An unfortunate accident

My brother had for a long time, dreamed of having a motorcycle. He was finally able to get one a couple of years ago, and was extremely happy about it. He had to part with it because he could not afford it at the time. This last summer though, he bought another one since he could financially. And again, he was ecstatic about it.

He became part of a motorcycle group that organise trips. They have a web site on which people post a destination, and whoever wants to go can join them. My bro chose one, which was planned for last Sunday, destined to go from Montreal (that's where he lives) to Lake Georges in the State of New-York. That's a decision he is going to regret making, for the rest of his life...

The route is the 9N, and is very sinuous. But nothing dangerous at all. It's a paved country road, and there are lots of lodging areas along the way. It's a very nice drive actually, along, of course, Lake Georges. There was one curve though, that went down slightly steeper than the others, and turned left at the same time. For now, what we know and what my brother remembers, he made a judgement error, and put on the brakes while he shouldn't have, and his bike just went sliding to the side, hitting the metal guide rail. he fell over the rail, and the bike bounced back on the other side of the road. This resulted in a severe ankle fracture on his right leg, a dislocated shoulder on the left, and multiple bruising on his ribs, shoulder back and left arm.

Let's say that when my mother called to give me the news later on that Sunday, I expected the worst - you know what "worst" I mean... So although we did not know at that point the exact extent of his injuries, at least I knew he was still alive, and he did not have something really bad like a broken neck, which could lead to paraplegia or quadriplegia. So I went by to my parent's house, because now, we had to decide what to do. I'll spear you all the different discussions and arguments we had to come to this decision, because family matters differ from one family to the other, but in the end we decided that me, my sister and my father would go to see him the day after.

The 6.5h drive down there went very smoothly. Upon arriving to the hospital, which was the Albany Medical Center, a very reputable hospital and it showed, I expected it to be harder to take when seeing my brother. It wasn't as hard as I expected, but there was a sadness that grew in me. He had a neck harness, but fortunately it was just to prevent his head from going on the side too much when asleep, as it would not be good for the bruises (and he did sleep a lot because of the morphine and, well, because his body was in a healing process). His left arm was strapped onto his body, so that it does not move while the shoulder, replaced from dislocation, heals. Hi ankle, part of his calf and his foot had metal pins coming out of them, with metal bars to hold everything together, a bit like a cage, to prevent everything from moving (I know there is a name for that thing, but I don't remember it at the moment). Not a nice sight to see, mostly with part of the foot had an oval-shaped opened wound, about 6cm wide. My father was not able to watch this when it was uncovered... So in other words he was in pretty bad shape, although he was stable, and he could move all his members, even the toes on the side of his broken ankle.

Today, which is 4 days after the accident, he will be transported at a hospital in Montreal. He will be staying there until he is well enough to start physiotherapy. So this will surely be many weeks. The physio might be done at a hospital in Gatineau, near me and our parents. I expect the healing process will be long and tedious for his right leg mainly, but hope is there and my brother can be strong when needed.

We're hoping for the best.