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Hey great site! Here goes!

On April 4, 2003 at approximately 4:30 PM I left my classroom psyched to go and pick up my new Specialized Allez Sport road bike that I had just ordered and been fitted for the week before. Living in Philadelphia, I decided to take it out on Kelly Drive along the Schuylkill River for its maiden voyage.

Little did I know that everybody and their mother was out on the bike path at the same time. The drive was loaded with pedestrians, bikers and bladers since it was one of the first warm nights of the season. I arrived at Kelly Drive at about 6:15 PM. No sooner had I gotten on the blacktop trail, than Skippy the Frat Boy was showing off his new blading techniques to his babe.

As I yelled ahead, "on your right!" the genius Rhodes Scholar moved to his right. In my vain effort to veer out of his way, I applied the brakes and flew directly over the handle bars, throwing the bike onto the grass to save it from harm.

Meanwhile, I took the brunt of the fall as I made contact with the hard asphalt in this order:

1. head (with helmet!)
2. shoulder
3. elbow
4. hand
5. hip
6. leg

As I got up, stunned and pissed off, at the genius who doesn't know the difference between left and right, I saw him skating off. He looked back at me and said, "Dude you should have screamed louder!" Prick!

A passer-by stopped and helped me get my bike off of the ground, and we noticed that it was a bit out of line and muddy, with the front tire and the gears totally turned to the side. I was unable to drive it as my arm and shoulder were really getting sore by this point. Luckily, a police officer put my bike in the back of his cruiser and drove me to a hospital in Center City where I waited six hours in the hallway of the ER to be seen by a physician. Apparently, I was not bleeding enough for most doctors and nurses, since they placed me in the farthest reaches of the hallway with old homeless people coughing and hacking up every imaginable color fluid. It was at this time I was convinced I had contracted SARS from any one of them when finally, at around midnight, they began treating my elbow and shoulder wounds.

Irrigating the open elbow with saline solution and picking out the dirt and pieces of gravel was not fun. When they finally got a look at my elbow up close they decided that it was pretty deep because they could see the bone and tendons. They thought they'd have to keep me overnight due to risk of infection, but after the x-rays revealed there was no fracture and thus no open bone fragments, they stitched me up and sent me packing.

The other wounds are really secondary to the story except for a separated AC joint in my shoulder that is still annoying as hell. The wound on my elbow did get infected a week after the accident, and I had to get antibiotics for the week. This infection became evident when my fourth grade students notified me that my "arm was leaking" during math class. I looked down and saw that they were right. A cloudy, bloody yellowish fluid was indeed dripping down my arm into my hand. Nice!

On April 22, 2003 I finally got the stitches out and the wound is healing nicely now.

M.T. from Philly

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Editor's Notes:

M.T. emailed me and asked if I could get this wound up by the end of the school year because he wants to show his fourth grade class! I told him he'd probably get fired, but his wish is my command.

Excellent set of pictures and nice healing.

I love the mountain bike trails down there on the Schuylkill! I've only ridden there once (and only about 10 miles at that) but I liked it. I have yet to get on my bike this year. Your story will remind me to never ride without a helmet.

I have to come clean that I have the same issue with confusing "left" and "right" sometimes. It's not something I'm proud of but I think I come by it naturally; my old man has the same problem. If you want to navigate in the car for either one of us you have to substitute "your side/my side" for "left/right". If you can tap on your window if it's your side, that also helps me out with an audio clue. Having said that, I'd like to think I'd stop and help someone up from such a crushing wreck especially if I had been part of it.

One of my favorite wounds happened to me in the fourth grade. It was a very strange incident. I was just sitting at my desk in school ripping up a piece of paper. I don't remember why I was ripping paper, but it's not important. What is important is that I dropped a piece of it. As I bent down to pick it up a classmate walked by. He had just been to the pencil sharpener and was on his way back to his seat with a nice sharp pencil sticking up out of his fist. I think you see where I'm going with this.

His pencil and my nose met. Hard. It was a great shot; right on the tip of my nose. Luckily not my eyes, and luckily the pencil didn't slide and scrape a huge gash in my nose. It just when straight into the end of my nose, just far enough to break the skin and leave a mark of graphite in there. It hurt like crazy, but there was no blood and the teacher didn't see it, so I was left just rubbing my nose and eyes (which had started to water very heavily--I WAS NOT crying, you hear that M.T.'s fourth grade class? They were just watering!).

So that was it, except. Except that I didn't realize it had broken the skin and left a mark, so i never washed it out and through the next day the skin grew back over the mark. So I had a permanent blue dot on the end of my nose...like a tattoo. We all thought it would lighten up over time, but it never did.

I'm not sure how many times I was asked "What's that blue dot on your nose?" but it happened often enough that my Mom and Dad paid good money to take me to a plastic surgeon. He just numbed my nose, sliced it open and cleaned it out. Oh, and stitched it back up. I had three stitches in the very end of my nose for a few weeks. What I ended up with was a somewhat noticeable scar on the end of my nose. It's not ugly, just noticeable.

I'd say that I get asked "What's that scar from?" about half as many times as "What's that blue dot on your nose?" so the procedure was a success.

That's it, that's my fourth grade wound story. Not life threatening, but I did get a cool scar out of it.

Hope you're elbow and bike enjoy a full recovery. Have a good summer riding!

Sharky

Photos:
Fresh- and clean
Puffy- That looks sore
Crusting Up- Getting better
Pulling together- healing
Straining - stitches
Closing- up
Scarring- doing it's thing
Leg- scraped up
Hand- minor annoyance compared to the elbow