Accident day - how it all started

Of course, it had to be a motorcycle accident.

I've been riding in places like India, Indonesia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Thailand. I never thought I would meet my first accident in the quite roads of a Malaysian village - my frequent riding grounds. In a dedicated post I will cover how is it to crash in a village in Malaysia. For locals might be the norm, but for a foreigner the experience is a surprise, to say the least.

The accident involved another motorcycle doing a sudden right turn. Full break put me in the inverted wheelie position. The crash sent me away a memorable distance, according to witnesses.

Luckily I had a good jacket on me. The shoulder protection was nearly gone, a big scratch on the side of my Arai helmet. Boots, riding pants, gloves and even my smartwatch took a hit as well.

"Cousin ! Cousin !" those words brought me back from a strange dream. I don't remember being able to see anything other that white light, but I do remember asking my cousin what was he doing there. He explained to me he was there to visit me. The answer surprised me while I passed out again.

Next thing I remember is waking up in the ambulance. I thought it was a dream. I wished it was a dream. When I tried to move and it hurt like hell, I knew it was not a dream.

One anecdote on this, inside the ambulance, the paramedics asked my permission to cut my motorcycle jacket in order to remove it. I didn't want them to do it, because I would need the jacket for the ride back home - I foolishly thought. With their help, I went trough extreme pain to move the body enough for them to remove the jacket from me.

I passed out again and woke up in the village's small hospital. They wouldn't check on me until I could pay a deposit for them to go ahead. And they would not accept credit card. Luckily my Nokia phone survived the crash (of course it would) and I manged to contact a Malaysian friend to help me deal with the situation. For one or two hours I was lying in the hospital bed, excruciating pain in the rib cage and unable to move my right arm. At some point I wasn't able to breath because of the rib cage pain. I called for help but nobody came.

Switching to meditation breathing from diaphragm helped me recover my breath. I managed to incorporate a bit, I could see the nurses there. They could hear me all right, but they just didn't give a damn until I had money to pay. My cousin was out there looking for food because he was hungry, he could have gone looking for an atm to pay the doctors to attend me, but hey, priorities. So this is it... it is OK, I had a good life - was my thought at that time.

Eventually, after a very long discussion, my Malaysian friend managed to offer his local identification number as a guarantee of payment until another friend's recovery van could make its way to our location. At that moment they started to administer morphine to my body. It was good.

They sent me for X-Ray. Surprisingly, I had no broken bones, just some road rash and a big concussion. Well, I had a crack in the acromion, but they missed it - it was later found by the follow up visit in Singapore. The pain in the rib cage was due to the impact against the floor. I had the phone in that pocket, and somehow it managed to hit the tissue between the ribs, but not break the ribs themselves. The phone didn't get a scratch. Regarding to loss of arm movement, they hospital was not capable of diagnosing soft bone issues, and they asked me to be relocated to a nearby city hospital for further diagnosis. They didn't bring up I should definitely had gotten a CT scan in the head.

I wanted to go to the city hospital for checkup, but my cousin (who was visiting me in Singapore for a few days so we went for a ride in Malaysia to complement the trip) was leaving the following day. My friend arrived to the place, and was going to bring my cousin back to Singapore. But he was scared of doing doing so alone, and he wanted me to get out of the hospital and go with him.

The doctor attending me wasn't very involved. He told me they could move me to the other hospital by ambulance - if I could pay for it. Else, I could stay the night or I could just go home if I wanted to. My friend, a seasoned rider, told me to stay the night because I could have some internal bleeding. The painkillers were reaching its peak, but when I was about to fall asleep the buzz was interrupted by my cousin's whining, who wanted me to accompany him back to Singapore. Relentlessly pressing me to get out of that bed.

I should have told him to fuck off. But I felt pity for him, a grown 30 year old man who is incapable of crossing a immigration border by himself. After a few attempts, I managed to stand up. I started to walk towards the door, to try to make it to the van to see if I could even make it. The unit personal was staring at me with surprised, but none of them cared enough to try to stop or help me. After several attempts, I managed to reach the door.

Long story short, I gave up to my cousin's whimpering, and despite of my friend threatening me to not do it. I sent my companions with my bank card to find an atm to get cash to pay the hospital bill. It was about 5 hours of bumpy ride ahead, so the doctor gave me a final big shot of happiness juice to endure the trip, plus lots of happiness pills.

Stayed the night in Johor, near the boarder. Upon arriving to Singapore the next day I sought local medical treatment, which will be detailed further in another post. Another anecdote on this was Singapore's immigration officer's faces when they saw me: looking like shit, walking funny, ragged clothing, one arm hanging loose and blood stains over my white shirt. I'm sure they will remember me.

Funny enough, it was later than I found that the hospital I wanted to go on the accident day, have quite a significant experience dealing with this kind of injuries, with several medical cases published. In Singapore, they see less than 5 cases per year and not so much local experience. It wasn't the best start.