Submitted by Dondea Sherer-Lykes
On July 28, 2009, I was riding my road bike with my girlfriends. We have a group of ladies that ride every Tuesday. I was feeling so great that day my husband Jeff and I were taking our eleven year old son Ben to camp in Washington that Thursday and I was really psyched to be riding with the girls before we left.
We had just finished a big climb and we stopped to chat about how great it was to be outside, riding with the girls. We felt free and without a care in the world as we started our descent through the new and not yet occupied residential development called the Preserve.
I came around a curve in the road going fast down a moderate decline. I was down on the drops. The last thing I remember was my back tire sliding out from under the bike.
My riding partners said that I flipped in the air and landed on my head and face. My bike was thrown about fifty feet away up a hill. I was unconscious for about three minutes. My girls called 911. As they were waiting for help to arrive, two local doctors happened to be riding by and they took over. I was rushed via ambulance to the University of Utah Hospital where I was greeted by a trauma team.
My injuries include fractures of most of the bones in the left side of my face, four broken ribs, fractured left shoulder, and fractures in three thoracic vertebrae. The same day of the accident, I underwent shoulder surgery to set the fracture and reattach the deltoid muscle that was completely torn from the bone. The following day I endured a six-hour facial reconstruction surgery. I spent a total of four days in the ICU at the University of Utah hospital and two days in a regular room. I have a plate holding my nose together that will be removed during another surgery in about two months. I have to wear a neck/body brace that holds my head completely still for the next four weeks. I now have a spine doctor, a face doctor and a shoulder doctor. They all expect me to make a complete recovery.
My Giro helmet is cracked down to the plastic near the front left side of the helmet, but even with all of these injuries, I did not sustain a head injury.
A big thank you to Giro from me, my husband, my son, my mom and dad and my friends. I am living proof that helmets work!
Update: I am out of my back brace/cervical collar and in physical therapy. My next surgery is November 12, 2009 to remove the plate holding my nose together.
