Someone hurt himself real bad........

[Spot]

Link from OCAU

http://forums.overclockers.com.au/sh...d.php?t=469426

[TerraMex]

http://forums.procooling.com/vbb/sho...645#post157645

[Cathar]

Pah, a mere insect bite!

Actually my rate of healing is surprising me, and I am wholly convinced that I owe it all totally to the excellent orthopeadic surgeon and his team who reassembled my shoulder. Am off all the strong pain-killers now, and only take the occasional ibuprofen whenever my broken ribs give me some grief, and even they are healing quickly. One rib in particular seems to be taking its sweet time before ceasing its pain inducement though. If not for that rib I could say that I'd be in almost no pain at all. Then again, it has been only 12 days since the accident, so given another week it should quit bugging me so much.

Strength has already started to return to my left shoulder. Still weak as a kitten though. Am able to lift the arm with a lot of effort so long as I keep it close to my body (i.e. can touch my head with it, but I can't reach out and grab anything with it). At least it's no longer a lifeless lump attached to my body. Very disconcerting when you take the ability to move your limbs for granted, and then one day you find that you can't, no matter what your brain is trying to tell your body to do. Certainly has opened my eyes just that little bit wider about how much I, and I would guess most everyone, takes the ability to control their body for granted.

It's certainly been a learning experience. My wife has been incredibly patient with her fool of a husband. I don't know what I'd have done without her. Just started being able to do a bit of careful rough-house play with my little girls again, bringing a huge smile back to everyone's faces.

Things are looking up, and I'm hoping to be mostly back up and running within 4 weeks from now, just with some degree of ongoing strength building required after that once the bones and muscles have knitted again properly and I can start to exercise them more vigorously, rather than the cautious stretching and limited movements which I'm presently limiting myself to.

Cheers.

[Spot]

TerraMex:
I missed that thread.

Stew:
You sound good. Glad you're getting well.

[Brians256]

What is this stuff about "going private" for healthcare? Does Australia have two systems of healthcare? One for people with good jobs and one for the rest?

If so, it sounds like the tax paid healthcare system sucks. Send you home with sling after fracturing most of the bones in your shoulder and having bone fragments all over, eh? Riiiiight. Now, this is why I'm afraid of govt run healthcare.

BTW, not trying to hijaack Stew's thread for politics. Just REALLY glad he had private insurance.

[Cathar]

Brian, it's a little complicated in practise, even though in theory it sounds simple.

Australia has a free health care system, being Medicare, which is open to all people inside Australia, including international visitors I believe. Technically you never have to pay if you find yourself in hospital for whatever reason here. Medicare is paid for by the public taxation system, and 1.5% of everyone's income gets taxed to pay for it.

Where it gets sticky is that this has naturally created an overload on the health-care system. The system basically works, but it has "cracks", and these present themselves in the form of surgery that is not deemed life-threatingly critical (and we can be talking about some pretty nasty stuff wrong with you that's causing you crap loads of pain and wrecking your life, but not "killing" you), then there's waiting lists to get treated by various public practitioners, and those waiting lists can range from days to months, depending upon how overloaded the staff/surgeons are.

In order to alleviate the burden on the public healthcare system, the government in its wisdom has also opted to provide financial incentives for wealthier people to have private health insurance. This is done by charging wealthy people who earn more than a certain annual income a 2.5% medicare levy (instead of 1.5%), but then providing discounts on that 2.5% levy if the individual has private health insurance.

Of course, now why would anyone pay for private health insurance when the public system is meant to be the free-for-all health service? The answer is of course mired in political skullduggery, and in practise invoking your private health insurance policy basically means that you get service, pronto. You get to shop around, find a surgeon who can work on you immediately, your insurance fund pays him a large sum of money, and he fixes you up with all due haste. The surgeon doesn't have to be a private specialist though, the surgeon can also be a regular public health service surgeon, but since they're provide a drop-of-the-hat premium service, you typically get bumped up the waiting lists because the hospital that employs the surgeon wants those tasty private health fund dollars, rather than losing your case to some privately run hospital that only caters to private health insurance scenarios.

Just to throw an additional spanner in the works here, road accidents are all no-fault in Australia, and automatically covered by a government run private health fund which gets paid for out of your annual car registration costs. If you have a road accident, even if you're a pedestrian, you're automatically covered by this private health fund and typically get a premium service, with the caveat that this government health fund is full of political red tape and can at its discretion decide to apportion blame (so much for no-fault huh?) and limit the amount of coverage which it is willing to provide.

My accident occurred on a race-track though, not a public road, so this govt. road accident insurance scheme didn't apply to me at all, so I had to fall back onto my regular private health insurance in order to give some additional weight to my words when I said that I wanted to be fixed in the best way possible, as soon as possible.

Had I stayed public, and complained loudly enough and strongly enough, they probably would've operated on me anyway, but it likely would not have been as high of a priority for them and they probably would've kept me in hospital for at least two weeks, seeing whether or not things would've improved without surgery before finally committing to doing it anyway.

So you see, it is free health coverage for all, but as much as the government would like to shy away from the reality of it, it really has created a system where money talks when it comes to getting you treated promptly and as well as possible in a guaranteed sense. There are essentially two classes of hospital service. The public class isn't too bad (but it does have some horrible flaws in certain areas), and then there's the private class, which is what you really want to have if something goes wrong with you.

From my experience of living in the USA, it didn't seem to be all that much different there.

[TerraMex]

Just to say that here isn't much different either. You have access to public health care, but usually the private system gets you fixed asap.

[Ice Czar]

hope you fully recover

at a race track eh?
when I started to read this and the linked thread I was thinking motorcycle
(having sustained similar but less serious injuries in a high speed lowside)
till I got to the 7' fall part

but now my curiosity is even keener if that's possible

whatecer it was I'm glad to hear your healing quickly.

edit > found the highside, I hate highsiding, luckily Ive never done a high speed one
still reading it but 7' would be quite a launch ouch

7 feet launch at 90mph, yup that would do it
glad to hear you didn't fetch up against anything in addition and the track ambulance got you quick
take care and mend fast

[HammerSandwich]

Cathar, glad to hear your recovery is going well. Good luck!

[dsptech]

at a race track eh?
when I started to read this and the linked thread I was thinking motorcycle
(having sustained similar but less serious injuries in a high speed lowside)
till I got to the 7' fall part

but now my curiosity is even keener if that's possible

C'mon guys what sort of activites could result in a 7' fall?
You know how them Aussies are.
It's obvious Stew has (or had anyways) become cought up in that "Backyard Wrestling" craze.
Time to give that business up, it's not good for you.

[UberBlue]

Damn dude...

Any "I told you so" from the Mrs?

[Cathar]

Originally Posted by UberBlue

Damn dude...

Any "I told you so" from the Mrs?

No. While I was waiting for the surgery, she had already rung around and researched replacement parts from wreckers, frame straightening services as required, called Yamaha to get quotes on parts that may need to be replaced new, and contacted my usual service guys to get information on how best to get the bike back up and running, and documented it all for me.

*sniffle*

Then, 4 days after I got home, she gave me a good ear bashing for inconveniencing her from attending her work 'cos I'm unable to look after our 2yo by myself in my present condition while she goes off to part-time work, but once she got that beef out of her system.

She just shakes her head, she knows that I know that I've screwed up and am suffering more than enough pain for it. She's a great woman, one that truly understands that a relationship is not about killing their partner's passions. I'm the same with her. We're just like two very good friends. She's very fiery, I'm very diplomatic. I call her my bull terrier 'cos she we she bites on some issue that pisses her off, it's like a death grip. To her, I'm the water to her fire, the one who can keep her from going off the deep end when necessary.

I love her to bits.

[UberBlue]

Sounds like you're a lucky man in more ways than one then.

[TerraMex]

And now, something ontopic :

http://www.impactlab.com/modules.php...rder=0&thold=0

looks interesting.

[Ice Czar]

interesting
body armour for the spine has been around quite awhile
and personally I wouldnt still be walking and talking without a helmet and body armour

but an airbag for my neck might cramp my "style" during a crash
I took seven years of advanced bouncing studies with the local hockey league
sort of hardwired to my brain, sometimes it helps sometimes not.

[Cathar]

I had spinal body armour on, including chest armour, kindey belt/padding, and high impact padding for the shoulders. The spinal section of the body armor has honeycombed aluminium crush/crumple zones, as well as padding and a hard plastic articulated shell.

The surgeons and nurses said that if it wasn't for all the body armour I was wearing, I would have likely also been suffering from vertebra damage as well as internal organ bleeding. Fortunately, none of that. I just whacked my shoulder real good at the worse possible angle into the bitumen with all of my 95kgs of weight dropping from a heigh of about 2m onto it. Sure, all the armour, crush zones, and padding definitely helped to prevent even more damage, but this was just one of those freak "if you fall just this certain way, bad stuff happens..." sort of deals.

They were concerned for my neck too for a while there. Lots of XRays and CT scans of the neck region. Anything that helps protect the neck from being wrenched around, such as if landing head first, would be of great benefit. I don't think that there is too much else that I could've been wearing to prevent the damage that occurred.

Stopped taking ibuprofen. I wasn't taking that many (4/day), but sure enough as Marci said, I've been developing stomach pains that weren't there before. Stopped taking them and the stomach pain seem to be subsiding. Just back to the good old super-strength Mersyndol's now. I was trying to avoid taking them 'cos they make me sleepy.

About to move about now a lot more without bad pain. Able to bend over now, and even able to lie on my side again, albeit with some rib pain. Presently it's still my collar bone where it meets the shoulder that gives me the most grief when attempting to move my left arm about, and where the broken ribs meet the spine causes pain there if I stand up for more than a few minutes. Still no real strength in the left shoulder at all. Slowly gaining limited strength and movement, but am still unable to move the left arm via the shoulder joint under its own power more than very restricted amounts.

Every day now it seems like I'm able to do just a little bit more, and get by with longer and longer times between taking pain-killers. Still very tired and very sore though, no mistake about it, but definitely improving.

[Ice Czar]

yeh those painkillers can sometimes be far worse than the pain,
of course thats relative, Ive seriously compounded injuries while doped up
and generally work on the premise that if it really hurts to move it
I shouldnt do that

had to look up Mersyndol, never had that one

suffering any pain of the cartilage at the sternum?
That always seemed to take longer to heal than the actual busted ribs

[Cathar]

Scar time! 5.5" long.

7 titanium screws and a stainless metal plate about 3" x 1/2". Wonder if it'll set off airport metal detectors?

[Ice Czar]

nice mirror work there

I pretty sure your guranteed to set off security alarms everywhere you go.
But look on the bright side, if your ever incerated to ashes,
its likely they'll be able to ID the remains from the serial numbers

titanium, hmmm....
now we just need to get you fitted with some magnesium covers
and a carbon fibre fairing

[TerraMex]

Setting off metal detectors...
Tell them it's your special power.
"I'm like, wolverine. You know, like Jackman. He's aussie too."

[bigben2k]

Yeah, the SS plate will.

[bobkoure]

Cathar - yowch! Guess I've beern much too busy to have only heard about this now. Best wishes on your recovery! I'm amazed at your positive attitude - way to go. I've never hurt myself this badly and can only hope that I can handle myself half as well as you

From your comments, I'm guessing that you had a "highside" (also known as "the flying 'W' " by 'stateside dirt riders). Glad you were wearing all that protective gear.
For non-motorcyclists, what happens is that you lose traction, the bike gets out of line, then, if your tires "hook up" again, the entire bike works like a lever (fulcrum at the pavement/tire junction) to flip over, pitching you off and (usually) a bit upwards. Same thing can happen in the dirt if you're sliding (normal state) and hit a berm wrong - only you're going a lot slower.