I’ve been teaching my eight year old son to ride a bike and have been getting more adventurous, ie negligent.

Normally I ride about four metres behind him so I can keep an eye on him. Eight days ago I thought I’d try him out on a bit of a gradient (1 in 12), the bike path had shit parked on it so we were on the road. My son wasn’t applying his brake and was accelerating steadily and began screaming. It seemed to me he wasn’t going to remember the brake… I zipped up to be about a metre behind him and to his left to yelled “Use your brake! Stay calm! Use your brake!” I think by this point we were at about 20-25km/h. He turned left into me, our bikes locked up (his pedal into my front wheel, I suspect) and I flipped over the handlebars right onto my face and left arm.

I think I was out of it or possibly just in shock or something because when I next became aware of my surroundings there were six people around me, taking care of my son, calling the ambulance, asking reasonable questions, shielding me from traffic (since I was still on the road and they didn’t want to move me.) I think I said something like “fuck, stupid, fuck, stupid.” My son seemed okay but crying. I was dazed as fuck, but I worked out that my arm was broken and bone was exposed, that I was in a huge pool of blood, and that bits of my teeth were on the road and I pocketed them for some reason. Some nice bystander said she’d take care of the bikes and told me her address. St Johns arrived and did an efficient job of assessment and loading us into the ambulance, I phoned my wife to tell her what was going on. At RPH they did a quick xray, wrapped the arm and determined it would need surgery, did repeated cognition tests (because of the head knock). My son had some scrapes on his fingers and knees.

I was put on fast and the following day went into surgery. I had never had any surgery before, nor for that matter a broken bone or been under a GA. I appreciated the RPH’s multiply redundant systems for identifying me and ensuring I got the right procedure. Ulna and radius were both broken and pierced skin: the procedure was to realign them, screw four stainless steel plates onto them and clean up the puncture. I was under for about 3 hours. They put on a plaster cast which wraps around about 180 degrees of arm if you see what I mean, which is then bandaged over. They kept me in an extra day to keep an eye out for infection. Released me on the Tuesday with a big course of AIs, ABs and painkillers with a plan to replace the cast with a light fibreglass one in 18 days’ time.

I presented again on Thursday because my upper arm was quickly turning red with fresh bruising and my fingers didn’t appear well circulated. The unbound me and cleaned up the surgical wounds and bone puncture wounds (looks like Darth Vader’s head under there), and used the same cast but wrapped a bit less tightly, and it felt much better after that.

Apart from the left arm, I have two broken teeth, bruised and sprained right hand, scrapes on my lower face and on knees etc. I will be glad to get the heavy plaster of Paris cast off next week because it really is a pain and prevents me from using my left hand for anything much. It’s pretty tricky to put on socks or open jars or carry anything, and of course keyboard work is one handed.

But lots to be thankful for. I live in Australia so I won’t be handed a five digit bill for all this. The St Johns staff and RPH staff were excellent in every way. I had my helmet on so I didn’t suffer a serious head injury or break my nose or even my glasses. My son is well. It was my LEFT arm.

The bike is fucked, though.