Man down

Last night on my way out the door to go to Mothers Day dinner I saw a huge stream of email messages in my inbox from the BMU members. I was cc’ed in a little late and couldn’t quite make out what they were talking about except I read the words: Jing, accident, hospital.

I had to duck out so I didn’t have time to make sense of any of it. I grabbed my phone and saw a message from Clifton which explained that Jing was riding his road bike out at the royal national park and had a bad accident. Both his arms were broken, internal bleeding and he was in hospital. I called Shirley, Jing’s fiancee, and she filled me in on everything whilst I was in the back seat of Mum’s car on the way out to the restaurant (I was meant to be driving!).

Today I thought I’d visit Jing at St George hospital. Hospitals are scary haunted places. Getting past the entrance is hard enough for me, getting into a lift even worse. I tracked down Jing’s room, saw a bed with his name on it, but he wasn’t there (freaky!). I then found out he had been moved. After going into another room full of strangers (I went into the wrong room) I was directed into the right room by a nurse but again, Jing wasn’t in there! The nurse said he could be getting an assessment, but it turns out he was in the bathroom.

It was amazing to see Jing up on his feet. Both his arms were in casts and his face was pale and sweaty from the drugs (he’s been loaded up on morphine and other pain killers). He told me how the accident took place, that he wasn’t even doing anything but rolling down a straight bit of road, he was riding one handed, hit a bump and flew into a metal guard rail stomach first. When he got up he realised his arm made an “S” shape, then a pain like he’d never felt before came over him and he soon found himself screaming.

His surgery went for over 6 hours. He has broken both arms, one in 3 places. He has broken some of his pelvis, fractured his hip. He’s got internal bleeding and initially the doctors were afraid he had a hole in his bowel, but whilst I was visiting a young doctor surrounded by his junior minions explained to Jing that the impact was so hard that his lungs ‘popped’ and that created the pocket of air in his back (which they previously thought was an intestinal gas pocket of air). So surreal.

The poor guy has had a lot of time to think everything through, the incident, his future of riding and his doubts about the later. If you know Jing, you’ll know he thinks a LOT (his blog is even called Thoughts…), and with this accident being so fresh its only natural for him to go through mental wars right now.

On my way out I ran into Timmy, who was on his way up to see Jing. He’s got a lot of support and I’m sure with a bit of time and healing he’ll be feeling more alive than ever.