CardiffBaseball, yes, there was a lawsuit. We all sued her insurance company. It took one year to settle. It takes a long time to go through this type of lawsuit. For one, you have to heal as much as possible, so everyone knows just how bad you are hurt. They base a settlement on the percent of impairment due to the injury. Luckily for all of us, she had a lot of insurance. Three injured riders all at once. The whole experience was a real learning experience. One, I found out that my wife and I had been very under insured. You just don’t think about bad things that can happen and how you need to protect yourself and your assets. If this lady had been an uninsured driver we wouldn’t had gotten much, because we weren’t carrying very high limits at the time. We fixed that. Two, I found out why you should have long term disability insurance. As it was, I had short term insurance through work and it was enough to cover my expenses while I was out of work. If my neck had been broken….. man that would have been bad. Of course the settlement reimbursed all expenses, plus some more $$. As you said, the money doesn’t give me my knee back and I’d rather have my knee working at 100%. The car hit me and my buddies said I went about fifteen feet in the air, spinning like a top. I landed down the road in the ditch. Looked down and where my knee cap used to be was a big dent. I couldn’t get up and both of my legs hurt something awful. Ended up that both knees were hit, but the right knee just had a deep bone bruise and a fracture. The left patella was busted into a bunch of little pieces. The doc put the three biggest pieces back together with pins and wire. I’m 47 now (almost 48), I was 46 at the time. I did road riding to train for mountain bike races. Endurance stuff just for fun. I wasn’t real fast, but could ride for long periods, so was doing 12 hour solo races and 24 hour races. The accident destroyed the cartiledge in my knee, so instant arthritis is the result. I am back cycling again, but not the level as before the accident. I didn’t get enough money out of the settlement to retire (not serious enough injury), but it did give us a nice nest egg. We were already in pretty good shape, so it just made things better. But now there are things I can’t do. I used to run marathons. Not anymore. I can’t run. Can’t squat. The knee just won’t bend enough. My knee just doesn’t work right anymore. I can cycle, but only because I wouldn’t believe the doctor when he said I wouldn’t ever ride again. I made my knee do it. The last time I saw the doctor he told me that he was amazed at my recovery. After the first surgery my knee wouldn’t bend enough to allow a full spin of my bike crank. I would hook my feet under my weight bench and grab my weight rack and force my leg to bend. Tears in the eyes, but over time I got the tendons to stretch back out (or whatever was breaking loose in there). Plus going to physical therapy two days a week for months. It was so much pain involved with recovery, you wouldn’t know. I doubt I will ever race again, though I am going to try someday. I just had my third surgery this past September, so time will tell. I did not know how long it takes to recover from a serious injury. I had never broken anything until that day. All I can say is don’t ever injure a joint. They don’t mend like just breaking a bone.
