Bikes and Cars Don’t Mix!

Okay, most of you have heard that Christopher got hit by a car. It happened on Feb 2nd (so I will date this entry as that). Really they kind of hit each other, but the bike (his old bmx one, not the new one!) and Christopher did, of course, get the worst end of the deal. The road, coming from the school, is going down a hill, and a car was just leaving the stop sign he was coming to. So instead of stopping at the stop sign, and since his breaks weren’t slowing him down quite as much as he needed, he decided to try to cross with the car just leaving the stop sign he was coming to. Unfortunately, he could not keep up with the car and by the time he was coming to the middle of the intersection the car was already through, and the cross traffic, not seeing him, started to go. The driver saw Christopher just a split second before he hit the front fender, and she slammed on her brakes. He flew up onto the hood of the truck, slamming his right thigh and inside left shin against the side of the truck in the process, then he flew or rolled off and landed on the pavement, hitting his chin and scraping his hands to stop his head and face from hitting the ground. In the diagram the red arrow is Christopher and the aqua one is the truck.

Meanwhile, I was at home wondering what was taking him so long to get home, figuring he must be riding with his new friend. After a while the phone rings and it is a police officer telling me he has hit a car and that he has a cut on his chin, but that he appears to be all right. He then asks me if I would like to come down there. I told Mother where I was going and grabbed my purse and drove to the intersection. As I drove up I saw several vehicles with flashing lights. A few cop cars, an ambulance, a fire truck and a bunch of people standing in a large circle with Christopher sitting in the middle of this circle, in the middle of the intersection, I might add! There were a few dents to the truck, and the trucks front tire was on his bike. Because Christopher had not learned our phone number here, nor the address, the officers called the school. The principal and another lady came down to the accident with his emergency info to call.

So they all told me what happened and the paramedics thought that he might need a stitch in his chin and asked if I wanted to take him to the hospital or if I wanted them to take him. I said I would and told them I had just moved here and asked where the best place to take him was. There was actually an urgent care place not very far.

After taking him down there and waiting for quite a while the doc said, “yes”, it needed a stitch. Christopher did not want a stitch and said he was willing to live with a scar (at his age scars cool, but I keep telling him that when you grow up, they are not so cool anymore!) The doc said he might be able to use dermabond and glue it, but that if it didn’t hold he would have to put a stitch in it. I think the most pain he had through this whole thing was when they had to clean the area before they could glue it. It glued just fine and no stitch was needed. He had some nasty bruises on his legs for a while but even they healed. Here are a few pictures of his chin. The first one is the day after with the steristrips over it to help hold the glue. The other is after it started healing and the steristrips had fallen off.

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