Challenge participant forced to cancel (car totalled)

Glad you're back here to post on your own.

And of course, "that will buff out"

Oh man,glad your here. Heal thoroughly and post often.

I missed you very much at The Challenge. You are one of those faces that makes it a great experience.

That's a hard hit for sure. Good luck with the recovery.

Nasty.

So does this reset the budget to $0?

Glad you are improving.

I've never met you, but I missed seeing you and your car at the Challenge. Glad you're healing up, I'll be praying for a speedy recovery. Sounds like you've got a good woman by your side, that will help immensely.

Hope you have a speedy recovery.

Enjoy your time in rehab. It was probably the most relaxing three weeks of my adult life. Get up, have a little breakfast and a couple Oxy. Go have a sadistic young woman torture you a bit then some light exercise. Lunch and some more Oxy. After lunch do a little reading. Another young woman tries to teach me to care for myself with one hand. Some more Oxy and dinner and then a bit more reading or Law and Order then bed. Really the only downside was that my wife worked in the front office and every obnoxious thing I said made it back to The Wife.

And when you go back to work and tell people you were in rehab they usually picture the cool Charlie Sheen tiger blood rehab and not the clumsy I fell asleep and rolled an Escort rehab.

Glad you're on the mend. That was a hard hit and we're glad you're still with us. There are better ways to get a helicopter ride. I'm curious what you would do differently for those road legal cars - closed course driving only, no cage, more cage? Looks like an aluminum seat. I've seen a few at the challenge - most just a floor install. Did it have a back brace?

Glad you're making progress. You were missed at the challenge.

In reply to hobiercr:

I was broadsided by of all people an er nurse. Sever saw it don't remember it.

Anyway after the accident and till this day I am super paranoid of cars pulling out from driveways or roads on my right. It is an automatic reaction for me to be overly reactive to them.

This was 30 years ago.

In reply to Wall-e:

True, except that they still show me as taking morphine 3x day but I have been refusing it. I have to ask for Oxy and today I forgot to ask after 6 AM. Oh well, no wonder my back felt on fire at 6:30 tonight. Best part of today? 7 visitors and some friends who brought some Pad Thai for dinner. Real food!!!

The worst part of all of this, as those who have met me know, is that I went through all of this 32 years ago when I broke my neck in a diving accident. That time I was 16, totally paralyzed and scared to death. I had no clue if I would recover any use of my limbs and if my life, as I knew it, was over. Amazingly I got most use of my limbs back except for my triceps and pectoralis majors. My walk/gait is a little "off" but I live life without any aids or assistance. So when all this happened and I got the full extent of my injuries I had a bit of a "are you berkeleying kidding me" moment.

In reply to oldtin:

The car was a Lemons/Chump legal car so it had a 6 pt cage and and FIA Legal glass MOMO seat with both leg and lumbar support. We mounted the seat on rails and the seat back brace was adjustable for driver changes. The battery was a trunk mounted gel cell in an enclosed battery box. It had a 6pt camlock 3" wide harness with a cage bar for the shoulder straps. Finally it had a halon fire system with both nozzles in the cabin area, one on the driver and another towards the tank (stock).

So, from your earlier comments, I think we're wondering if you think the race car safety stuff helped or hurt in this incident. Any thoughts on that?

In reply to pkingham:

That is the topic I want to start a thread on but I'm not quite ready. I have a lot of thoughts but need to get them a little better organized before I start the discussion.

Sorry to hear about this as a whole, but eager to hear your thoughts on the safety side. Rest up!

8 months. Holy cow time flies. I just re-read this thread and wanted to say a huge THANK YOU for all of the well wishes during this situation. They definitely helped keep my spirits up during all the turmoil.

Here is a quick update on how things went after the first 2 weeks. There are more details and issues but these are the highlights.

10 days into rehab (a Friday) I start feeling nauseous and start throwing up. I'm slated to be discharged the next day so they hold me and give me some oral meds which don't do a thing. They also say that pain meds could be causing this so I immediately stop taking all pain meds. After puking 3 times on Saturday, the last at 3 am I have the nurses call 911 and transfer myself the the "real" hospital up the street. They do a CT scan with contrast and determine I have a small intestine illeus with some blockage. No food for 3 days (IV) followed by clear liquids, soft foods then hard foods. They finally let me out the following Friday.

The first day I was in for gastro issues I saw an ortho who did updated film on R foot, L knee, L wrist. L wrist which had broken radius but still in alignment initially is now 45 degrees out of alignment and 2 weeks post break. Ortho says we need to fix this, how is tomorrow at 7:00 AM? So the next morning he re-breaks my wrist (it had healed fairly well) and adds titanium plate with 12 or so screws. LOVELY.

As I was not 100% sure at this point that the gastro issues weren't opioid related I refuse all pain meds post surgery. THAT was not fun. That day and the next were spent mostly doing yoga breath to work through the pain. One day post I took some tylenol and that took just enough edge off to be ok.

So, got home on Friday in wheelchair to my lovely hospital bed in the dining room. Thankfully Izzy, our rescued Persian was happy for a new place to sleep and kept me company. As the hospital had said "eat away" I did just that and on the following Monday got very nauseous again and had an ambulance take me back to the hospital. This was a VERY difficult decision as my wife wanted me to stay home but I had to make the call. As I'm waiting on gurney at emergency I throw up a ton of stuff and feel a little better. As I was just there they decide to put an NG tube down my nose to give my stomach and intestine a chance to rest and hopefully heal. NG tube is in for 5 days! Not sure if you have ever had one but they are a SOUL SUCKING piece of torture. 3 days I could handle. DAYS 4 & 5 I just wanted to crawl under a sheet. Swallowing was excruciating. Talking was excruciating. Just berkeleying miserable. on top of this the PT kept wanting to get me up and walk with a walker (immobilized left leg, clamshell back brace, wrist in splint post op and tube down my nose and multiple IV's). I did it as much as much as I could stand and 2 days after the NG tube came out I go to go home again. This time MUCH wiser. Soft foods, more liquids (soups, Ensure, etc.). By this point it is around 11/22 so my goal is to eat Thanksgiving turkey which is about the best meal ever. Around this time I ditch the wheelchair and start using the walker exclusively.

December is mostly home care PT and on New Year's Eve I switch to a cane. I also start back to work in late December, part time, as i have to get some normalcy back to things. January I get back to work full time and switch to outpatient PT.

Fast forward to today. I still use the cane for longer distances and am still having knee issues (possible soft tissue/meniscus) damage which makes kneeling tough. Gastro issue were better for a while but have gotten worse again so I go in for laparoscopic surgery this Friday to see what can be fixed. My guess is that they will re-section the intestine to remove the damaged section. Could be another 4-6 days in hospital but I just want this to be fixed.

My 2016 Challenge car sits longingly waiting for my attention but it will have to wait a little more. Right now I just want to get through this surgery and back to the gym to start building strength again.

Dude. Holy E36 M3.

Thanks for the update. I will continue to keep you in my prayers.

You are one tough motherberkeleyer.

Holy hell. Stick it out and hopefully things will get even better.

This is almost a build thread! Keep it up and get back soon!

Wow. Consider prayers said!

Oh wow! Hope the surgery goes well. I agree, this is almost a build thread--so please keep us updated on your progress!

Margie

Puts things in perspective - thanks for posting the update. Hang in there.