Umm yeah… This is not something I particularly expected to happen when riding a motorbike in Vietnam, even though I did think I’d get into a few bumps and scrapes. This is, as you can tell from the title, the day I was in a motorbike crash with a truck. It’s been exactly a month and one day since the accident and thank fuck (yeah sorry, this won’t be the most PG post I’ve ever written, but you’ve clicked on a link about a crash) I’m alive and well – sorry for the spoiler. Here's the story, as best as I can remember it.
The Run-Up
So that eventful day (Thursday 13th – luckily not Friday 13th) started off with waking up later than planned (still only 7:30am) because the alarm didn’t go off. I then used my new technique of using music to get them to wake up and then we all packed, put our bikes into the mechanic and eventually went off to breakfast. Once we’d finished eating, Emily and I went to the petrol station, but the electrics were down, so we decided to wait until we were on the road to fill up and we all left just after 10am. We found a petrol station pretty much straight away and filled up our bikes whilst Ryan got his bike fixed quickly (he hadn’t taken his to the mechanic – numpty). The worker filled up Ebony’s water bottle for her and Fred, Ryan and Jonty drove off and Emily and I waited for Ebony to tie her bags back onto her scooter.
The Crash
Then I accelerated off with Emily behind me and Ebony behind her. I had turned round the first corner when a truck decided it would be the right time to cut across my lane to get to the exit on my side of the road. I instinctively started braking and swerving (good thing I’d had my brakes fixed the day before), but instead of panicking, my immediate thought was: “You fucking arsehole” because I was so used to people being dickheads on the road and truck drivers are too impatient in Vietnam to stop and wait. The next thought that went through my mind was “I’m going to be okay, it won’t hit me” because I had reacted well and it looked like I’d make it. It was at this point, I worked out afterwards, that he’d started braking because he realised his mistake. Now my predicted path to safety was blocked by the truck and so my final thought was “Fuck, I’m going to hit it”.
I shut my eyes just before I was going to hit it and I think (but I’m not certain) I passed out from the pain of the impact. What I later figured out had happened was that my leg had hit the metal railing at the side of a lorry that’s supposed to stop people going underneath, taking the full force of the impact, instead of my bike which was unscathed apart from skidding along. I was lifted off my bike and turned around a little bit in the air, then just landed on my arse and fell onto my side. No skidding, the impact had been such that I just stopped. Anyhow, it was either when I touched the ground or when I was falling through the air that I woke up again.
First Aid
As I rolled back onto my butt, the first thing that I thought of wasn’t the pain, but quickly debating if I would be able to keep travelling and deciding the answer was probably (but hopefully not) no. I then felt the pain, looked down and the first thing I saw was my knee with a deep cut on my right leg, but it didn’t scare me all that much. The part that scared me was when I felt a lot more pain in my leg, looked down to my thigh and saw my sliced muscle and fat in a cut that was an inch or so deep, about 7 inches long and a few inches wide. That got me screaming “OH MY GOD, MY LEG!” and I then cupped my hands round both sides of the wound and pushed it together to keep everything in place as best as possible. There was definitely a moment of despair at this point, wondering how bad this might become because I hadn’t seen any hospitals since leaving Hanoi.
I then heard Emily screaming “Oh my god, Fabian, your leg!” (as if I didn’t already know) and I looked over to see her on the ground. I thought she’d parked up and the bike a few metres behind her was mine and she was on the ground out of shock, but apparently she’d hit the back of my bike once I’d come off and had skidded herself and the bike in a wreck on the ground was hers. She was on the verge of a panic attack before Ebony pulled up, had a quick scream herself and then told Emily to calm down because they needed to help me. They ran over and we all started screaming for someone to get an ambulance whilst I was still holding my leg together. A Spanish dude was able to pull over and help us too – I’m not entirely sure what he did, but having someone else who could speak English (I thought he was American until this afternoon) that I didn’t already know calmed me down a lot.
At this point, Emily passes me her t-shirt to put over the wound, but it wasn’t big enough to cover it all. Some local (there was a big crowd by this point) tried putting toilet roll on the wound to help, but we stopped that quickly because it would have been terrible. A different local started wrapping my knee and I shouted him to focus on the big fucking gaping hole in my leg. Instead, Ebony gave me her shirt to cover the rest of the wound and someone else handed me there’s, so I used that last one to start doing a quick tourniquet to keep the shirts in place, which someone then thankfully finished off for me much tighter than I could have done it.
I then saw a truck driver jump out of his cab and walk gingerly over, so I started screaming “Fuck you, look what you’ve done to my leg!” and gave him the finger multiple times. It turned out that this guy turned out to be a poor, random soul that was already parked up – the actual driver had already driven off because he was an arse and/or couldn’t afford to pay for my recovery. I then realised I had more important things to do and got people to bring my backpack over so that I could rest my leg (I was getting really tired trying to keep it elevated). A man then wrapped something around my big toe, which had been cut through by my flip flop, but I was really worried by how black it was.
I was moved by a bunch of locals to the side of the road, even though I didn’t really want to move, but it was the right decision. I stayed sat up as I shouted for my bag to be brought over to support my leg again. They were trying to put it under my calf, but I dragged it to under my thigh because that was the part I wanted to focus on elevating. Having said that, I made sure that people held my foot up because I could still see the black toe and I was worried it would need to be amputated (it turned out it was just a dead nail). Ebony and Emily told it was “just a fucking toe”, which was a fair point, but my balance is bad enough without me missing a toe that is fundamental to my balance.
Anyhow, so the bag was in the right place and my foot elevated, now I was just knocking my head at a guy who had positioned himself behind me so he’d let me lie down, but apparently that’s not what you’re meant to do in these situations. That same guy then told me to take my helmet off, which you’re not meant to do either, but seeing as I’d been throwing my head about and I couldn’t feel any pain, I decided to go for it. At this moment, I remembered about my GoPro that was on the right-hand side of my helmet and I saw that the GoPro had disappeared with only a few millimetres of the holder left (which shows both how close I was to hitting my head and how close I was to not hitting the truck).
The Clinic
After a while, a guy in a pick-up truck arrived to take me and Emily to what I thought would be a hospital, whilst Ebony waited for the guys to turn back round once they saw the group message telling them to turn back. The locals and Emily chucked me into the back and Emily sat in front of me, holding up my leg, even though she was still in a lot of pain from hitting her elbow in her part of the crash. I was much calmer by the time we’d got in the pick-up, even though I still had a lot of adrenaline running through me. I was able to thank Emily, as well as make jokes about not being able to take Aesop (my table) with me to go on the 4000km journey through SE Asia and be happy I’d transferred GoPro footage to my phone.
We arrived at the hospital, which seemed to be more on the size of being a clinic, and the people who drove me got the nurse. I was once again carried, this time to what I think was the only A+E bed. I noticed that I had some things that should have been inside my right leg, just sitting on my left leg (I’ve got a small dip in my leg now from where I’ve lost a little bit of tissue).
This next part was fucking painful. It always seems that fixing a wound is more painful than receiving it and unfortunately this was no different. I asked for Emily’s motorbike glove to bite on whilst the nurse was preparing her kit and I was preparing myself. The nurse then proceeded to unwrap my makeshift bandages and pour ethanol into my wound in an attempt to clean it. I was there just biting on the glove and gripping onto the bed as Emily reminded me how brave I was being and one guy (I think from the pick-up) clenched my chest, while another squeezed my shoulders. At one point during this legal torture, I was given an injection, but I’m not actually sure what it was, because I was definitely still in pain.
Once I’d got through that, I started singing the Bare Necessities to cheer myself up and then stopped pretty quickly in the fear of making people think I was in shock, but the people who were in the room said that I was good for doing it. Shortly afterwards, Fred, Ebony and Jonty arrived whilst Ryan took pictures of the crash site. Jonty talked about how lucky I was and a little bit after Ryan arrived, I got jokes about having to shave my eyebrows because I’d left my table. After saving my eyebrow, I was able to chat to my mum (apparently my dad was there too, but I didn't realise) over WhatsApp. I couldn’t hear her, so I just spent a minute telling her a less-detailed version of what happened, where I was and that I was okay.
The Ambulance
Whilst waiting for the ambulance to arrive and take me to hospital, I weeped quickly. I didn’t really know why, it might have just been shock, but we had a laugh afterwards and then the ambulance arrived soon afterwards. The boys and some other people who had been in there carried me to the trolley and then I was rolled in. I got Emily to join me in the back because she had been there from the start and was so great. Jonty almost jumped in, which I would have been more than happy with, but Emily actually had to get in because she had no bike and was injured herself.
I’d heard in the clinic that the hospital was 75km away, but I thought it must have been mistranslated. Emily checked with the nurse, but it turned out that it really was 75km away, so we just buckled in for the bumpy and painful ride. I bled through my bandage and Emily was an absolute soldier, powering through her elbow pain and fear of blood (she’s over that fear now) to support me. At one point, the driver broke really hard and that motion felt just like the crash, so I cried out of fear from that one.
We spent most of the time talking about how much worse the accident could have been. I could have hit my head, I could have braked too hard, skidded and then been flung into the truck, I could have shattered my knee cap, I could have been at the back of the group and no one stopped for me or I could have hit an artery (I realised a couple of days before writing that I was probably an inch away from cutting through my femoral artery). It’s a weird thing to say that I could have died – a bit too melodramatic and not realistic – but it was a possibility.
Pre-Op
90 minutes later, we arrived at the hospital and I was put into a ward that was seemingly full of idiots, whilst Emily sorted out my stuff and paid for the ambulance ride. I eventually had a blood test and got some X-rays done, which was really painful because I had to slide from bed to bed and move my leg to get better angles with the doctors thinking I could just hop along easily. I came back and the others arrived soon after, having driven slowly to get to the hospital. A doctor told me that my blood type is O (I assume O+ but I’ll probably have to have another test) and Ryan informed me that they’d keep driving through Nam.
The boys helped roll me onto my side so I could go for a wee into a big bottle (they’re good friends), which was once again very painful, but necessary. We found out that Emily’s elbow wasn’t broken, which was a massive surprise seeing how little she could move it and the pain she was in, but it was obviously good news. The others then said goodbye and I was wheeled into the orthopaedic trauma ward. I then got all of the nurses on the floor wanting to meet the white guy in the motorbike crash. For those of you that haven’t had the pleasure, it’s very nice having a swarm of nurses telling you that you’re attractive and that you have nice eyes – it’s better than any painkiller. I didn’t appreciate it so much when they gave me a million injections, but I still couldn’t complain. After a nice snooze and a few hours waiting, I was sent for my operation.
Surgery
A surgeon who thankfully spoke a decent amount of English (the nurses knew none), asked me to fill out a form and give consent to the surgery. I was put onto the operating table, linked up to the heart rate monitor and given some oxygen through my nose. The surgeon told me that I would be given “a lot of anaesthetic”, but when I was injected in my spine and didn’t fall asleep, I realised he actually said local anaesthetic and by that, he meant an epidural. They put a piece of material up in front of me, as if I was about to have a Caesarean, and put a bunch of sheeting under my leg before unwrapping my leg. The thing with an epidural is that you can still feel what’s going on and so you’re not completely numb. With it not being entirely numb, them rubbing ice over my leg and knee to freeze the nerves meant that the deep cut in my knee was really quite painful.
Soon enough the pain disappeared and the operation got underway. They started by cleaning my insides and then I felt them suctioning and tugging at my leg. I started chatting to one of the doctors and once they’d finished stitching my insides together, he took a picture of my leg and showed it to me. That made me go “woah ho hooo!” It was such a wide cut that it had quite a cool factor about – my leg shouldn’t be open like that. The doctor took some pictures of me (they’d been doing this frequently since I’d got into the ambulance, probably to cover their arses if something went wrong), so I asked if there was any way of getting the pictures. Turns out there was and I now have a Vietnamese doctor as my friend on Facebook.
I was told that the surgery was taking longer than normal because I have fat thighs… I’m going to say he meant big aka strong and that it was just lost in (Google) translation. Whilst they finally got to stitching the outside of my leg together, I was told by a nurse at the back of the room that I was attractive and then one of the surgeons asked me if I’d ever “made love with a woman from Vietnam.” Unfortunately the answer was no and I was slightly saddened that my injuries restricted my movement so much. Anyhow, they finished up on my leg after around 90 minutes, at which most people left and a couple of people got to work on my toe. I heard a big click at one point, so I guess it was dislocated from the accident.
Post-Op
After the operation, I was taken to a room where I was on my own and I tried to sleep because it had been such a strenuous 6 hours. After a while, I was sent to a ward where I was given an IV drip and waited for the rest of the Nam Biker Gang to arrive. During this time, I couldn’t understand why the nurses kept putting a towel over my crotch. I realised that the combination of having the ice rubbed on my leg and the epidural meant that I had had a semi for a couple of hours - woops. Anyhow, when the NBG did arrive at 7pm, they were just awesome. They made me laugh and they had bought me some gifts: Jonty got me a superman watch (long story), Ryan got me a little girl doll (weird story), Emily a keyring with a B on it for Buzz (my great friend/bike), Ebony a lego truck so I could build and then hit it and Fred got me a bunch of snacks and sugary drinks. They put these gifts inside of a Mitre sports bag that had Vietnam and the Vietnamese flag printed on the side.
I found out that Ryan and Jonty had done a great job corresponding with my parents. Already, my parents had spoken to insurance, got me a case officer from International SOS (a company used by my dad’s business) and my mum had got flights to come to Vinh (where my hospital was) and would be arriving on Saturday. In the meantime, Emily, Ebony, Ryan and Jonty would all stay until Sunday morning so they could help my mum out and Fred would be leaving Friday morning because he had a tighter schedule than the rest of us. A woman I had seen earlier came in to give me dinner and she’d brought two chicken burgers from KFC (although I could only eat one) and gave me a bunch of other stuff for me to use during my stay at the hospital. I ate and we continued to chat. I really enjoyed having the guys there and then they headed off at 8:30pm and would return later with some films downloaded onto my phone.
Night Pains
Once they had left, I tried writing my journal, but ended up just falling asleep. A little while later, I woke up in a massive amount of pain. Not because of my leg, but because of some awful indigestion. You see, having numb muscles around your crotch area and drinking fizzy drinks is not the best combination. When Ryan and Jonty turned up at 10pm to drop off my phone and say good night, I got them to get the doctor because the pain was so bad, but there was nothing he could do apart from give me some paracetomol.
It was only at half past midnight, after more than two hours of being unable to sleep, that I texted the nurse (they didn’t have call buttons by the beds) because I was finally able to go to the loo. I was wheeled over in my bed to in front of the bathroom and then I needed to hobble a few metres with nothing but a Vietnamese nurse half my weight to help me over. It wasn’t the easiest thing anyway, but holding onto my IV bag and the drain for my leg didn’t exactly help matters. It was painful getting there, but the rest of the process came naturally and after getting back to bed, I slept like a baby.
What a fucking day.
P.S. Goodbye Buzz (the bike) and Aesop (the table), may they rest in peace forever.
P.P.S. An enormous thanks to everyone who helped me out on the day and the people behind the scenes