On the 23rd of July Scott was out riding his motocross bike and took a fall and broke his humerous bone - the large bone in his upper right arm. He was on a warm-up lap waiting for a few buddies to arrive and looked away for a moment and didn't quite make a turn. Normally, this would have been no big deal. He was going 10 miles an hour and has fallen plenty of times. This fall, however, was different. The weight of his bike, and his body, all focused on one bone falling on one perfectly placed rock meant his first broken bone. Well actually, his first broken bone was a few weeks before - a small stress fracture in his foot - but we won't count that.
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| Love his left handed signature |
So, he's laying there and tried to reach up with his right arm to lift the bike off him and realizes "oh darn" (maybe something more strong but we'll edit here) "my arm is not moving." He said it was like a big piece of meat just hanging off. Gross and very disconcerting.
He got out from under the bike and cradled his arm and started to walk back to the parking lot. After a mile or more of walking (in 100 degree weather with his helmet and goggles still on) he came to the vehicles where a few other riders saw him and could tell he was hurt. They retrieved his bike, loaded it into his truck, and drove him and his truck to Lakeview Hospital in Bountiful. Thank goodness for brothers in the motocross community!
I was unfortunately swimming at the pool that evening with the neighbor and didn't have my phone handy. I always have my phone handy. Scott laments at how handy my phone always is. Until today.
After some time at the ER in Bountiful, they decided that he should be transferred to the University Hospital. Since I was unavailable (now at Leatherby's with the neighbor and our kids with my phone, of course, still in the car) he caught a ride in an ambulance.
I received a call from him (his 8th) almost the minute I walked into the house. After telling him we had just gotten home from swimming I asked where he was. He said "in an ambulance on the way to the U Hospital". What!!!??? I dropped Maddy at my mom's for the night and drove up to be with him in the ER.
By the time I arrived it was around 10pm. They did a bunch of x-rays and told him that they would try to reduce the fracture (set the bone) and then splint the arm and check with more x-rays. If the bones were relatively straight (angles no more than 20% and 30% off ) then they could allow the bone to heal on its own in a split. They sent me out of the room and brought in three big guys to hold Scott down while three doctors cranked on his arm. Even with the drugs he said it was excruciating. They told me that I was going to leave because there were too many people in the room - I suspect it was because they didn't want me to witness them making him yell out. They set it twice and finally got it to a place they thought acceptable. They splinted him up and sent him back to radiology. The angles were 7% out of 20% and 19% out of 30% - within acceptable limits. The plan was to wait for the surgeon Dr. Kubiak to see the x-rays in the morning and decide whether to let this heal as it was, or to do surgery. Scott was in pain every time he moved. He could feel the bones moving around and sharp pains with each movement. His vote was for surgery!
At about 3am they moved us out of the ER and to a room in the care unit for the evening. They brought me some blankets and pillows and brought a CPAP for Scott and at 4am we tried to sleep. Tried.
At 6am the resident came back and told Scott that Doctor Kubiak, after looking at the films, decided that he should do surgery. They could either put a plate along the bones and screw them in, or a rod down the middle of the bones to hold them straight. He wouldn't decide until he got into Scott's arm and assessed the situation. We waited several hours and at about 2pm on the 24th I sent Scott along into surgery.
I took the opportunity to drive home and shower the chlorine out of my hair and grab some clothes for Scott (his shirt was cut off and his padded motorcycle pants were less than comfortable). I returned to the hospital just in time for Dr. Kubiak to come and tell me that the surgery went well, he put a plate on the bone and it would heal beautifully now and ever so straight.
He then said that he found something really interesting - something he'd never seen before. When the bone broke in two, the top half split up the middle slightly and allowed the nerve to get into the crevice. It then snapped shut with the nerve pinched inside. This explained why Scott was having trouble with his wrist and with numbness in his hand. He said that during surgery they had to pry the bone open to pull out the nerve. Good thing was the nerve was not cut, only crushed.
The Doc explained that had he not found this in surgery - had we allowed the bone to heal on its own - we would have been back in a month or two after the bone healed to a point where it actually severed the nerve. We would have been in surgery anyway to repair the nerve with a nerve graft which would most likely have had lasting problems.
Like me, Dr. Kubiak was thankful that we opted for the
surgery and that he was able to find the problem now.
After a few more hours of waiting, they took me to the room where Scott would recover and eventually they brought him in, loopy and acting silly because of the anesthesia. I was so happy to see him doing well. Anesthesia, in the past, has brought vomiting and migraines so silly-loopy was good. He had a big bandage from behind his shoulder all the way down to below his elbow. No cast or split, just a sling to support his arm and a brace they brought later for his wrist.
We stayed another night in the hospital and came home late in the afternoon two days after the accident.
It's now been two weeks and he still cannot lift his fingers or his wrist. When he got back to work he told me that he could depress the mouse but he couldn't actually lift the finger to "unclick" the mouse. We went back to see Dr. Kubiak this morning and he said that the pins and needles and electric shocks and hypersensitive skin was a great thing - it means that the nerve is coming back to itself. He agreed with my assessment that the full capacity of that nerve may not come back for up to a year. He did think that Scott needed some help with his wrist - something to make sure that the muscles and joints didn't atrophy as he waited for the nerve to come back. Off we went to the hand therapy clinic where they fabricated the coolest looking splint I have ever seen.
This splint holds each finger and his wrist up so they don't flop down. It has rubber bands so that he can grip or push his fingers down and they will return back up. The therapist said that this will allow him to, hopefully, type and have more overall function as he can push fingers down on his own and then the rubber bands will lift the fingers back off the keys. Who comes up with this stuff? Too cool.
I personally think that you should be able to pay extra to get one that comes with the ability to shoot a web or darts.
