ntc wrote:
Can you go into more detail about the dr's explanation for how this happened? What I got from your thread was you were in aero, hit a pot hole and that was it. There is nothing more to it than that? Implies we are all at risk of something like this everytime we ride. Im glad you are ok and recovering, it's just so shocking.Absolutely. I'm assuming you probably haven't read this thread (starting at post #5) which is where I started to tell my story:
Here
To start, it's probably important for you to understand that I am a natural born skeptic -- probably to the point where I irritate the shit out of people at times. Point being, I would guess the probability of what happened to me to be on the order of something like .001% or less. My initial assumption prior to talking to my docs post surgery was that I was a ticking time bomb, i.e., I had some sort of chronic condition that was just waiting to be exposed. This is clearly the most intuitive result given that kind of probability. So, I definitely needed some serious convincing here.
I will say the pothole was the worst I have hit in my 15+ years of serious cycling. Again, the hit was so significant it did affect my aerobars but that's not an uncommon occurrence either. However, being in a relatively aggressive aero position, your neck is probably the most vulnerable thing in this situation.
Post surgery the docs made it crystal clear that I had no signs of any chronic condition, e.g., partial blockage due to plaque buildup, etc, and that my dissection was due to an acute injury, i.e., trauma to the neck area which is almost always due to some kind of whiplash. They thought I had crashed. I kept telling them that I never crashed. The only significant thing that happened to me was when I hit the pothole.
Now, I do remember that I hit the pothole right after passing someone. That means I was first moving to the right looking back over my right shoulder to make sure I was clear of the rider. This is something I always do (mostly out of courtesy and partly out of safety, of course). I did spot the pothole a small fraction of a second before I hit it but my head was possibly in motion moving from the right side towards the front. However, I'm just not sure if my head had completely rotated to the front yet. These kinds of details are critical to understand whether my head position and therefore my neck might have been quite vulnerable at the time of impact. I just don't know.
Another thing to note:
This was my first race back in over 5 years. Now, as far as my cycling is concerned, I managed to get my FTP back to where it was when I took my break from the sport 5 years ago. However, I started training hard/consistent again around August of last year. So, was that enough time to rebuild strength in my neck again to accommodate a return to an aggressive aero position? I thought it was but I'm also 53 years old now so maybe I should have been more conservative. That road was absolutely brutal so maybe it was a cumulative effect where the pothole caused some initial damage or weakness and things got worse from there?
Trust me, I'm as freaked out about this as anyone so the word "shocking" is certainly appropriate. However, let's put things into perspective a little bit:
The probability that you die in an accident driving to work every day is far greater than what happened to me.
Lastly, I have definitely received a fair number of emails/messages from people who say that I'm alive due to some kind of miracle (they actually use the word "miracle") and ironically most of them have come from nurses, first responders, etc who claim to have experience seeing people in my situation before. I just feel like several people made really good, highly educated decisions that *might* have saved my life.
Hope that helps. Unfortunately, there's no easy/simple answer here but I tried to give you what I think is a relatively objective perspective for someone in my position.