May 15th, 2005
Road Rash
Spencer crashed his bike today and got pretty bad road rash. Both knees got torn up a bit, his right forearm has a chunk of missing skin over an inch around, and he got a few scrapes on his left ankle and foot. I was taking a nap when it happened, but I heard him screaming as Rachel brought him home. I think Spencer forgot that braking is important. When we go out on training rides on the trail-a-bike, we focus on balance and pedaling, but Spencer neither steers nor brakes since he’s in the back. Rachel says he went down the hill like a banshee, realized he was going to fast, and tried to stop with his feet instead of the brakes. Upon his
It looked just bad enough that we wanted professional attention, so after minimally covering the wounds, we got Jacob and Spencer into the car and headed to the urgent care clinic near our house. Good move. The clinic was practically empty and we got straight in. The cleanup was traumatic, but relatively fast. The nurse did a great job calming him, getting him to help clean the wounds, and letting him apply antibiotic. I watched carefully to learn bandaging technique. Spencer is either brave or foolish; he told his nurse that he’d rather have Jennifer (his oncology nurse) since she’s better. We got professional confirmation that we shouldn’t worry too much about it, but should inform Spencer’s oncologist. We also got a prescription topical antibiotic and recommendation for frequent dressing changes.
I’ve already changed the dressings once and I’ll be trying to remember what I learned. His dressings, even after my unprofessional replacement, look much better than I usually manage to do my own road rash.
