My name is Jamie and I'm a CRNA at a small rural community hospital. I had a rather interesting experience several months ago, which I have been asked to share. So here goes.

The race itself was rather uneventful except for the fact that quite surprisingly I wasn't dropped over the 42-mile course. It was a very hilly course and approx. two thirds of the field fell off the front. As this small breakaway group approached the finish line, the young riders started to sprint...unfortunately a couple of the leaders got tangled up and a massive pile-up ensued with bikes and bodies all over the road. I went head over heels, cracking my helmet in 3 different spots. I thought I broke my ring finger on my left hand...turned out to be just dislocated. More seriously, I noticed one of the racers appeared in critical shape. I made my way over to him and the only thing I could think of doing for him was to stabilize his head.

What seemed like forever, but in reality, was a short period of time, the EMS people arrived. I was sure glad to see them...as I wasn't feeling to swift myself. I checked this fellow's eyes and noticed they were quite dilated and not particularly reactive and a small amount of blood oozed from his right ear. All in all it made me feel pretty sick, but I really felt terrible for this guy cause it was obvious he was critical with an obvious head injury and possible neck/spinal cord injury.  

One of the M.D.s, a urologist, that happened to be a racer and responded, was on the cell phone, calling for a helicopter. Anyway, to make a long story short, I was glad to be "relieved" of my duties...but I wasn't done yet. I went to check on a friend of mine who was also involved in the crash. He turned out to have a bad concussion. I started to leave the site but for some strange reason I decided to check on the head injury fellow as they were loading him up.

Part of me was just wondering what they were doing...turns out they were in the process of intubating him so I waited briefly...long enough that I asked them if I could help because it appeared they were struggling, or at least taking to long for the procedure. One of the trauma M.D.'s said help them, so I leaped out of the back, ran around to the front and intubated him.

Turns out this fellow made a complete recovery after being in a coma and spending most of the summer in the Neuro-ICU and an extended time in rehab. Actually, last I heard, he was going to start racing again!! Me?? Being self-employed, my wife tells me I'll be just doing the "club rides" from here on out. The whole experience cured me of any desire to want to "race” again. I did feel fortunate/blessed to be able to help out in such a critical situation.

That's my story, you can't be too careful out there,

sincerely, Jamie. ≈•≈