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Geo Gosling (page 3 of 3) Page 3 of 3
Having survived this accident, I had amongst many other injuries, a TBI, or Traumatic Brain Injury. If you ask me, that is a pretty redundant name. What the hell would an Untraumatic Brain Injury be? I also had a broken neck. I fractured the C6, C7, and C8 vertebrae. Those are at the base of the neck. My right shoulder was also pretty much destroyed. There are a number of reasons why I didn’t die. I’ll share with the reader the main reasons that I believe I am still alive.
The first, and probably most important, is that I was wearing a bicycle helmet. The helmet is now split on one side, cracked in other places, and is shaved down on the right, front side. If my skull had received only a fraction of the damage my helmet did, I wouldn’t be alive, or I’d be a vegetable, at best. The second is my right shoulder. It bore the brunt of the collision with the truck. Had my shoulder not done so, I don’t believe the helmet could have saved me. The next reason is all the people in the medical field. The emergency medical technicians (EMTs), who were the first to treat me, kept me alive long enough to get to the hospital. Another reason is the woman who made the decision to route the ambulance to The Queen of the Valley hospital rather than S.H.H.H.C. because The Queen is much better prepared for head trauma. The final reason: I was in extremely good physical condition. I had very little fat on my body and my heart was in excellent shape, from all the riding I’d been doing. So riding my bicycle nearly got me killed but I believe it also helped save me.
Back to the helmet. As I said, the helmet was cracked, split, and shaved down on the right, front side. I don’t how it got that way. I can only speculate. I believe my helmet was shaved down because my head must have slid along the pavement after I collided with the truck. The helmet, sliding along the asphalt, created enough friction to tear through the plastic cover and then shave down the material that composes the helmet. I don’t even want to think what might have happened to my head had I not being wearing a helmet. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out I would not be alive today. I can’t stress
enough the importance of wearing a helmet.
Now, I must admit, I never wore a helmet as a kid riding my Western Flyer around the yard. I very rarely rode on pavement as a kid, and trees don’t turn left in front of you. As a youngster I, nor anyone else, was very aware of head trauma. I also never wore one during the five years I spent at the University of California, Davis (UCD). I probably should have, but UCD and the town of Davis, California, are set up for bicyclists, and the people in the town are very accustomed to us riding all over. So they are used to looking for and seeing cyclists. This results in relatively safe riding conditions. In retrospect, I probably should have been wearing a helmet during my time at UCD because the bicycle rider rides on the same streets with cars, buses, big trucks, etc. Hindsight is 20/20 and I came through fine, so I don’t think about it too often. Back to hitting the truck.
An ambulance picked me up and drove to Queen of the Valley Hospital. Incidentally, I learned after being released from the hospital that one of the EMT’s knew me but I was so covered in blood he didn’t recognize me until later.
Apparently, I hit the truck and flew over it. Unfortunately, my upper thigh caught on some part of the truck and, as I flew over, a big gash was ripped in it. I think that must be where most of the blood came from. I came to rest on the on the upward-sloped bank on the opposite side of the road. People in a nearby house were having a barbecue or something, and heard the woman who had been driving the truck screaming or crying. Someone there was the person who called for an ambulance.
Excerpted from TBI Hell: A Traumatic Brain Injury Really Sucks by Geo Gosling. © 2006, Geo Gosling. Used with permission. For more information on TBI Hell, go to www.amazon.com.
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