The man on the bike

I was in a horrible accident about two and a half months ago which ended up putting me in the ER, ICU, hospital and rehab. The cause – though hard to believe – was a man on his bicycle running me down and giving me cuts and bruises on my body and a cracked head and brain bleed. The bottom line is that I’ve recovered almost completely with no residual after effects. I’m doing everything I used to do before the accident.

What I’m trying to do now is write about the details of the accident. I’ve written six pages, but I only plan to share the first two pages here today. Please comment after you’ve read it. I’d love your feedback.  With huge thanks.

The Man on the Bike

On Saturday, September 24, 2022, at about nine-thirty in the morning, I was walking back to my apartment in Playa Vista as usual. I had just about finished my daily ten thousand step walk and was ready to cross at Bluff Creek Drive and Westlawn, a corner I crossed every day, so I could reach my apartment entrance on Westlawn. I pressed the crossing button and waited for the light to give me the little walking man sign.

Though the details of what happened next are very unclear to me, the man who reported the accident said he slammed on his brakes to avoid hitting me and flipped over the front of his bike and landed on top of me, all six feet and one hundred ninety pounds of him. Paramedics, police, and fire department people arrived at the scene, and the biker and a woman on the scene filed police reports.

I found myself in the Cedars Sinai emergency room in Marina del Rey and later that day ambulanced to the Cedars Sinai hospital, but my mind has lost all but a few of the details of what happened to me as I prepared to cross the street.  The tiny memories: I think I remember seeing a man sitting on his bike on Bluff Creek back from the crosswalk, I think I remember seeing the paramedics vehicles, and when they got me to the ER, I think I remember the paramedics taking off the five bracelets I always wore on my left wrist and putting them into the little over the shoulder purse I wear when I go walking. That’s it. By that time my son Ben was with me in the ER, and he stayed with me the rest of that day and overnight though I don’t know if we were in the ER or transferred to the hospital that same evening. One of the first things he said to me when I gained consciousness was that he had never seen so much blood. It was mainly from my wounded skull and the blood caked on my head and in my hair. Luckily, I didn’t break any other bones in my body.

There is a short explanation about what happened to me but the aftereffects were much more complicated. To put it simply, I was run over by a man on his bike. He claimed he had a green light and of course I knew he didn’t because I cross that street every day at around the same time, and I have never crossed that street until the green walk sign was on.

I must have been knocked unconscious because I don’t remember much when or after that happened. I might have seen the biker sitting on his bike afterward as the paramedics were putting me into the ambulance and taking me to the emergency room. He looked to be dark skinned and silent as they took me away. I also don’t remember being in the ER. However, it was where I was treated for heaving bruising, large sores on my hands, arms and head, and X rays and a CT scan were taken.

Then toward the end of the day, an ER nurse told us that the radiologist was concerned about my CT scan, as it showed that a bone in the back of my head had been broken and I had a slight bleed in my brain. For this reason they transferred me by ambulance to the Neuro ICU at Cedars Sinai main hospital near Third Street in West Hollywood the day of the accident and where I stayed until September 27.   I remembered that ambulance ride and how bumpy it was.

I stayed in the ICU for two nights, where I had round the clock monitoring for my head injury. Nurses came in every couple hours to wake me, ask me questions, shine a light in my eyes, and check my vitals. So I didn’t sleep much. I was on an IV and was also occasionally given anti seizure medication necessary for the kind of a head injury I had. I received insulin to lower my blood sugar. They also gave me Tylenol for the almost constant headaches I was experiencing but nothing stronger because of fear of more head bleeding.

After 48 hours in the ICU, I had improved to the point that they transferred me to a regular room. My son thought I began to seem like myself again. My hearing was better, and I was much more lucid. But they were still waking me up throughout the night to monitor me and still giving me the bad tasting food to try and swallow down. No wonder I lost eight pounds while I was hospitalized.

More to follow….