Broken Collar Bone Recovery Update

The last update I posted mentioned my crash, and immediately after that I was completely out of action. Two weeks later and I can type again – slowly. Fortunately I figured out I can use a dictation tool to massively speed up my ‘typing’. Hence, this post is quite long… because I spoke most of it.

For the intrigued, here’s what happened.

I was coming down a shared path—one that’s meant for both pedestrians and cyclists.

To be honest, in the 30 or 40 times I’ve ridden that track, I’ve rarely, if ever, seen pedestrians on it.

But on that particular day, two carers were coming towards me, each pushing a wheelchair.

I spotted them from quite a distance—pretty much right as I turned onto the path. The path itself runs alongside a fast road, one side is double laned, the other is single but people bomb it down there as it goes towards an industrial estate, so there’s usually not much foot traffic, mostly just cars in the nearby road.

As I approached, I noticed that the two carers were moving quite slowly. I had a good few hundred metres to assess the situation, but they didn’t shift at all and were completely blocking the path.

When I got closer, I saw a minuscule gap to their left—maybe a foot wide at best. It was technically enough to squeeze through, but it was going to be a tight fit, to say the least.

You can sort of see the line on the path – not sure what that line indicates, but the carers were to the left of it, leaving the ‘gap’ between the white line and the curb.

Of course, I made the decision to go for it.

The obvious, sensible thing would have been to brake, come to a complete stop, and let them pass.

But I was impatient. It was entirely my fault, and I fully accept that.

What made it all the more unfortunate was that just as I aimed for that narrow one-foot gap, the lady on the left stepped into it. She was tending to the person in the wheelchair she was pushing, which forced me into the road. At that point, I had no other choice. I was committed, so stopping wasn’t really an option without crashing into her / them, or veering into the road.

Neither was a ideal, but instinctively I dropped into the road.

As I hit the road, my front wheel was tight against the kerb, and oncoming traffic was now a factor. I couldn’t steer left because I would have put myself in front of oncoming cars, and with the road curving, I had to hope my wheel would hold its line along the kerb while avoiding the traffic.

That’s when I made a critical mistake: I tried to turn the wheel. In hindsight, it was bound to end badly, and sure enough, it did. I came off the bike about 10 feet after missing that gap, and as soon as I hit the ground, I knew straight away that my shoulder was broken.

Man Down

At this point, I was lying on the ground, twisted awkwardly because I was still clipped into the bike. The carer dawdled back over to me and, for some reason, started trying to pull the bike away from me. I was in absolute agony, shouting, “I’m clipped in! I’m clipped in! Stop!” But she didn’t seem to understand what I was saying.

Then, she attempted to sit me up, which was alarming on so many levels. Not only was it incredibly painful, but the way she was trying to lift me—by pulling on my arms—was downright terrifying. I remember thinking, You’re a ******* carer, yet here she was, making the situation much worse.

Some of my language was quite choice. But I did repeatedly apologise and reassure her it wasn’t her fault.

Somehow, I managed to convince her to try and unclip my feet from the bike. But as soon as I twisted my leg to demonstrate how to apply the torsion needed to unclip, the pain that shot through my body made it clear that it wasn’t going to happen. The shock was overwhelming, so I just had to give in.

She kept asking, “Are you okay?”

I responded that, “no, I’m not okay—I’ve definitely broken my shoulder,” or at least that’s what I thought it was at the time. It turned out to be my collarbone, but close enough.

Her response was, “Oh, okay… will you be all right?”

“No, I need an ambulance.”

She seemed surprised by that and said, “Oh, right. Okay, I’ll go ring one.”

Help In High-Vis

As she was walking away, two workmen in orange high-vis jackets suddenly appeared out of nowhere. I have no idea where they came from or where they were going, but they just showed up and started trying to help.

Fortunately, after the lady went off to call the ambulance, I was able to explain to one of the two guys how to release me from the bike. Instead of unclipping, I told him to unfasten my shoes so I could free my feet without needing to twist out of the pedals. Thankfully, he understood and managed to get the bike off me by undoing both shoes.

By this point, there were bits of my bike scattered all over the road, but the workmen gathered everything up and moved it to the side. They started talking to me, and I explained what had happened, though strangely, they hadn’t seen the crash. It must’ve been due to the bend in the road—since they were coming from the same direction as the carers, they were likely just out of sight when it all happened.

We talked briefly, as much as I could manage given the pain. I knew I wasn’t in immediate life-threatening danger—I’d checked that I could move my arms, lift my legs, breathe normally, and that my neck was fine. But even though I wasn’t critical, I was still in rough shape. I told them, “She’s ringing for an ambulance,” and when they looked at her, I could sense their doubt.

After about a minute or so, the lady returned and said she had rung for an ambulance.

She then asked, “Do you need anything else from me?” I asked that she stay with me until the ambulance comes.

Somewhat unexpectedly, she responded, “Oh, well, we’re going to go if that’s okay,” as if it was no big deal.

Thankfully, the two workmen spoke up and said, “It’s all right, you go ahead. We’ll stay with him.”

That’s a blurry picture from later in the day where I was led in hospital. It’s a pretty good representation of my vision after the morphine.

Call Your Own Damn Ambulance

The carers ambled away slowly, and I watched them go, feeling very relieved I was being left with the workmen over them two.

Once they were out of earshot, I started explaining to the guys what had happened—how she had tried to pull me up and all the rest of it. One of them said, “We don’t think she actually called the ambulance.”

Freaking out, I decided to call the ambulance myself. I tried to reach into my back pocket for my phone but quickly realised I couldn’t manage it. One of the guys helped me out, though it took a bit of fiddling around in my jersey pockets—it’s not easy if you’re not used to them.

When he finally pulled out my phone, I was amazed it wasn’t broken. I had fallen flat on my back, and yet the iPhone survived. It’s crazy when I think about how my iPad got broken in a rucksack whilst on holiday from far less impact. I’ll never understand how that works.

I called the ambulance myself, explaining to the operator where I was and what had happened.

After I’d given all the necessary information, I mentioned that a carer had called an ambulance earlier, and asked if any call had been logged. The operator replied, “No, no one’s logged an ambulance call.” I couldn’t believe it—the carer had literally just left me there. I wouldn’t say she left me for dead, but I certainly wasn’t in a good spot.

Thank goodness for those two guys who stayed with me. Whoever they are, I’m incredibly grateful.

Lie And Wait

After that, all I could do was wait for the ambulance. I started to feel really cold. I called my wife to explain what was happening. Fortunately, my brother lives nearby, so I rang him as well, asking him to come and collect my bike and bring a blanket because I was really starting to shiver. Even though the ride I’d been on wasn’t particularly intense—it was supposed to be a recovery ride—I had still worked up a sweat. Once the adrenaline wore off, the combination of sweaty clothes and the cooling temperature really started to get to me.

The ambulance arrived about 20 minutes later, and, as luck would have it, my wife, my brother, and the ambulance all showed up at exactly the same time.

I think the picture above comes from when I was led in hospital – the drugs did a number on me so it’s all a bit of a blur. The notch on my shoulder is the damage… doesn’t look that bad in that picture to be fair.

The paramedic did a full check on me while I was still on the ground, and that process was absolute agony. Once I was cleared to move, getting into the ambulance was extremely difficult, but with their help, I managed. My brother had taken care of my bike, and my wife had brought a bag with clothes and food and stuff, knowing I’d be heading to hospital. Thankfully, I had my water bottle and a few other essentials from my bike, so I was relatively set for the trip.

They gave me gas and something stronger to manage the pain, and the paramedics ran a series of checks on me while we were still roadside. They had to cut my clothes off. I managed to save my bib shorts and jersey, pain be damned, though I lost my base layer. All told, I was probably at the scene for about an hour from the time of the crash to when the ambulance finally left.

Off To Hospital

When we arrived at the hospital, I ended up waiting in the ambulance for about another hour—maybe even longer—just waiting to be admitted. I don’t know exactly which department we were headed for; it wasn’t quite the main Accident & Emergency unit, but some part of the A&E, I’m not entirely sure.

After arriving at the hospital, I ended up being there for about eight hours, going through x-rays, talking to doctors, and getting assessed. It wasn’t a fun time, but the staff were absolutely brilliant and I am extremely grateful for all their help.

Whilst I was led in the hospital bed I checked the Garmin app out of curiosity, to try and see if I could see how fast I was travelling when I crashed. Lots of people at the hospital asked me this. I couldn’t get the stats because the ride hadn’t synced. All I saw was this warning screen – and my wife assured me it had not called her during the emergency 🙄

When I finally got home, things took a turn for the worse—I fainted and collapsed onto my injured arm, which certainly didn’t help matters.

Since then, I’ve been pretty much out of action. The crash happened on a Thursday, and I took time off work. Believe it or not, I actually went back the following Monday because I was so bored. Aside from the injury, my brain was perfectly fine, and sitting around doing nothing was driving me crazy.

That said, I’ve been hobbling around ever since. Slowly improving, but still very much hobbling. My back is extremely sore, and on top of everything, I’ve managed to pull all my stomach muscles from relying so heavily on them to move without using my back. So yeah, it’s been far from fun.

Now, about two weeks later, I’ve managed to wean myself off the stronger painkillers. They were dehydrating me, and I kept waking up with terrible headaches. Plus, there was a part of me that was worried about getting hooked on the opiates in them. Maybe that’s a bit dramatic, but I didn’t like the idea of it.

Looking ahead, it’s probably going to be another four weeks or so before I can even think about getting back on the bike. Right now, I can’t imagine lifting my leg high enough to get over the bar, let alone leaning forward comfortably. Realistically, it’s going to be a lot of time on the turbo trainer. And to be honest, that’s probably for the best—there’s a lot of anxiety around me getting back out on the road, and I can’t blame anyone for feeling that way.

So, what’s the takeaway from all this? If I had to sum it up: for God’s sake, just have a little patience. A little patience would’ve saved me a lot of pain.

One thing I want to add before wrapping up is that I’m not writing this for sympathy—please don’t think that’s the reason behind it. I’m not looking for that at all. Like everything else I’ve done on the bike, I thought it would be a good idea to capture what happened and reflect on how I could have done things differently. Hopefully, if this post saves even one person from going through the same pain, then it’s been worth it.

Thanks for reading.