Personally, in my life, August is the month of fall :-) August is when i got my bike. After an year fell down for the first time, on August 4th, when my bike skidded off a muddy road. Escaped with a few scratches that time. This year, i was not all that lucky on August 21 :-)
A confused guy on the bike, decided to take a hard left from middle of the road.No indicators, no signals and no botheration about the traffic behind. Unfortunately, i was closely following him with a decent speed. Too close for even disk brakes to be of any use. Brakes, crash and i was on the road. Fortunate there were no other cars behind, unfortunate that i landed on my left knee, taking the full impact on it. I had followed all the traffic rules, except for the most basic one, expect idiots on Indian roads. Expecting people to adhere to traffic rules is a luxury that is not to be expected on Indian roads. I do see a lot of super geniuses daily who feel that the red signal is for the weak and stupid, and choose to ignore it.
Anyway the guy was little considerate, stopped and asked sorry repeatedly and asked whether i need a drop to home. I was feeling ok that time, so i picked up my bike and started home without help. The bike also didn't suffer any major damage except for a scratch on the body guard. Later realized, he had given me all the burden of his mistake with the apology. What started as a small pain in the knee, became a huge swelling. The trouble started with a night without sleep and in pain. Next day, went to the hospital and the x-ray revealed fracture in the knee cap. The only fix was screws and bolts and threads to fix them up. Sad part, I will have to spend considerable time in hospital, after so many years.
The operation happened a day after and the knee cap, patella was put on place using screws. It was fun to see how doctors and helpers prepare for an operation. They were relaxed, discussing about their vacation leaves, cracking jokes, just like how I start fixing a bug in the code. The guy being operated on was usually referred by the bone he has broken. So my name inside was patella :-) Learned that they do around ten to twelve operations daily most of which are result of bike accidents and quite serious.
The post operation effects were a matter of concern. But when you are in pain, all you have to do is look around. I was surrounded by people with even more serious injuries in the post operation care unit. To name a few, people with broken rib cage, broken hip, crushed leg bones, hips replaced etc etc. The guy with crushed rib cage was not able to swallow a tablet. The most horrible one was a twelve year old kid with amputated leg after a bike injury :( Half of them can be averted if people start paying a little respect to traffic rules, change lanes with little sense and try driving a little predictably.
Slowly recovering from the injury and the operation. It is going to take a few more weeks to get back to normal. Life moves on, may it is just a reminder that you can be shaken and broken in less than seconds :-)
