An X-Ray showing Jeff's right arm fracture

There is a biker attorney named Jeff H. in Korea that has become a long distance pen pal of sorts with me.

Over the years since I started the Biker Law Blog, he has shared comments, exchanged emails, and such.

Jeff lives, works, and rides, in the nation of Korea, and yes he is a real biker lawyer like me.

A couple of days ago Jeff informed me that he was in a motorcycle accident, and sent me the following letter through the blog describing his accident.

He states that “even biker lawyers can go down once in a while. Be Careful.”

I suggest that all of you read this letter carefully. Maybe it will save your live. It is not often that you get a firsthand account of an accident such as this, written by a fellow attorney.

Jeff I wish you Godspeed on your recovery.

Below is the actual letter sent to me by Jeff in Korea:

Okay. Some of you have no idea what happened to me. Others know basically what happened to me. I think only a few of you know exactly what happened to me. Now that I have this nifty software that allows me to speak into a microphone and watch the words magically appear on the computer screen, I can sit back, rest my arms, and tell you all what happened.

Early in the afternoon of October 30, 2010, my friend Jeremy and I were riding our motorcycles to lunch. After a delicious lunch at the Seamen’s Club, Jeremy headed home, and I took off by myself to go take care of some other business. Just before 1 PM, I was riding along a four-lane highway with two lanes going in each direction. I like to take this particular road because it’s not well traveled by other vehicles, so there’s not much traffic to worry about.

I was southbound on the inside lane nearest to the double yellow lines, and another car was approaching northbound from the opposite direction on the inside lane nearest the double yellow line. Suddenly, and without any warning whatsoever, a large delivery truck that was sitting on the right shoulder of the road completely outside of the traffic lanes began to make an illegal U-turn directly in front of me in an effort to proceed in the northbound lane. However, due to the other car that was traveling opposite me in the northbound lane, the delivery truck could not complete the illegal U-turn and he had to stop his truck directly in front of me, blocking both southbound lanes.

He pulled out and stopped in front of me so quickly that I didn’t have time or space to maneuver around the truck. So, I slammed on my brakes, locked my wheels, honked my horn, cursed as loudly as possible, and prayed for the best. Unfortunately, it was not my lucky day. At some point in the space of what I estimate to be about 2 seconds between the time that he began to pull out in front of me and the time that I slammed broadside into the side of his truck, I realized that there was no way I was going to be able to stop.

I had no time to take any other evasive maneuvers or safety measures, such as laying the bike down or doing anything else. I T-boned the truck. I hit broadside. Hard. Very, very hard.

I don’t remember actually hitting the truck. I remember getting very, very close to it, and I remember bouncing off the truck. The next thing I remember was lying on my back in the middle of the road. So, I remember approaching the truck, bouncing off the truck, and laying in the road. The actual impact and landing in the road are gone from my memory.

The driver got out of his truck, and immediately started calling for an ambulance, the police, his company, his insurance company, and anyone else he could reach. I remember mumbling something to him like, “why? Why couldn’t you wait 3 seconds to make that turn?”

It took a few minutes for the police to arrive. While waiting, I had one of the most incredible sensations of my entire life. I knew that my right arm was badly broken because I could distinctly feel that my right hand was laying flat on the road up to my elbow, but my shoulder felt like my arm was pointing straight up in the air. I tried to flex my fingers, but my fingers didn’t move. It still felt like I was pointing toward the sky, but my hand remained flat on the road. It was really a very weird sensation. Also, my left wrist hurt and I couldn’t move my fingers on my left hand, so I knew that my left hand was broken somewhere as well. I knew that both of my arms hurt like hell, but because of the adrenaline or some other reason, the pain wasn’t nearly as bad as it probably should have been.

When the police and the ambulance arrived, the first thing they did, which is something that is standard in every Korean vehicle accident, was to paint the outline of the truck. They spray painted the outline of my bike where it was, and I remember them mucking around and spray painting the outline of my body. It was sort of like a crime scene body outline like you see on TV.

The next thing was the ambulance driver, the EMT, and the policeman wondering how to get big old me onto the gurney and into the back of the ambulance. Eventually, and with no small amount of jostling my broken arms, they managed to get me on to the very narrow gurney and into the back of the ambulance. Now, at this point, it must be understood that Korean ambulances are not like ambulances in America. Ambulances are not these big, huge, spacious, fully equipped mobile trauma centers. Korean ambulances are more like old Volkswagen minivans. They’re very narrow, very old, and in generally very poor condition.

It was my intention to go to Pusan National University Hospital, which is approximately 20 min. away from the accident site in normal traffic. However, due to the fact that the ambulance I was in had no suspension whatsoever, I felt every bump, every pothole, every rock, every cigarette butt, and every gust of air. This made me extremely uncomfortable. Because of this discomfort, I had no choice but to ask the ambulance driver to take me to a closer hospital. The closest hospital was Haedong Hospital.

A quick back story for those who don’t know: Almost exactly 4 years ago, I was involved in another motorcycle accident that left me with a shattered femur in my right thigh. I was treated for that accident at Haedong Hospital. They put a titanium plate and 15 screws in my right thigh. After five weeks in the hospital, I was released. Six days after my release, the titanium plate broke. I had to return to Haedong Hospital, where they opened up my thigh removed the broken plate, did various surgical procedures, and replaced the broken plate with a longer, wider thicker titanium plate. I had my theories as to why the titanium plate broke, and the filed a malpractice lawsuit against the hospital and the doctor that performed the surgery. After lengthy negotiations, we reached a settlement that I was slightly less than happy with, but I could live with it.

Fast forward back to the date of this current accident. I arrived in Haedong Hospital, and was wheeled into the emergency room. The emergency room physician confirmed that I had a broken arm above the elbow on my right arm and my left wrist was broken. I finally had a chance to look at my left wrist and knew immediately what had happened because I had suffered nearly exactly the same break when I was in junior high school. I knew exactly how it felt and looked. The doctor confirmed that I had suffered a compression fracture on my wrist, which basically meant that I had completely destroyed my wrist joint and the two bones in my forearm had pushed up and past the bones in my wrist, so my wrist was actually below the two bones on my arm.

The emergency room doctor sent me out to do x-rays. I won’t get into how uncomfortable it was to manipulate my broken right arm to take x-rays, but I will suffice to say it was extremely painful. After the x-rays, I was wheeled back to the emergency room, where the emergency room physician told me that due to the swelling in my wrist and arm it would not be possible to perform the surgery until the swelling had decreased. He said that the surgery would most likely take place on the following Monday, which was two days after the accident. I asked him why this was the case, and he explained that if you perform the surgery while the arms are swollen, then it makes it harder to stretch the skin over the swollen arm to close the injury, which can lead to a much greater risk of infection.

They wheeled me up to the eighth floor and into a private room. The eighth floor is where I spent my two stints in the hospital for my broken femur four years previously. In fact, I was next door to the room I was in last time I was at Haedong Hospital. The head nurse was the same person, and she recognized me. Also, one of the nurses from my previous visit was still working there, and she recognized me as well. They both expressed their concerns that I was back in the hospital.

The nursing staff kept me comfortable during the weekend. They advised me that the physician who would be performing my surgery would visit me on Monday. Imagine my surprise when Monday morning rolled around, and the doctor walked into my room and he was the doctor that I had filed my medical malpractice lawsuit against. AWKWARD!

After a few uncomfortable moments and some even more uncomfortable small talk, he advised that my arm and wrist were still too swollen to do the surgery on that day. He said that they would give me medicine to help the swelling go down as early as possible, but that it would be at least Wednesday before the surgery could be performed. It made me extremely unhappy that I would have to wait for five days after the accident to have my broken limbs repaired. But, what was I to do?

Tuesday evening, the nurse stopped by to tell me that my surgery would take place the following morning, and that I was not to eat or drink anything from that time forward. Just before I settled down and went to sleep, the doctor came in and told me there was a problem. He said that there was a special tube that they needed to insert into my throat to keep me breathing after I was placed under anesthetic, but that they didn’t have that particular tube at the hospital at that time. My first question was why they didn’t have it at the hospital. He replied that they had sent it out to be replaced a couple of weeks earlier, but that it had not been replaced yet. My next question was how they did surgery on other people without that particular tube. I was told that generally when doing surgery on Koreans, they used a smaller tube, but it was necessary to use a larger tube for me. I took that to mean that they could probably use the same tube that they use for everybody else, but he wanted to do the surgery as properly as possible, and wanted to use the best equipment in light of our earlier lawsuit.

I asked how long it would take to get the equipment back at the hospital. The doctor told me it would take approximately 2 more weeks. I sputtered something about it being utterly ridiculous to expect me to lay in my bed with two broken arms for two more weeks to await surgery. I told them that I would be transferring to another hospital the next day. The doctor seemed visibly relieved by this decision.

I asked him what hospital he would recommend that I go to. He said that any university level hospital should be sufficient. He went on to tell me that I had to understand that because my injuries were not life-threatening and not considered an emergency, I would likely not be able to receive surgery immediately at the new hospital, and I would probably have to wait until the doctor assigned to my case had free time in his schedule to perform the surgery.

I asked him to recommend the hospital that could perform the surgery the quickest. He said that he did not have any connections with any other doctors at other hospitals that would allow him to order them to treat me any faster than they could or even to request that they treat me as fast as they could. He said that the only hospital that really would provide him with an opportunity to politely ask that they try to see me as swiftly as possible would be Pusan National University Hospital. I said I would go to that hospital and asked him to make the arrangements as quickly as possible.

The next morning, Wednesday morning, the doctor came to my room and advised me that there was yet another problem. He said that from that morning until the end of the week, all of the anesthesiologists in the country were attending a major conference, and that the anesthesiologists who remained at the hospitals were only working on patients who were in life-threatening situations. The doctor told me that because my situation was not considered life-threatening, I would probably not be able to have my surgery until the following Monday, nine days after my accident, regardless of which hospital I transferred to. This made me extremely upset.

I asked him which of three particular hospitals would treat me the fastest in his estimation. One of my suggestions included the brand-new and, by Korean standards, quite luxurious hospital, Baek Hospital in Haeundae, Pusan, which was about 45 minutes away. He said that that hospital would probably be my best bet for faster surgery. I told them to make the arrangements immediately. He said he would.

Within a couple of hours. I completed my checkout procedures and was being loaded into yet another tiny little ambulance for the journey to the new hospital. The ambulance driver was going to take the inner city Expressway, which would’ve taken a very long time to get me to the hospital. So, I suggested that he drive through town, go through a particular tunnel, and cross the bridge that runs across the bay and leads right to the hospital’s front door, which would take a much shorter time than the route they had planned. They complimented me on my brilliant idea.

Unfortunately, they decided to try to improve on my idea. They decided that they would take a shorter route to the tunnel. I didn’t notice this until I looked out the window of the ambulance and saw that we weren’t where I thought we should have been. I asked where we were going, and they told me they were taking the pier road to the tunnel. I specifically did not want to go on this road because I knew that it was under major construction and that there were potholes, bumps, train tracks, and various other obstacles along this road. As such, I was forced to endure perhaps the bumpiest ride that could be conceived by the human brain.

Eventually, we reached the new hospital. As we pulled into the driveway up to the emergency room, the ambulance driver commented, “wow, THIS is what a hospital looks like.”

I was wheeled into the emergency room, and was pleased to note that they were awaiting my arrival. The emergency room staff was friendly, helpful, and very professional. They took excellent care of me. They made me as comfortable as possible. However, that was all to end too soon.

So the doctor came and told me they would have to take new x-rays and perform CT scans on both limbs. They wheeled me into the into the x-ray room and took the x-rays as carefully as possible. The next stop was to the CT room, where they did their best not to hurt me anymore than they had to. After those steps were complete, they wheeled me back to the emergency room to await the doctor’s further opinion.

The doctor came and said that my left wrist was not that badly broken and probably should have been treated immediately after the accident. By simply resetting the bone and wrapping my hand in a cast. However, because five days had elapsed since the accident, the bone had started to heal again, and they would have to re-break it before setting it again. I said that would be no problem, and told him to shoot me up with painkillers and anesthetic and then to go on with the procedure. He informed me that it had to be done without the benefit of anesthetic. He went on to tell me that it was more dangerous NOT to use anesthetic because my arm would be dead, and they wouldn’t have the benefit of my screams to tell them how much they were moving the arm.

They wheeled me into the emergency surgery room, and told me that they were sorry for what they were about to do to me. One guy grabbed my left bicep, and the other guy grabbed my left forearm in one hand and my left hand in his other hand. The second guy then proceeded to twist and pull my wrist until he heard it snap and I screamed. He said it was done and wrapped me up. He then sent me off for a new round of x-rays to determine whether it could be set by hand or would require surgery.

After examining the x-rays, the doctor decided it would be worth trying to set my hand without surgery. I asked him how that was done. He said it was done the same way as re-breaking my arm but backwards. In other words, they would hold my arm and he would pull my arm and try to force the bone back into place, again using my screams to determine how well things were going. That was a horrible procedure, and equally as painful as having it re-broken. He then sent me for another round of x-rays.

After examining the latest x-rays, he determined that the wrist hadn’t been set well enough, and that I would, in fact, have to have surgery. So, as it turned out, it was not necessary for me to go through the pain of having it reset by hand. Oh well, nice try.

The doctor told me about the anesthesiologist situation. He said they would get me into surgery as soon as possible, but he didn’t know if it would be that day or the next day. He did guarantee that I wouldn’t have to wait five more days to get my arms set.

They began procedures of arranging for me to have a room in the hospital. By now, it was getting late in the day. It was about 4:30 PM. unexpectedly, the doctor came over and told me that the anesthesiologist had decided to stay around and perform my surgery that day. Luckily, I had not eaten anything since the night before, so there was no problem with waiting for me to digest food in my stomach.

They immediately began preparing me for surgery. Soon, I was wheeled into the operating room, and hooked up to numerous machines, tubes, and needles. They told me that the procedures would begin shortly. I asked who the head anesthesiologist was, and was introduced to the man. I thanked him profusely for agreeing to perform my surgery that day. He seemed genuinely touched that I would take time to say that to him.

With those niceties out of the way, the anesthesiologist opened the valve on one of the tubes. Anesthetic flowed into my veins, and it was lights out. I awoke several hours later in my spacious private room. The doctor stopped by a short while later and explained that they had the steel plate in my left wrist and that they had put to plates in my right arm one on each side of the humerus, which is the bone that runs from the elbow to the shoulder.

I left the hospital a week after surgery. Now I’m in the process of slowly recovering. My left wrist is still a little bit swollen, and the joint is still very stiff. My right arm is what is causing the concern. The break in my right arm was an inch or two above the elbow joint. This is a very unusual and dangerous place for a break to occur. This is because the radial nerve into the hand runs directly across the location of the break. The radial nerve is the nerve that controls the extension of the fingers and the raising of the wrist. The doctor said I was extremely lucky not to sever the nerve or damage the nerve covering. However, in the course of placing two steel plates in my arm, they couldn’t help but move the nerve and do some minor bruising to the nerve.

As a result of the concussion or contusion or bruising of the nerve, my right hand remains about 60% paralyzed, and I have sensation of only about 50% of the back of my right hand. I can lower my wrist and to curl my fingers. However, I cannot raise my wrist or fully extend my fingers. The doctors assure me that the feeling and motion will eventually return to my hand, but that it could take anywhere from one to four months. It’s only been three weeks and a couple of days since the accident, but I’m becoming very impatient for the use of my right hand. As it stands now, because my right hand is mostly paralyzed, I can only type with the index finger of my right hand. Also, because the joint is so stiff in my left wrist and because it hurts to bend it in the position of the keyboard, I can only type with my left index finger. Thus, I do two-finger hunt and peck typing. This makes my arm and wrist tired and painful.

Thankfully, I made the smart decision to buy the Dragon Naturally Speaking software, which allows me to speak into a microphone and watch my voice be converted to text. I am completely satisfied with this program. In fact, it’s actually more accurate and much faster than my actual typing. I fully intend to continue using the software even after I’m healed.

The road to recovery will be long. However, I will get through it.

As far as compensation goes, I’m very lucky. Thankfully, the delivery truck driver was insured in just about every way possible. Even better, the truck driver’s insurance company is one of my law firm’s major clients. And, even better than that, I am very well acquainted with the insurance adjuster that is been assigned to handle my accident. He’s taking very good care of me, and actually doing more than is required of him. So, if everything continues this way, then I should be able to get through this without having to file a lawsuit. But, if I have to, at least I know I have a good lawyer. Ha!

This should suffice to let you all know what happened to me over the past three weeks. Drive safely, and please, PLEASE WATCH OUT FOR MOTORCYCLES!

End of Letter.

If you or a loved one has been involved in a motorcycle accident anywhere in the State of California, call the real California Biker Lawyer Norman Gregory Fernandez for a free consultation at 800-816-1529 x. 1.

California Motorcycle Accident Attorney Website