. To my surprise I was called into the Nurse at about 8:40 and she was amazing. She thought that I had torn my rotator cuff in my right shoulder which is why I had limited movement and it was hurting so much! She had just recovered from this injury so was super empathetic as apologised about the length of the wait and asked me to wait in the waiting room again. I was waiting 10 minutes before the Nurse called me and took me through to the x-ray department to get x-rays on my finger and shoulder. I was literally waiting about 5 minutes when I was called in my the radiologist and I had my x-rays taken and got told to go back to the A&E waiting room and that a doctor would call me when they were available.
After waiting about another 20 minutes or so I was called in to see the attending Paramedic and he cleaned up my finger as it was really infected. He also splinted the finger as it was broken as I had thought and also told me that I had torn my rotator cuff and damaged ligaments in my shoulder as well but there was nothing that I could do to make that better at the moment.
I was then told I could go home and I left the hospital and I was home before midday 🙂
I am waiting to hear from the fracture clinic as I will need to go there and see them later in the week to make sure that the finger is OK.
The crash as meant that I have had to cancel going to training tomorrow in Birmingham as I am in no state to ride. I am thinking that I may be OK to pump around at the weekend to get my last race in but I don’t think that I will do very well asI have 50% movement in my shoulder at the moment and it is super sore too. I will decide later in the week if I can ride or not!