The Motorbike and Me

Motorcyclist and motorbike

I am writing this article as an inpatient from the spinal injuries unit of my local teaching hospital. I was just out for my daily walk a week ago and had nearly arrived home along the country lane close to my house when, unbeknownst to me, a motorcyclist took the fateful decision to overtake a van behind me on the opposite side of the road.

The sequence of events that ensued resulted in the motorcycle hitting me and the car in front of the van demolishing the wall I had been walking in front of. The motorcyclist, I understand, emerged apparently physically unscathed by his ordeal, having been protected by his helmet, leathers and bike. The car driver too emerged OK, but shaken.

There was literally no warning – no screeching of brakes or crashing, just a giant motorcycle boot in the back. I remember thinking “You have got to be joking!” as I flew through the air having just spent the best part of a decade clawing my way out of one health hell hole (CFS / fibromyalgia / autoimmune disease). I lay there for a while seriously winded and trying to get up before realising that I could not move my left leg.

The scene of the accident

I did not fare so well. The wheel I imagine hit my left thigh fracturing my femur and the impact of the rest of the bike full square on my back catapulted me through the air to land with my leg at an interesting angle to the rest of my body.

I was completely oblivious to the other dramas unfolding around me – the crashing of cars and motorbikes against walls as my universe condensed down to what was happening for me in the moment. I looked up to see a number of concerned faces looking down and I remember my neighbour appearing and recognising me.

I remember someone holding my hand and stroking my arm. I remember comforting voices telling me to breathe and to open my eyes. I was fortunate that two of the first people on the scene were very competent and reassuring – one was a trained first-aider and one a physiotherapist and they took charge until the paramedics arrived.

I also remember being asked questions obviously designed to maintain and establish consciousness, one of which was if I had had my holidays, if so in which country and what particular village(s) I had been to - which frankly - would have been beyond me even if I hadn’t been fighting for my life!

I remember asking someone to please move my leg, which was awkward - but not painful - and there was a murmur of dissent (because it was obviously broken, but no-one wanted to say anything). I remember hearing sirens as the paramedics arrived, them giving me Entonox, cutting my clothes off, hearing them use an acronym (and wondering if that meant the air ambulance) and the paramedic requesting morphine.

I can recall being told to suck hard on the Entonox while they straightened my leg (painful), realising that the acronym DID mean the air ambulance, having a neck brace put on and being transferred to a spinal injuries board (uncomfortable).

During the experience, there was a part of me experiencing the drama and a part coolly calculating that things were not looking good and wondering if this is how and where it was going to end.

The air ambulance crew lifted me through the fence and into the helicopter waiting in the field opposite. They asked me which hospital I wanted to be taken to and I tried to calculate the convenience for my husband, who would be coming by train. I remember asking for my handbag and giving the security code for the burglar alarm and asking my neighbour to ring my husband to tell him where I would be.

Throughout the whole incident, the paramedics kept asking for feedback about my pain, and I remember not really being able to formulate an answer because (other than when the leg was being manipulated or I was being moved) there was no pain. Seriously, I have had much, much worse menstrual cramps.

I was aware of the paramedic pushing the Entonox tube slightly too hard against my teeth, and someone kneeling on my hair and the ground being rough against my back – and those things were bothering me as much as the fact that I had a suspected spinal injury and an obviously broken leg.

When later questioned by the emergency room medics about a loss of consciousness I reported that I thought I had not lost consciousness, but upon reflection that was patent nonsense since I appeared to have lost several hours between the mid-afternoon time of the accident and delivery to the hospital in the dark some time later, whilst remaining lucid and clearly remembering the date and day (when questioned).

Lessons from the scene

This experience tells me that the body is marvellously equipped with its own emergency pharmacy – and also that I received effective and timely emergency care. It also tells me that your consciousness is categorically not part of you. It withdraws from the body when things get overwhelming. I would want to convey to anyone who has lost a loved one under similar circumstances that the chances are that they did not suffer. When the pain was overwhelming your loved one was literally not there - only their body.

I would also like to thank all those involved throughout the ‘golden hour’ – the immediate response in the wake of trauma that determines whether you live or die. Also to stress the importance of the little things – even if you have no specialist ability to help, the importance of making the person comfortable, calling them by their first name, holding their hand and just generally being a calming and reassuring presence. Everyone I encountered seemed like a ministering angel. I could literally see their kind spirits. “Oh yes, they look kind and nice” I thought and was comforted that I was in safe hands.

At the hospital

The drama that unfolded when I reached hospital was then a catalogue of all the surgical procedures and pharmaceutical therapies I was most keen to avoid. Dozens of x-rays to establish the full extent of my injuries (with a special focus on my neck and incidentally my poor old thyroid gland), a general anaesthetic, major surgery, steroid injections, the placing of a metal rod in my femur, intravenous morphine, intravenous antibiotics, non-stop medications for pain control and daily injections to prevent blood clots. The follow-up will also require x-rays from different angles every 2 weeks for the next 6 months.

I refused the tetanus injection thinking it was unnecessary (having only a small scrape on my back and head) and managed to state my greatly preferred preference for a titanium rod and screws rather than stainless steel (having just had my remaining metal dental work replaced last year and having had a massive reaction) and my preferences were honoured (as far as I know).

Other than that though, I have bowed to their expertise and accepted all their treatments. I have, however, antidoted the radiation exposure with some herbal radiation formula, the effect of the antibiotics with massive doses of probiotics, taken vibrational remedies to counter the effects of the anaesthetic, and so on.

The hospital staff

All the nurses, physiotherapists, surgeons, registrars and other support staff were almost without exception kindly and caring and made an awful situation bearable. Some of the other elderly women on the ward were not the easiest people to treat and literally put up a fight over being washed, eating, taking their medication or being dressed but were treated at all times with kindness, respect, patience and - by some staff - love. Whilst the technical aspects of nursing are obviously important to healing and recovery, the role of encouragement, loving kindness and care - although not quantifiable or teachable - are probably equally as important.

The other thing that is striking is that the staff in the spinal injuries intense care unit in particular looked more unfit and unwell than average. This is probably not helped by the irregular dietary, exercise and sleep patterns that accompany shift work, the physical and emotional stresses of the job and grateful patients bringing chocolates and biscuits as presents. A case of the less sick (or certainly not radiantly well) helping the very sick.

The allopathic model

For me being catapulted into the allopathic model of medical care with full-force was a little like going down the rabbit hole. It also reminded me of some of my initial desire to go into dentistry and the great white hope that appeared on offer back then. I have no doubt that the vast majority of the staff were motivated in their career choices by a desire to serve their fellow man and many have spent years at great personal sacrifice and expense honing their skills and for that I am immensely grateful.

However, what is invisible to them is that this replacing of the naturopathic model of healthcare (that was the only medicine up until a century ago) with the allopathic model of healthcare has not arisen casually, but has been orchestrated by the pharmaceutical companies to their own ends. So that when you felt sick because of the number of pills you’ve had to take - they’ve got a pill for that too!

The medical school curriculum, for example, completely ignores the role of nutrition in maintaining and promoting health and only equips the young doctors with the twin hammers of pharmaceuticals or surgery and so, for them, everything looks like a nail. There was no interest expressed at all in my supplement regime and fortunately no resistance either – it was just completely beyond their frame of reference.

In fact, in response to queries as to what I did for a living, I replied that I was a dentist, naturopath and author. There was a look of absolute mystification as to what a naturopath was and this was apparently reported to my surgeon as being a naturalist – something that he was suitably perplexed by!

Also, until recently it was actually illegal for an allopathic doctor to consort with a ‘quack’ – an alternative practitioner - under threat of losing their licence (certainly in the US). So there has been no cross-fertilisation of the two worlds. Add to that the hounding of alternative practitioners, who ultimately tend to keep their heads below the parapet to avoid losing their licences to practice and you effectively have a silencing of any alternative to the dominant model on offer from Big Pharma.

It may be an idle hope, but I feel that if the best that allopathic medicine has to offer could ultimately be informed by the best that naturopathic medicine has to offer, then we would really have a health care system worthy of the name. However, this does require people – ‘patients’ – to take individual responsibility for their lives which, is more than many are willing to do.

Compare and contrast

The other thing that struck me was intense care and interest I met on the receiving end of a serious trauma which couldn’t have counter-pointed more strongly the complete lack of interest or concern expressed when I had been terribly sick with chronic fatigue syndrome / fibromyalgia / autoimmune disease.

There is not doubt that some of the advances that allopathic medicine has heralded are of enormous benefit. I am currently very grateful for powerful and effective pain relief, for example. However, much of the allopathic paradigm has been an extension of the trauma care developed during the two world wars, and transfers poorly to the management of chronic health problems and ultimately when their model of health fails to diagnose or treat an illness – they blame the patient as being ‘psychosomatically’ ill.

The surgery

The break was internally fixed from the head of the femur using just three small incisions: an entry point for the reamer and two for fixation screws. I am astounded at the technical excellence displayed and the small incision wounds. This technique maintains the integrity of all the tissues surrounding the fracture and also apparently by compromising the internal blood supply to the bone (endosteal circulation) causes a compensatory increase from the peripheral blood supply (periosteal circulation) promoting enhanced healing.

I think that the surgeon concerned did an outstandingly fine piece of technical work and I am grateful for his years of dedicated training, application and skill and for the support of his surgical team.

Physiotherapy

They are almost insanely keen to get you mobilised the day after surgery for all sorts of legitimate reasons including preventing deep vein thromboses, bed sores and the muscle wasting that comes with prolonged bed rest. That proved particularly trying, pouring with sweat and practically passing out.

They are similarly keen to get you to progress from Zimmer frames to crutches, to managing stairs and home as quickly as possible. Many of these efforts rest upon effective pain control, without which they would prove even more traumatic – or even impossible.

The physiotherapists, whilst invariably being fairly young and fit themselves, were very encouraging and the occupational health professionals also keen to facilitate a return to normal life.

Nutrition and diet

The surprising thing is that whilst your body does the healing, it needs a serious amount of high-quality nutrients to do the work. There was absolutely no acknowledgement of the role played by nutrition in repair other than to have the other elderly ladies with osteoporotic fractures on calcium tablets.

In fact, there seemed to be a lot of well-meant encouragement to have some ice cream or a pudding (even for the diabetic on my ward) and visitors, of course, pitch up with chocolates, sweets and biscuits (cookies). This means that not only are you facing inevitable weight gain induced by several months of greatly reduced immobility as you recover, but you are also challenging your blood sugar levels and hampering your body’s best efforts to repair as you consume anti-nutrients (nutrients that take more out of the body than they deliver).

Requesting a gluten and dairy-free diet I was confronted by soggy chips and some cheese gloop at practically every meal. Breakfast too, was milk and cereal or toast and there were endless rounds of coffee and tea on offer. Whilst I appreciate that you have to give people - and especially sick elderly people - food that they recognise and will eat, it is hard for me to reconcile the fact that this regime had been carefully formulated for ‘healthy’ calorific/salt content by teams of highly trained dieticians.

Curiously enough I was already taking a vibrational bone healing formula prior to the incident (as a result of muscle testing – I don’t ask why anymore, I just trust the process). I also started taking probiotics, a meal replacement powder, a protein powder, a calcium apatite and magnesium formula, an anti-radiation tincture, Arnica (cream and pillules) for the considerable bruising and vibrational remedies to promote healing within a couple of days and will keep you posted on progress. So far I have exceeded all expectations of recovery, but these are still very early days …

Before the incident

Also interesting is the fact that 10 days to 2 weeks prior to the incident I had been working in my home office when I was overcome by an inner understanding that, in spite of appearances, everything was perfect for everyone at all times. Specifically, that nothing meant for you could ever pass you by and that nothing expressly not intended for you could ever happen in your life. That this literally was not possible, that the system worked perfectly and to trust whatever happened as uniquely and divinely intended for you.

So of all the many emotions I feel, curiously anger is not one of them. It took four people – the motorcyclist, van driver, car driver and myself to create the accident and split-second perfect timing. First, I had to be impressed to go for my walk at that particular time and also to turn back (a bit earlier than usual). Curiously as I flew through the air with the impact of the motorbike, there were practically no cuts and scrapes and there was no slashing of skin or nerves. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was gentle, but – well, almost.

I am currently very bruised from the trauma, the reparative surgery, from taking a direct hit on the back and the impact of landing on the ground. My abdomen is also very sore and I imagine this to be from my internal organs being forcibly thrust forward on impact. I also realise that had the motorcycle hit me slightly higher, lower, to one side or another or half a second later or sooner that I might well not be here to tell the tale.

Ruptured internal organs, being a quadriplegic or paraplegic, losing the leg or losing the use of the leg and dying were all on the agenda that day. So oddly I consider myself fortunate - fortunate to still be here and fortunate that it was not worse.

Although I obviously did not want the accident or any of the procedures that followed in its wake, I understand that they were all directly focussed upon saving my life and preserving maximum function and I am very grateful for all the care I received.

Reflections

When in hospital your goals diminish to being able to have your catheter removed, being able to progress from a Zimmer frame to crutches, being able to wash your own hair and go to the toilet independently. I am at the beginning of yet another long road to recovery. Best estimates are that it will take 7-12 months. I will keep you posted ..

Further resources

Alternatively click to watch The Town of Allopath, The Most Astonishing Health Disaster of the 20th Century or the videos listed under Mercury and Medicine in the Video hub especially Big Pharma: Big Bucks and Making a Killing or listen to part 1 and part 2 of Dr Michael Murray on the topic of What the Drug Companies Won't Tell You and/or part 1 and part 2 on Pharmaceuticals listed under Mercury & Medicine inthe Audio hub.

The motorbike and me: Article summary

This article gives an account of a serious accident involving the writer, Alison Adams, being run over by a motorbike whilst out walking. It recounts her experiences of emergency medical care and of her views as a naturopath of the allopathic healthcare she received.

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The Natural Recovery Plan Newsletter September 2010 Issue 9. Copyright Alison Adams 2010. All rights reserved
Alison Adams Dentist, Naturopath, Author and Online Health Coach www.thenaturalrecoveryplan.com