Colin F. Jones

~ Once Upon A Time ~
THE BIKER

We were working down south near the Town of Taree. We had pretty well secured our work area and tidied up and were ready to go home. The train home for the men would not be in until later that evening, but I had my Motor Bike with me so I did not need the train. It was still a working day, so I left someone in charge, because I had planned to head off early. The Easter holidays began on the morrow.

I loaded my bike up, (a Yamaha 900) and started out about 9am. It was about a five to six hour trip depending on the traffic, which would be more than usual due to the holidays.

I did not get very far.

A bloke on a Honda, going too fast crossed the centre line, and because he couldn’t ride for shit, failed to shove the right bar down, failed to lay his bike down, all sorts of mistakes I saw in the one second, before he took me out. All I could do was stand my bike up mid bend and hope that he missed. But he hit directly into my right handlebar, ripping it off, smashing my arm, breaking bones in my foot, and causing me to sail through the air in a state of shock ready to meet my death.

The bike somersaulted down the road, his bike somersaulted, up the road, and I winged my way over the embankment missing all the nice round grey gum trees that formed the forest and landed on my back somewhere down below. The other bloke followed his bike up the road with a compound fracture to his left arm.

But because he was in the Army he was whizzed away quickly and I was never able to thank him for being such a bloody idiot.
After about twenty minutes the ambulance arrived and I was whipped off to the hospital.

I had shattered my right radius, about 4 inches from my wrist and fractured my little finger, that stuck out “like a chapel hat peg” as my mother used to say. I had also fractured my right foot (the instep) my off road plastic boots had done a good job protecting my leg, and my left wrist, well an important bone in my thumb; it felt like my wrist,
And generally I had bits and pieces all over the place giving me a hard time.

My arm was very badly broken and bloody painful. They failed to discover my busted right thumb, and criticized me when I complained. After the given time, I think six weeks or so my arm was still acting as though it was made from rubber, and the Indian doctor, an Indian Indian, not an American Indian, discovered that no one had told me to wriggle my fingers in the plaster cast, so they had become completely stiff, and locked into a half grip position.

I had a plaster cast on my leg also so I looked a bit comical.

My broken radius had failed to heal so I had a second cast put on but this did not allow enough room for me to move my fingers that would not move anyway. So they designed a cast (I had to suggest it) that I could take off and put back on, damned if I can recall what it was made from; I know it was waterproof, and looked like netting. Now the broken arm was very, very painful, and was not healing, but let me tell you getting my fingers to work, one at a time was the most difficult thing I think I had ever had to do. The pain was excruciating to say the least, and it took weeks to get them to move even a little.

All the while this was going on they were massaging my arm wrist and hand, and because I complained of the pain, they wrote in the letter for the doctor at Kyogle where I lived and after I had finally insisted that I was getting out of the place, that I had a low pain threshold. My arm was still fractured; it had failed to mend and they were massaging it, and because I complained I had a low pain threshold!

There is a great deal more about this hospital that was not right. The way they treated some of the stroke victims in rehabilitation was appalling. They needed a spokesman, and guess who took on that role.
But I could not stay there forever and some of those poor buggers cried when I left. That ward reminded me of the Gestapo wards I’d seen on the movies. The nurses were harder than an ironbark gum tree.

When I got home to my dear worried wife I went over to the doctor there, still with the split cast on my arm, and ordinary cast on my leg. He sent me to a specialist who couldn’t believe that I was running around with a broken arm that had not healed, now months later. My doctor found the broken thumb and put it in a cast for couple of weeks. It healed over time.

The specialist decided to do a bone graft, so bone was shaved of my right hip to graft the bone; my right radius. This did not work, either, so I had a new cast made; in fact I had a couple more before the specialist decided that he would need to cut a piece out of my good bone, the ulna to shorten it, so that the relocated bones and joints of my wrist, (that they had previously been massaging) could be pulled back into position. So this was done and more bone was shaved of my right hip to graft again. A plate was then screwed into place at my wrist to hold it all together. The plate is still there, I have never bothered to have it removed.

He was very pleased with my progress. I was supposed to try turning door knobs to strengthen my wrist, but what I was doing was riding my off Road Honda XR 250, all around the hills through the local forests. I was having physio on my foot, and the split cast I was wearing again gave me some flexibility to use my arm for the bike. In fact it was the best exercise for my still painful fingers turning the throttle up and down. My hand unfortunately is not straight with my arm anymore and I embarrass people sometimes when they hand me change for something and without thinking I extend my right hand, and the money falls on the floor.

My arm is still very sensitive after twenty years, but mostly I have forgotten about it, until I bump it that is. Since then I have owned lots of bikes on and off road, and have not met the same fate again. I don’t own one anymore, but I wish I did, because I would still like to go for a ride. I took Karen on our honeymoon on the back of the FJ 900 not long before my accident. She would never climb on one again. I left my job of 15 years soon after, and set up my own little market garden. But with the combination of PTSD, Diabetes and my useless arm, I found this impossible to continue.

I was saved by being granted a TPI pension after several years of trying. Such is life.

©Copyright May 7, 2008 by Colin F. Jones