Tom Falls Down and Goes Boom

Dear Readers of This Is Our Life,

This is Chicken Mama's mama writing tonight. (Does that make me Chicken Grandma?) Chicken Mama is currently in a hospital in Arizona and doesn't have the capabilities to post an entry. No, she isn't injured, but Chainsaw Tommy is.

Last week, Chainsaw Tommy left to take a brief respite from the frozen cold of northern Minnesota to visit his best friend who is preparing for a cross country bicycle trip. Tom, being a cyclist extraordinaire himself, thought he would spend a few days beside said best friend in the sun pedaling up and down some training hills near Sedona.

Wednesday morning the two guys headed out for a long training ride. They were only a mile from home, clipping along at about 30 mph, when Tom's front wheel came off. The results were disasterous. His biking helmet was shattered on impact, his clothes ripped to shreds, and unfortunately he sustained multiple injuries.

He has six shattered ribs (not cracked, but shattered they tell us), his clavicle is broken in two spots, and he has a collapsed lung. Add to that a lot of road rash (some in very weird spots) and you can imagine how totally beat up he is. He had to undergo general anesthetic to have a tube inserted to inflate the lung. There's a good chance he'll have to have surgery on his collar bone/shoulder but that won't even be considered for another 1-1/2 to 3 months. He's been told his ribs will bother him for 6-9 months.

It was hoped they would take the tube out of his lung tonight to see if it will stay inflated by itself. That would be a very good sign. Unfortunately, x-rays taken today show part of the lung still collapsed so they aren't going to proceed with that plan right now.

He's in a great deal of pain, saying it hurts the most when he tries to move, or breath, or talk, or blink, or think, or . . . well, you get the idea. All of the medical staff has commented on what good physical shape he's in which, of course, is to his benefit. In a perfect world, it would have been more to his benefit if the front wheel of his bike hadn't come off.

Chicken Mama got the first flight she could to Arizona to be with him and is enscounced in his room, spending her nights on a very uncomfortable cot, she reports. She's going to be due for her own collapse just as soon as she can work it into their schedule.

He drove a car to Arizona, but he's probably not going to be able to sit in a vehicle to make the ride back to Minnesota for several weeks. Fortunately, as soon as he can leave the hospital, he and Chicken Mama can stay in their good friends' house as long as is necessary.

Chicken Mama has her laptop with her and hopefully she will soon find a way of making entries to this blog to keep you all updated. In the meantime, I'll do my best to convey information from both of them to all of you.