Mountain Biker Breaks Her Neck, Barely Escapes Dying -- But Unrepentant!
Mike Vandeman
Mike
http://www.lodinews.com/articles/2009/10/07/sports/1_accident_091007.txt
Lauren Liden smiles as she talks about her love of mountain biking
while in her Woodbridge home. Liden crashed and broke her neck during
a recent race in South Dakota. (Dan Evans/News-Sentinel)
Broken neck can't stop Woodbridge cyclist Lauren Liden
By Joelle Milholm
News-Sentinel Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 7, 2009 6:21 AM PDT
Comments (1 comment(s))
While her body lay flat on the ground, Lauren Liden's mind was racing.
The Woodbridge resident wondered how she went from riding her mountain
bike to being tossed into the air before landing head first on the
ground.
With a throbbing headache and blood rushing from her nose, she tried
to analyze the situation. She could wiggle her toes and fingers. She
had feeling up and down her body. She wasn't paralyzed, but she knew
something wasn't right.
As an ambulance came to take her out of the adventure race in which
she was competing in the hills of South Dakota to the hospital in
Rapid City, she began to think her neck was broken.
She was right. Liden fractured her C1 vertebrae, the very top bone in
her neck. Luckily for Liden, it didn't touch her spinal cord. Outside
of immense pain and a short stint in a few different neck braces,
Liden won't have any permanent damage from the accident.
"I could have been dead or I could have been in a wheelchair. To me
this is nothing," Liden said recently, pointing to the immobilizing
headgear that is strapped from her back to the top of her head. "I
will be as good as new in four or five months and back to what I was
doing and I am extremely lucky."
It's hard to believe it's all from a stick that popped up off the
trail and jammed itself into her front tire, bending two of her spokes
like an elbow and launching Liden into the air like a projectile.
The Race
Liden is a cyclist. Whether it's road riding, hitting mountain trails
or summer adventures with her husband Lyle, she spends a lot of time
on her bike. So when she was approached about competing in Primal
Quest a 10-day adventure race covering 600 miles of biking,
trekking, climbing, caving, kayaking, river boarding and more with the
majority of the miles coming on the bike she couldn't refuse.
So she joined a three other Stockton Bicycle Club members who were
in need of a female rider for the coed race and headed to South
Dakota in mid-August.
Liden's squad, Team Spanos, hiked a marathon with their camping gear
on day one. They continued through the race, biking and caving,
working hard and only sleeping about two hours a night.
"I was having a blast," said Liden, a veterinary doctor who owns Dry
Creek Veterinary Hospital in Galt. "I would have to say I was having
the time of my life in this race."
Halfway through the fourth day, Team Spanos realized they'd taken a
wrong turn during a biking section of the competition. Once they
figured out they were on the wrong road, they turned around to
backtrack in search of the right one.
On the way back, they met up with Big City Mountaineering, another
team that took the same wrong turn. As they pedaled back to the
original trail on a forest service road not a technically
challenging ride Liden glanced back to talk to one of the Big City
Mountaineering riders.
Bam! That's when it happened.
"I caught her out of the corner of my eye. I saw her going over her
handlebars," said Liden's teammate, Steve Peppard, a Galt resident and
Stockton Police Officer. "I knew it wasn't going to be good. Then I
heard her land."
The Crash
Liden said that those who saw the crash believe she flew about 30
feet. She landed straight on her head, like a railroad spike being
driven into the ground by inertia. Her helmet, which now shows a crack
in its interior foam, saved her life.
"One minute I'm on my bike, riding down the trail. No big deal," Liden
recalls of the crash. "The next minute I'm airborne and for a split
second I remember thinking 'Whoa what I'm I doing in the air.' And
then I smack on the ground. Just in milliseconds. It was so fast."
The impact broke her neck and brought intense pain to her entire head.
Her sunglasses were impaled into her nose. Her teammates had to pull
them out of her face, leaving a gash across the bridge of nose that
would later require three stitches and has left an X-shaped scar.
Her jaw throbbed. Her ears rung. Her eyes, reacting from a traumatic
impact, became painfully sensitive to light.
"The regular sunlight was like the light of 10,000 suns burning my
eyes," Liden said. "It was so bright."
Her teammates covered her eyes with a towel, which they also soaked
with water for Liden to suck on. They forced her to remain still,
trying to stabilize her neck an effort that saved her life and
prevented paralysis. Even taking a sip of water was too dangerous.
While waiting for the ambulance, Liden, who was fully conscious,
started to realize the severity of her injury.
"I was thinking this is the bad kind of pain and there was no way I
was going to finish that race," she said.
The Aftermath
More often than not, fractures to the top two vertebrae result in
paralysis or death. Test results revealed that Liden's ligaments held
the fractured C1 in place. The broken vertebrae didn't touch the
spinal cord.
The break also could have damaged nerves that connect to the
diaphragm, like what happened in Christopher Reeve's paralyzing
horseback-riding injury. In that case, Liden would not have been able
to breathe and could have died or spent the rest of her life needing
respiratory assistance.
Many times when vertebrae are broken, they must be surgically fused
together to create permanent stability. With no vertebrae above C1,
Liden would have had to have the broken vertebrae fused to her skull,
severely limiting her neck and head mobility for the rest of her life.
Once again, Liden got lucky and her C1 showed enough stability to
eliminate the need for surgery. She was even allowed to leave the
hospital, fitted in her halo tightly strapped to her head, neck and
back, five days after the crash.
A few days later, she traveled back to Lodi.
At first Liden's activities were very limited. She couldn't move
around much, or even lift a gallon of milk. Getting dressed and taking
a bath were grueling activities.
Day by day, Liden was able to do more. Now she's able to go to the gym
and can even lift 15 pound weights. She's got her stationary training
bike up in her backyard and rides it almost every day.
In the immediate future, she's looking forward to ditching the halo
for a less obstructive neck brace. Then she'll be able to slowly get
back to work.
She's bummed she'll be inactive for the snowboarding season, as she
already bought a pass to Kirkwood. She constantly pesters doctors
about when the halo can come off and when she can get back on the
bike. She's hoping to be training and racing again come early 2010.
"It's really scary what could have happened," Liden said. "People look
at this whole getup and say 'oh you poor thing.' But I am so lucky."
Sparky
Thanks, Mike. Good to read about what injury is possible. Makes me a better
mt. biker!
Regards.
Paul O
> Stupidity, your name is "mountain biker"!
>
> Mike
>
>
> http://www.lodinews.com/articles/2009/10/07/sports/1_accident_091007.txt
>
>
Ok, so mountain biking can be dangerous. What's your point?
--
Paul D Oosterhout
I work for SAIC (but I don't speak for SAIC)
pmh
Mikey has no "point," only a focus for his pathological hatred of
mountain bikes. There are [according to his exalted vantage] no
ecological/environmental/sociological/cultural degeneracies deeper,
blacker or more sinful than mountain bikes.
PMH
martin
Support environmentally conscious mountain bikers who stay on trails,
don't spook wildlife, etc. The others need a dose of piano wire.
tt
Bill Sornson
> Support environmentally conscious mountain bikers who stay on trails,
> don't spook wildlife, etc. The others need a dose of piano wire.
>
> tt
Gee, that sounds like a TERRORIST THREAT, Mr. Humanitarian. (Anonymous POS,
big surprise.) Sure hope no one reports you to DHS...
BS