It was a normal spring day, the weather finally starting to get warm, the snow melting, shades of green finally emerging back into trees, A great day to ride my bike.
Earlier that day in Mr. Sennabaum’s class my friend chad and I had talked about going mountain biking after school in the woods near our house. After school I rode my bike to his house and we grabbed some shovels and miscellaneous tools needed to build a dirt ramp. We got to the woods and both already had an idea in our minds where we wanted to build the jump. it just happened it was the same spot, the spot that would change my life forever... we picked the spot at the bottom of a small hill, perfect because we would have plenty of speed without pedaling to hard. We started moving dirt and clearing rocks and debris. After about 20-30 minutes of working and perfecting the ramp, it was done.
Chad hit it first, he did a couple of runups first then went for it. It wasn't a big jump but it had a lot of kick and sent you relatively high. Looking back it was not a very good ramp to begin with, it was narrow and two inexperienced teenagers built it, but it still seemed like a good idea at the time. Chad landed it with ease, “that was easy” he said. now it was my turn.
Me being me I decided I did not need any runups or practice, which I now regret because I definitely could have used them. I came down the hill pedaling and hit the ramp, when I hit it the kick of the jump threw me over the balance point of my bike, mixed with a lack of speed meant my front tire hit the back of the landing ramp. That, in turn, made me go right over the handlebars of my bike at about 15 miles per hour into the dirt. I remember flying through the air, my first thought was “this is going to hurt”. My second was do I put my arm out and roll which risks hurting my shoulder, or do I face plant and probably break my jaw requiring it to be wired shut. Obviously I chose my shoulder and did my best to roll when I landed but the impact went straight into my collar bone. the impact of the hit fractured my clavicle, but at the time I didn't know it. I remember laying on the dirt and trying to get up, but I couldn't move my right shoulder, I looked down at it and saw my bone tenting my skin tall enough to where I could see it through a hoodie and A t shirt. I asked chad to help me up, after that my first instinct was to take a picture of it, I wanted to see what it looked like. After that I walked to the edge of the woods where I had phone reception to call my mom, neither of my parents were home at the time. My mom answered and I said “mom, I think I dislocated my shoulder.” I had never broken a bone before so all I knew was that something was sticking out of my shoulder and it was not supposed to be there.
My mom started asking questions like “where are you?” and “are you okay?”
I was extremely calm on the phone and my tone of voice made my mother not in a rush to get home because it did not sound urgent. If I had sounded more panicked she probably would have come home sooner. She said that she would leave work to go home, and on the way she called my dad and told him. Chad walked with me back to my house and I sat on the couch waiting for my parents to arrive. Once they did he went home and we loaded up in my moms car on the way to urgent care to get x-rays.
The car ride felt like it took forever, but my mom did let me pick the radio station which was nice. The service at the urgent care was terrible, the doctor told me I had a broken clavicle but wasn't sure if anything else was damaged. She then proceeded to give me a brace that she attempted to put on upside down and backwards, that my dad knowing nothing about the medical field, figured out how it was supposed to go. She told us I would need to see a specialist for my shoulder. When we got home my mom called and made an appointment with Dr. Bahu, a stranger at the time, but I would come to know him as the man that saved my life.         We went and saw Dr. Bahu the next day and he told me it was one of the worst breaks he's ever seen in a younger person and that it would require surgery to fix. We scheduled a surgery date That was three days after the appointment. We drove home and once I sat in the chair in my living room, I didn't leave the chair for those three days except to use the bathroom. My mom stayed home the first two days to take care of me but on the third day she went back to work. After three days of limited movement due to excruciating pain and my unwillingness to take pain medication, it was time for surgery. We went to the hospital around noon to 1 o'clock, my surgery was later that night. I was laying in the hospital bed waiting and seeing doctors and the anesthesiologist for a few hours talking with my parents and my aunt who worked in the hospital. It was time for surgery now, they wheeled me into the operating room and the last thing I remember was the surgeon asking me to move a couple inches forward, I got about one, and I passed out.
I woke up 4 long hours later with my aunt, who was my recovery nurse, pushing me out of the operating room and I large bandage on my shoulder. I remember asking her if she could drift the gurney on the way to my room, she did until I got nauseous and almost threw up. After the surgery my throat was extremely dry from my breathing tube and I could only eat ice chips for almost a day. Once back in my room I wanted to get out as fast as possible, I had already missed close to a week of school. I stayed one day in the recovery room then I left, they wheeled me out of the hospital in a wheelchair which was weird to me because I was in a sling and not injured my legs.
Once home I did not have a lot of energy, I wasn't hungry but I had to eat, so I made eggs. I then watched tv for the rest of the night. but the next day I was back at school. I was excited because since I was in a sling I got to leave early from class because if someone hit me in the hallway it could re break.
After I was home my parents told me that when the surgeon came out
he said; “your son is okay, but,”
my mother was already crying,
“when the bone broke, a very sharp fragment went backwards and was sitting on the subclavian artery and if anything would have happened like hitting the jump faster, or sneezing weird or anything between the accident and surgery, could have poked the bone through.”
I would have internally bled out and died on the spot.
This accident taught me a lot, that life is valuable and fragile, it can be ended so easily, and cherish every day you wake up on the sunny side of the dirt. It really hit me when I realized how my death would have impacted people around me, my parents walking past my empty bedroom every night, or the empty spot at my lunch table my friends would sit by every day. My car in the driveway unused, or something as simple as a friend wanting to tell me something that happened. but they can't. things we take for granted only to appreciate when it is too late.