Adventures in Concrete Biting

On one balmy Tuesday evening, I now understood why my childhood Danny O’ Day ventriloquist doll with the Edgar Bergen 33 LP to “Learn How to Be a Ventriloquist” would be of utmost importance. OR how sitting down with my dear friend Linda when we were kids with World Book Encyclopedia to teach ourselves sign language in order to outsmart and talk about our teachers right in front of them would come in handy. I would practice my ventriloquism skills on the neighborhood kids who admittedly were a great deal younger than me. I had them convinced Danny O’Day was my brother and he would “talk” to them and engage them with stories and jokes.

Fast forward to the present day and I’m with Lance (my now husband) riding bikes after an evening of our favorite local dive’s oysters, a couple of slim cigars and a nice evening of moon gazing. We’re returning home after a peaceful evening ride from downtown St. Petersburg FL and I’m peddling to the top of “Thrill Hill”. It’s just about the only “hill” in St. Pete, the kind in the road where your stomach does flip-flops when you drive over it quickly. As I rounded the top and started my descent, my 25-year-old old Raleigh hybrid bike starts to gain momentum as I make the snap decision that would change my life -- or at least my face!

I attempted to “jump” my bike up over the curb as I’d gained momentum down the hill vs. heading toward an oncoming car in the bike lane. I reasoned it was dark and cars tend to speed over this particular hill. Only my “recently-retired” Raleigh had other ideas. The old burgundy steel frame raced down the incline and I wasn’t fast enough to maneuver the curb. In reality there was a chunk missing from the curb that stopped my faithful bike dead at the curb and I went hurling into the air right over the handlebars.

I remember the thud as my jaw squarely hit the concrete first. I didn’t even have time to put my hands in front of me to break my fall. The wind was knocked out of me, and the pebble crunching going on in my mouth wasn’t rocks, it was my teeth! Lance immediately runs to my side and all I can scream through my now locked jaws is “Call 911!” A Good Samaritan was passing by stopped to help and blocked the oncoming cars and turned on his emergency flashers to keep people from running into us. Laid out on the sidewalk, I felt the warm concrete on my back from the heat of the day, even though it was not my friend. The ambulance arrives and they assess whether I’m lucid or not. Remarkably, I was not knocked out.

The EMT asks me if I had any allergies, and I replied, “Yes - bicycles and curbs.” At this point they determine I’m mentally alert after repeating my name and date of birth at least 3 times. They put me on a backboard and want to know just “how tall are you?” while the horrible red fire ants are chomping on my arms. (I’m crying hysterically from the pain and stop long enough to ask them to please get me out of those #%$ fire ants!)

I make the long 1-mile trek to the hospital in the ambulance while Lance is left on the roadside to contend with 2 bikes. Somehow he managed to get home, come back and picked up my gnarled bike at the scene of the incident and arrived at the emergency room in cracker-jack time.

After sitting in the emergency room a CT scan and a few X-rays later, it was determined that I had a dislocated and fractured jaw – actually the condyle joint where your jaw goes into your skull. Some of my teeth had fractures as well. I can’t close my mouth or open it up much either. They now were sewing up my chin that was the size of a baseball with 3 rows of stitches. I meet with my surgeon who now explains to me that the type of fracture that I have is very difficult and that I have to have surgery to align my jaw and allow the bone to heal. They will need to wire my jaw shut for the next 4 weeks after surgery. So now after 6 weeks of a juice fast that has left me feeling very healthy – I am now on a forced liquid diet! On a positive note, I was already acclimated to juicing.

After pondering life while lying there in my hospital bed, I’m back to Danny O’ Day and my self-taught ventriloquist training. I guess you learn everything for a reason and all this will come in handy in my next four weeks. So if I’m not as talkative or sound a little funny, you’ll know to blame it on Danny O’ Day!

The outcome: It took a while with two facial reconstruction surgeries and a complete artificial joint replacement, but I since have summoned the courage to get back on a bike. I've now graduated to at least another street hybrid and moving onward and upward. I definitely don't leave the house without a helmet!