In getting ready for my (trip of a lifetime) for Whistler I've been doing a lot of bikepark / DH recently. Things have been going pretty well, and my skills were getting back to around where they used to be a couple of years back when I was doing it more regularly.
On the 28th of May, I was back at Bikepark Wales trying some of the trails with bigger drops. I'd warmed up with a few blues before getting a bit more technical on a red and a black. These out of the way I'd planned to just mix in a few parts I'd not done before as well as try and session a few things I was less confident with.
I'd just come out of Hotstepper into Terry's Belly (a blue trail I've done numerous times before) when I lost concentration, came out of a berm badly and somehow washed out my front wheel. I came down hard on my right-hand side, hitting my head / shoulder, arm and hip. Thankfully due to body armour / full-face helmet my upper body was largely protected, my hip didn't do so well. I managed to get to my knees and realised fairly quickly that something wasn't right. Based on the bruise that my right forearm sustained, I'm pretty sure I'd have broken my arm were it not for the hard shell / D30 based pads.
Wasn't too long before a couple of riders turned up, and I asked them to help me to my feet to see if I could work out what I assumed were seized muscles. Not so much. I asked them to tell a staff member and to leave me leant up against my bike, where I'd stand on one leg until help arrived. Quite a bit of time passed, and I started to consider walking my way out, but after a few steps, I realised that I'd just be putting myself in more danger from other bikes arriving at speed.
After waiting a while I stopped another couple of riders, asking them to take my location and pass it to the staff. Significantly more time passes, and I'm starting to consider hopping out of there (still assuming muscle damage rather than anything more serious). Finally, two riders show up saying they've been asked to call the staff if they see me. Apparently, the first aider has gone to the rest area in the trail, much higher up the hill than I am. They take turns helping to hold me up until, around an hour after my initial crash, the first aider arrives.
Another age later, the trail is closed (I'm going to try and work out exact numbers from Strava). I'm still standing on one leg, with the first aider doing his best to take as much of my weight as possible. Shortly after that, the first paramedic arrives, I'm dosed on morphine, my armour is removed and I'm readied for a spinal board / pelvic brace. With the help of the fire service and their new six-wheeled toy, I'm brought down off the hill and placed in the ambulance. By this point, it's about 1.5 hours from the crash.
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Things move reasonably quickly now. I'm at the Prince Charles hospital in Merthyr within about 20 mins and sent for an x-ray shortly after that. If you've ever suffered from a core injury, you'll know that's when the pain really begins. Some staff are better than others at moving patients into scanners, and thankfully these were great. As soon as I heard "the doctor will explain what has happened to you" I knew that it wasn't as simple as just damaged muscles. The doctor explained that it was multiple fractures to the hip socket, and stated that when people normally "break their hip", they actually break the ball end rather than the socket... with the socket being a much more complex recovery (typical). It was at this point I started to realise the long term impact of what I'd done.
After a CT scan (another excellent job moving me) I was moved back into a corridor and remained there until late that night. Around 10pm I was moved to a ward, where the assistants seemed to take great pleasure in throwing me into the bed. From this point on, most of the times I was moved / scanned it was agony, so I can only assume that something had shifted in my hip that hadn't previously.
Time passed fairly uneventfully at Merthyr. The food was actually quite good, and I must say that I found the valleys accent to be quite comforting. The initial local diagnosis was that I probably wouldn't need surgery, but they were waiting for Cardiff's specialist input... annoyingly, Cardiff was down a surgeon, and didn't get back to them in a timely manner. The next step was Swansea (where I'd rather not have gone), who were also too busy. Finally, Bristol agreed to have a look and decided that I would in fact need surgery. At this point even getting to Whistler on crutches was impossible, and without that small ray of hope, my mood took a pretty dark turn.
After four days in Merthyr I was transferred off to Bristol Southmead. A rather impressive looking modern hospital.
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Bristol didn't get off to a good start. The night doctor couldn't be bothered doing my handover, and by the time the nurse had angrily harangued the daytime doctor into doing his job, it had been 17 hours since I'd had any pain medication. I still need to work out if I should complain about this or not. I'm lucky in that I've got a pretty strong tolerance for pain but no-one should have to go through that.
Things got worse fairly quickly when they found a blood clot in my right leg. No way to know if it had happened during the accident or because of the bed rest since, but either way, things were about to get a whole ton more complicated. The next day I was taken down to Interventional Radiography to have a filter installed into my IVC (inferior vena cava), a large vein just below the heart. This is a particularly unpleasant procedure where they make a cut in your groin, feed a tube through that vein and then feed the filter through the tube. This is what the horrific thing they put in me looks like (thankfully I didn't google it beforehand!)...
The idea behind it is that if the surgery was to cause the clot to move, the filter would catch it, and rather than pulmonary embolism, I'd just have a really bad day.
Two days of scans, injections, and general poking and prodding and I'm off for surgery. Originally scheduled for 10:00 I was told at 08:30 that I was being taken down immediately. This upset me quite a bit, I'd never been put under for surgery before, and I really wanted to see my wife before going in. All I could manage was a quick phone call before being down in prep. Thankfully they didn't leave me waiting long, and the next thing I knew I was waking up to the doctor asking me questions to get the fentanyl dose dialled in. I must say, that's some seriously impressive stuff. It's the only painkiller I had whilst in hospital that made an immediate / significant difference to my pain levels. It's not hard to see why people get addicted to it.
The rest of the day after surgery passed fairly quickly, and having been put on a catheter there wasn't a lot for me to actually do (annoyingly they let my bag fill up at one point, which was quite uncomfortable). Next day I was asked to move around / get off the bed for physio and it was at this point I started to realise that something wasn't entirely right with where they'd operated. Pain was generally fine, but the wound felt extremely tight and each movement almost felt like it was ripping it. I tried some gentle stretches in the hope of loosening it up but it didn't seem to do much. After being manhandled for a scan this got even worse, and the swelling had started to become fairly extreme.
Some blood tests and (world endingly painful) poking and prodding from a doctor and I was asked if I gave permission to transfuse if necessary. I can't say this helped my anxiety levels much! Shortly after I was rushed for an emergency CT (the most painful part of the entire experience as they had to roll me onto my swollen side to move me) and shortly after that was told I'd need surgery the next morning to remove a large haematoma. Apparently closing me up hadn't quite gone as planned and I'd bled internally, which had dropped my blood pressure by a decent amount and left me feeling generally shitty.
We made sure not to make the same mistake the next morning, and my wife got in before visiting time officially started. This made going down for surgery a significantly less stressful experience, and I was back up with her in no time (this time with no need for extreme pain medication). The next day's physio was an entirely different experience to the first too, with them being surprised at just how well I could support myself on one leg etc.
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Sadly this wasn't quite the end of the setbacks. It seemed that being taken off the blood thinners for the surgery had caused the clot to grow slightly, which meant that my legs swelled alarmingly towards the end of the day. Some more poking and prodding from doctors and it was decided we'd just have to live with it as they couldn't risk increasing the dose whilst my surgical wound was healing. A couple of stressful days and I was put back on the full treatment dose of the thinners, which seemed to sort things out pretty quickly.
I managed to get in a small victory, in that I was able to both go to the bathroom without a helper. You'd be amazed how much the little things make a big difference to you when you're in that place.
Unfortunately, there was a little bit more drama to come. As had been the plan, the IVC filter they'd installed needed to be removed (via the jugular vein). However, what I thought was a scan to check it then turned out to be the removal procedure... and worse, they ended up leaving me waiting in a room for three hours beforehand, so the anxiety kicked in again in a big way.
They were pretty good about it in the theatre though, even putting on Queen for me to listen to.
This only helped for so long though, as the surgeon first managed to destroy his syringe by pressing too hard (spraying what I assumed was blood over my face) and then used the words you never, ever want from a surgeon "Uhh, that's not right. That's never happened before."Thankfully the incident with the syringe was just the tubing coming off (I've done this bleeding brakes!), and the liquid which exploded everywhere wasn't blood, it was contrast fluid. The second issue was slightly bigger. It seemed that although he thought he'd captured the filter in the retrieval sheath, when he went to pull it out, the hook at the top bent and he lost grip on it (turning it slightly in the process). I just about sh*t myself.
A tense period followed with him asking for various adjustments on the imaging etc, when he asked me to hold my breath again and thankfully he managed to hook it successfully. Having one of those left in you really isn't ideal, especially if you want to lead an active lifestyle.
That out of the way, it was time to start looking forward, and I got my first of many future small victories the next day, when I was able to wash and dress without assistance.
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If you've read up until this point... congratulations. You have far too much time on your hands!
I appreciate that people have been through far more than I went through there, but I can only speak to my own experience of it all. I guess it would have been fairly straightforward without the clot, but there you go.
As for life going forward, the real hard work is yet to come. I've been told that I definitely won't be cycling for at least nine months, probably more like a year. I can't drive for three months, and it'll be at least six weeks before I can put even partial weight on my right leg. On top of that, I'll now be on blood thinners for six months, and, dependent on testing, possibly the rest of my life. It'll probably be six months before I know if the surgery was enough of a success to allow me to cycle again... if not, I'll be looking at a full hip replacement instead.
I've just got back home. Still a long way from being well, but at least I'm going to get some sleep here. So much planning and organising to do, if nothing else so I can get back to work.
I've booked my first appointment with my regular physio and I'm eager to start finding / addressing my new weaknesses. Also going to try and find a coach to put together a weights regime I can do with no hip / little core involvement. Gotta stay sane somehow.
If nothing else, it's nice to be away from hospital food...
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TLDR: Smashed up my hip socket at Bikepark Wales (just before trip of a lifetime to Whistler).
Hospital didn't go smoothly at all, ended up with a blood clot on top of the injury which complicated things a bunch. Had a filter installed to stop the clot killing me. First surgery caused a haematoma, second surgery fixed it. Final procedure removed the filter, but they nearly lost it in the process.
Three months before I can drive again. 6 weeks before I can even put partial weight on my right leg. Probably 9-12 months until I can ride a bike again, if at all. If not, next step is a full hip replacement.
p.s. I've left out the constipation so severe that I nearly begged for an enema. I've also left out the pictures of my ruined meat and two veg (I think they forgot to move them from between my legs on the second surgery).
that's the Bearbones spirit, taking the 'stop being soft' to the extreme 
