I wanted to post this somewhere, and this thread seemed to be the most relevant of all, so here it goes (sorry it's so long, I tend to get carried away!):
My 18 year old daughter graduated from High School on June 5, had enlisted in the Nat. Guard and was leaving for basic training on June 6. She got to the intake center in Indianapolis (60 miles away) but they wouldn't take her because she was missing some medical paperwork from her doctor here at home. She called me at work, at about 8:30 am to tell me she was coming back home for the day, and asked me to call the doctor and get the necessary paperwork ready so she could pick it up. I asked her how she was getting home, and she said that "that" (her boyfriend) was coming to get her. I knew he rode a sport bike, but I didn't gripe at her, I figured she's 18...
So at 12:30 she called me again, from our house, asking where some things were of hers. I told her, and she said, "me and that are coming to town, we'll stop by and see you before he takes me back to Indy." Ok, no big deal to me.
At 1:45, I was sitting in my office, and three teenage girls came in, none of whom I knew. They said "are you that's mother?" I said, "Yes?" Their spokesgirl said, "We need to talk to you." I said, "well come in then!" I could tell they were nervous about something, but had no idea what could possibly be going on. Then she said, "that was just in a really bad motorcycle accident and they have lifelined (that's transported by med-copter) to Indy." I completely f-ing lost it. Around here, you don't get life-lined unless you're a breath away from death. We have two excellent hospitals in our town, so if they can't handle it..it's bad. All I could do was shake my head and scream, "No, no, no..." Then she dropped the hammer on me - "They had to bring her back to life twice before the helicopter got there."
Every mother's worst fear, coming true....I was hysterical. Sobbing, running around my office trying to get my brain to work, to figure out what to do first. I called my husband and tried to tell him, but I was so out of control he couldn't understand me, plus he thought my daughter was on a bus to Ft. Leonard Wood, MO - how the hell could she have been in a motorcycle wreck?? Finally I just screamed at him, "COME AND GET ME".
We drove my Chrysler mini-van to Indy and learned that it WILL indeed do 105mph. That was the absolutely longest 60 mile drive of my life, even though we made it in 45 minutes, through heavy traffic. Half way there, my daughter's friends called me on my cell phone and said "The hospital says if you want to see her alive you'd better get there soon." More hysteria. On the way down I called my mother and my son and a couple of my friends to let them know.
We got there and they took us into a private waiting room, and a chaplain from the hospital came and talked to us. She couldn't, or wouldn't tell us any medical details, she was just there for moral support. Finally a nurse came and got us and said we could come back to the ER to see her. I was terrified. What would she look like? Was half her face ripped off? I had no idea what to expect. Right as they pulled the curtain, the doctors were removing the breathing tube the emts had put in. My daughter was thrashing about on the bed and making the most god-awful sounds I've ever heard. They made us leave again, until they got the tube out.
Finally a doctor came and talked to us. She had an extremely serious closed-head injury and lots of road rash, but other than that, she was fine. He assured us she was not going to die. He explained to us that victims of these types of injuries become very combative and that we should expect to see more of it in the next few days. She spent 2 days in pediatric ICU, and they had her wrists and ankles tied to the bed, and a neck brace on her. They had to put a tube down her nose into her stomach because she was vomiting and they didn't want her to choke. She was unconscious for 24 hours, and when she woke up she could barely speak coherently for a couple of days.
All in all, she spent 5 days in the hospital, and had a month of physical and occupational therapy afterwards. She has a very serious memory problem now, and also has numbness in her left shoulder, arm and leg. The neurologists said she did some nerve damage to the left side of her neck, and it may or may not get better with time. The army gave her a 2 year deferral for her enlistment, but the neurologists said that most likely she will not be able to go. That is the only good thing to come of this - I did NOT want her to enlist in the first place, and I do believe she did it to spite me and prove a point.
The cause of the wreck? They were on the bike in town, headed south. A woman in a car ran a redlight on a side street heading east. She hit the car in the lane next to the bike, and then hit the bike. She had no insurance. From what I heard from the cops, the bike did a complete 360º end-over-end flip, and my daughter was thrown and landed under the car that hit them. No helmet, of course, and wearing a tank top. Luckily she was wearing jeans. When I spoke with the cop who was in charge of the investigation, he was genuinely surprised to hear that my daughter was ok. He had her marked for dead. In fact, on the police report, they indicated "fatal injury" next to her name.
And, what happened to the woman who hit them, who had no insurance, and who was at fault for totalling three vehicles? She got a ticket for disgregarding an automatic signal.
Before this happened, I really had no interest in bikes, other than to admire them from afar. I thought they were beautiful machines, but didn't really see the big attraction. But after my daughter's wreck, something changed inside me. I can't explain it. Kind of like someone else mentioned in this thread, "the hair of the dog". Even though it wasn't me in the wreck, it was a part of me, and my life was hell for those first few days. I decided I was going to find out what bikes were all about. I know that sounds pretty childish or stupid, but it's something I needed, or had to do. It really made my husband happy - he's been talking about getting a bike for years and I always just rolled my eyes at him
I do wear a helmet, a 3/4 with a face shield. When I'm riding and I look down at the pavement below me, I think to myself, "holy Sh*t that would hurt..." Hopefully I'll never find out.
