wear a helmet

...it happened on a friday. friday, may 29th, 2009, to be precise. i know this because it was several hours after my bike accident had occurred before i was able to answer the question "what day is it?" correctly...

cycling back to my office from a meeting in another of the company's buildings, the last thing i remember is a family unit of, what i assume to be, given the proximity to fisherman's wharf, tourists deciding to cross the street against a red light as i approached the intersection at a fair clip. i swerved, i blacked-out.

i vaguely remember spitting out blood at some point and i have faint auditory memories of being in an ambulance. i have no recollection but there is a voicemail to prove that i called stephanie to let her know i was en route to san francisco general hospital. apparently, i also managed to convince the paramedics to call my boss.

i sort of remember being rolled into the hospital and answering "yeah, ok" to a paramedic whose question remains completely unknown and whose face is very blurry...

i kind of remember someone asking "do you know where you are?"
"uuuuuhh... san francisco?" came my unsteady reply.
"good enough!" was their confirmation...

i started to realize i had a neck brace on and was strapped to a board as several people began undressing me. "please don't cut this shirt, it's really expensive!" i cried, not realizing i had already splattered it with blood and scraped a hole in the back...

i definitely remember lights in my eyes and being told to follow them while answering who the president of the united states is. "barack obama," i said, immediately. "woo!" said someone out of my field of view...

stephanie begins to melt into the memories at this point, but i'm pretty sure the timeline is still jumbled. i remember being rolled on my side for a spine exam, gripping someone's hands, telling them what hurts, having to push their hands away and having to hold my arms up with my eyes closed...

someone asked me (for the fifth or sixth time) what day it was and i struggled. "it's friday... it's not june, right? so, it's may, like, may 25th?" "pretty close," said my interrogator. "he couldn't answer that right on a normal day," said stephanie...

i refused the offer of pain and nausea medication once, but gladly accepted the offer an hour or so later. morphine is fantastic stuff...

the morphine and chemotherapy-grade nausea medicine went a long way towards stabilizing my mental state. having stephanie there helped anchor memories and establish some context for everything that was happening. my wrist was x-rayed (negative), my lip was stitched (once), cuts above and below my eye were dermabonded (glued) and then it was all about waiting a few more hours for a cat scan ("should be ready in ten minutes..."). i asked the doctor if i could have my x-ray film and she offered a digital copy for $10 that would also include the cat scan. i guess i was a pretty good patient, 'cause they hooked me up with the scans for free!

anyway, i walked away from a pretty bad wreck with some cuts, some scrapes, some bruises, a stitch, a sprained wrist and a mild concussion. considering i wasn't wearing a helmet at the time, i have no complaints... except one: the witnesses claimed i swerved to "dodge a car or something..." i can't remember a lot, but i'm pretty dang sure i remember swerving around people...

check out the gory details on flickr: