Thoughts of a Father on this rocky road...
I ride up into the mountains, to Springwood, stopping at Glenbrook on the way back down to make a phone call to the office. It’s 9:30 am and there’s a small issue I need to deal with. “I’ll be in by noon” I promise. Heading down Lapstone Hill on the M4 I’m going very fast, 93kmh, and pass a 4wd (it’s an 80 zone). As I pass a cross wind hits me and the handle bars start a death wobble. I am certain I am going to die. Then a calm, peaceful feeling comes over me as I accept the inevitability of this. I unclip, push the bike under me and tumble, still relaxed, like a rag doll. “It was the most exciting thing I’ve ever seen” said the driver of the 4wd to the police officer “he just flipped and flipped, about eight times, I can’t believe he’s still alive!” She was a nurse, pulled over to help and came running at me with a survival blanket yelling “lie down you stupid man!” I got up to get my bike off the road, was bleeding all over my body, the lycra had been ripped off me and the survival blanket was to restore dignity rather than keep me warm.
My helmet was smashed into three distinct pieces, my ribs were fractured, and skin had been ripped from all over my body exposing flesh. One of my shoulders and one of my hips have never quite been the same due to multiple impacts with the road. That said, they do not prevent me from any physical activity. Some of the wounds inflicted by the accident continued to excrete small pieces of gravel nine months later. A colleague came to my home a week after the accident. I was laying face down on a mattress with a small towel covering my backside. “How do I look?” I asked. “Like you’ve been thrown out of a car going 90kmh“ he responded. I had three more cycling accidents that year before my wife made me promise I’d stop the racing and intense training that goes with it. I haven’t really raced, or taken her car in for a service since, besides, it’s her car.
Throughout Lincolne’s youth has was very conservative and careful. He’d tell me to slow down in the car, not throw him so high when playing and would decline to do anything if he thought he would get injured. Looking at him now, sitting in his powered chair, I feel enormous guilt, that it is him and not me that has suffered this affliction. In search of excitement and adventure, in order to feel the vitality of life, I have continued to lead myself into many dangerous situations. I deserve what Lincolne has, I am angry that God gave it to him when I deserved it. How could he possibly need this trial and have more to learn from it than I could. Helplessly I volunteer to trade places. I beg God to take my mobility instead. It is a guilt that won’t go away, as if Lincolne’s been afflicted to teach me a lesson. I wonder whether I may have done something differently in my life to avoid this.
Two weeks ago Lincolne arose with autonomic dysreflexia (AD). It was 8am and he had the worst headache of his life, like his head was going to explode. He had red blotchy marks across his chest and the nurses knew immediately what it was. A quick search and they discovered his catheter was blocked. The urine in his bag was dark and cloudy with some sediment. When the catheter was replaced 600ml of urine drained from his bladder, that’s more than its capacity. Tests were done and fortunately he did not have a unary tract infection (UTI). Also fortunate was how quickly the condition was responded to, AD is potentially fatal.
This was the second piece of bad news that week. Earlier in the week the wound in his hip, where bone was taken for the graft, had puss oozing and redness around it. It appeared to be infected so they subscribed antibiotics which, as it turns out, may also have assisted in the avoidance of a UTI. We were worried sick he may have had golden staph.
Another day, I duck out of the office to give him lunch. I can do the round trip from Epping to Ryde and back easily in about 50 minutes, including a half hour to feed him. But I arrive, and he’s scheduled to be taken back to the hospital for x-rays. It’s incredibly frustrating how impossible it is for us to plan. But for the first time we got to see the hardware in his neck, two titanium rods and eight titanium screws (see picture). During the doctors debrief he explains what the future holds. “How he is now, that’s how he’s going to be.” He sees our hurt and goes on to explain that additional movement ability is possible for up to two years, but unlikely. It was more than five hours later that I got back to the hospital. I didn’t get back to the office.
We also had a goal planning meeting. Lincolne set some lofty but achievable goals, some which require additional movement to achieve. The nurses, physios and occupational therapists glance sideways at each other. They are uncomfortable. They have decided he will be ready to leave rehab in three months time but they have not told us. To achieve some of the goals will take a year and a miracle, I know that. So they defer the long term goals and set some one month goals. I know what’s going on, they’re institutionalized, and the institution runs on stats, and the stats say that if after two months he can only move his shoulders and biceps, that’s all he’s going to move. Before we left hospital we were told the longer we stay in rehab the better, six to nine months is good, it means they have a lot to work with. But they only need three months to work shoulders and biceps. I’m torn to pieces, happy and excited he could be home in mid June, devastated by the reality that he can only move his shoulders and biceps, and angry the experts have decided our fate so soon.
His progress remains amazing, he now spends 15 minutes on the arm cycle unassisted, up from 11 seconds at the hospital. They also put him in a manual wheel chair for the first time. He can’t grab the rails so they put knobs on them that he can strike with his wrists. On his first run it took 4 minutes and 30 seconds to travel 10 meters. A week later it now takes him 1 minute and 23 seconds. The goal is to crack the minute by the end of the month. It’s hard work, as you will see from the video. This whole thing is very hard for all of us. But as a good friend keep reassuring – “you can do hard things!”
