VTR1000.ORG

Benny Hedges and I have been comparing notes - and Benny raised the notion that we ought to compare "battle scars" in an "I'll show you mine, if you show me yours" type scenario.............

So to kick off:



The bike



That's the bus that pulled out in front of me....



2 shattered vertebrae, 1 more fractured...



My helmet - I escaped with a black eye and lost 2 teeth - it saved me from a lot worse....



I had a "Vertebrectomy and a Throracotomy" - basically the Surgeon (genius) opened my chest up under my left armpit - removed a rib and collapsed my lung. He went in through that opening, removed 2 Vertebrae (T5 and T6), and replaced them with a metal cage. The rib was used as a bone transplant inside this cage.



Leaving me with this scar (26 staples) - I tell people I was attacked by a shark...

Oh, and I shattered my right arm (plated) and damaged my spleen too....

3 months off work, and 4 years later still need painkillers - but I'm still walking - many in my ward weren't so lucky!

Special thanks to Mr Harvey - my Surgeon, Queen Alexandrias Hospital in Portsmouth - and Knox - without whos back protection I would most certainly be paralysed....

Now - your tales...?

well, as said, my worst of many was on a kwak z400j (shed lol) when i was 18, 28 years ago!
same week barry sheen did his legs...
i was going to the dole to sign off after being taken on full time and decided to fill up at burtonwood services on the 62 on the way...
my mate was behind me in his viva...
i shot off like the proverbial, knee down, round one corner, flicked into a blind left (next to mway police stn) and bang. white flash.
remember lying in the grass with people stood round me, then next thing smashing through doors in warrington general on a trolley, a nurse trying to get a drip in me, my mum tearing her hair out screaming..
mate came round behind me and saw my bike inside a cortina estate, the driver half out of the windscreen..
bike literally cut the car in half and pushed the engine into the drivers seat trapping him.. apparently he was in the same hospital but i never met him.
police came to take a statement but i didnt know what had happened.
it was a quick thinking copper who saw the traffic backed up and called for help, apparently i was dead in the ambulance with shock so im only actually 28yo!!! (today)

we'd met on the white lines head on, they estimated i was doing 70+ and he was doing between 25 & 40 mph.
what saved me was the fact i was banked over to the left and didnt hit the car, instead i went through a 4" fence with my left ribs, smashed them all and popped a lung, broke both forearms and wrists, bone stuck out of wrist, smashed jaw, left leg on wrong way round due to dislocated pelvis, shattered d6 vertebrae and crushed 6 & 7th disc, shrinking me by 2" lol.

apart from my left wrist, the only other place i was bleeding was my jaw, i worked at a bike shop before this happened, and got a simson starwars helmet off a rep, before they were approved - one of the first carbon fibre lids iirc..
i didnt hit anything with my head really, but it shattered and left me with a polystyrene shell on my head but a shard of fibre (where the strap stud was) went through my jaw and pinned my tongue to the roof of my mouth.
most worrying thing was i didnt feel a thing - thought i was crippled for life but it took ages to sink in how lucky i was to survive, being young & tear butt.
no major surgery except reconstruction of my wrist, 6mth in traction then physio, then signed myself out and went back to work still in plaster.
no pics of the wreck unfortunately as it was before cameras were invented, but all that was salvageable off the bike was the rear wheel and back light.
they never found the fuel tank!
thing was i couldnt claim on ins cos it wasnt classed as a public road - i even got billed for damaging the fence.
as said, while i was in hospital, barry sheen got his legs fkt up, my bud paul allen got sideswiped off a rd400 with his bird on the back, she was in a bad way, next bed had a guy off a placcy 70 with 17 leg fractures in exactly same crash as my m8, then another came in from tetleys, lost a foot on a placcy 90... list went on, every day almost, more bikers were coming in... docs said thats why they hate bikes.

mate asked me if i wanted anything and i said wanted my bike back together - he came in with some pics and it really fkt me up, then a few mth later it all came back and i had a mad panic attack!

anyway, got over it, got a cb250rs soon as i could get around, had it 6 week and got hit side on at the flyover at almost the same place - guy saw me, made eye contact but then still went for it, spun out and took up both lanes leaving me nowhere to go.
my left bar went through his back quarter and spun me round backwards, through a fence again, this time right leg gone.
the wonker saw me fly past him and drove off, left me there with bike on top of me.
plod came again, i gave a description (red escort estate heading toward gt sankey) and they found him patching up the damage on his car - then he claimed id run up his butt.
heard he got jailed for that

i could go on forever tbh, written off 7 bikes in total but been very lucky with injuries, just bones and roadrash so far.
good luck getting better clivey, i have no bad effects from my injuries yet so you'll be ok!

go on, who's next...

so I guess my hernia scar is not going to be much competition here!!!!!!!!1

Sounds like I have been a lot luckier than you 2, in 34yrs of riding [started at 14] including road race, enduro and now trials, worst I did was to feck my left knee up with a botched wheelie on KDX200 enduro stroker. Torn ACL, ruptured cartalige, and chipped a bone inside the joint when I had to take a big dab, to stop it crashing. Never felt pain like it, then tried to keep riding to cover my embarasment!
had key hole surgery so cant even see scars [didnt reconstruct the ACL, said I would try and see if it was stable after clean up], and I use a CTi knee brace to hold it together on MX, trials, Skiing where I might still twist it.

So I think I am in last place on the battle scar league. Not much to show for a miss spent youth!

Thank goodness my injuries have been much less then yours.............first time on first bike was a cb 250 and lost it on gravel build up on a bend, ran wide on to wide grassey bank and just as I was thinking I'd made it when front wheel went into deep rut and twisted violently, bike stopped dead but I didn't and flew through the air like superman but in the process chipped my hip...............layed on the ground mentally checking what was working. Anyway got up and managed to get home. Dad fixed the hole in the tank and apart from severe pain I was ok............except couldn't tell mother or bike would have been history so had to pretend all was normal. This was before the days of the remote telly control and of course I had to keep getting up to turn telly channel over, thank god there was only 3 channels in those days.

Second was a few years later, for some reason I thought I could ride off road.............I couldn't and flew up a steep slope 60ft high, flew through the air thinking I was cool...........landed, well trail bikes have quite high seats, and well my legs are a bit short, so as I put right foot down the bike tipped over to the right a bit, foot went into a f###king pothole.......bike fell on top of me and when my mates pulled the bike off me, I looked down and saw my leg stetched out, knee on top but foot was pointing behind me. You know that feeling when its broken but you don't want to belive it.............no choice, got back on the bike an rode it 9 miles to hospital with foot flopping around..........too many fragments to pin it so 5 months in toe to thigh pop, two months toe to knee pop, then about 6 months before it was back to normal.

Last on was couple of years ago...........peeling off two lane roundabout when 'female' driver undertook the waiting traffic, shot onto roundabout and left foot got squashed flat between car and bike.............more pain than any break I've had and the kids just had to knock into each time they walked past. Bless em !

OH AND ONCE GOT WILLIE CAUGHT IN ZIP OF SLEEPING BAG............WORST INJURY TO DATE


So all in all pretty minor stuff in comparison..............but then I'm a bit of a wuss

i got a splinter in me finger last week hurt like a b8stard it did too .....

marravtr wrote:i got a splinter in me finger last week hurt like a b8stard it did too .....

<manhugs>

Shall I pop round with a plaster (it has Mickey Mouse on it), a hot chocolate - and a packet of Parma Violets...



I'm waiting for someone to do the Jaws/Broken heart line - or have I just ruined your chance....

Thanks for quoting the whole of Cliveys post again Tracy, I'd forgotten what it looked like.

RAINMAKER wrote:
OH AND ONCE GOT WILLIE CAUGHT IN ZIP OF SLEEPING BAG............WORST INJURY TO DATE

caught mine in my jeans zip - hurt like hell but had to rip it out.
tore a chunk out of me bell end - 3 stitches lol :/
had a towel wrapped round me it bled so much, by the time i got to a&e i was white as a sheet, no blood left!
nasty!

worst non-bike related injury, sort of - last job on a friday, bit of a backhander doing some pipework for a guy right at the top of a flight of concrete stairs...
he left me to lock the factory up, and as i was clearing away i slipped and landed diagonal on the first step, thought id snapped me leg again.
anyway i could move my toes etc so i got up and called meself a daft git, went home and found a hooj egg lump on my thigh, no bruise...
i thought give it a few days, see what it's like...
then noticed i couldnt feel my fingers, nob wouldn't work, memory went and eyes etc, then bang, collapsed.
blood clot had gone all round my body and blocked a valve in my ticker
not nice waking up on a geriatric ward at the age of 39 lol..
was very lucky they said.....
why do they always say that!!

is it just me being daft....................or does he have just one big nipple in the middle of his chest????

waking up on a geriatric ward at the age of 39

yep that can age you................

RAINMAKER wrote:is it just me being daft....................or does he have just one big nipple in the middle of his chest????

I'm not sure if I should be concerned that you have paid so much attention to my chest....

cliveyandrews wrote:

marravtr wrote:i got a splinter in me finger last week hurt like a b8stard it did too .....

<manhugs>

Shall I pop round with a plaster (it has Mickey Mouse on it), a hot chocolate - and a packet of Parma Violets...



I'm waiting for someone to do the Jaws/Broken heart line - or have I just ruined your chance....

i did do this aswell


was bike related in a round about way (if you spill oil on your garage floor, dont walk in there the following morning in wet trainers )

Not that clear, but taken 1-6-79. This is a pic of the base of my skull with a broken odontoid peg (C2) locked with stainless steel wire to stabilise it ... barrier meeting helmet means helmet snaps back, rips off and breaks my neck! Got me where the hangman's rope normally does its job. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3293/305 ... 02b21c.jpg

Have ten holes drilled in skull from the various halo attachments and a decent scar on hip where bone was removed to support the neck etc etc.

Ouchies, that looks nasty - and puts you into top slot so far. PMPL