A Rider's Recovery: An Orthopedic Trauma Patient Story

Описание: Barry Meek is an avid motorcyclist. He was riding his bike on the Blue Ridge Parkway several April's ago when a car drifted over the center line and crashed into his motorcycle. He suffered several non-life-threatening injuries, and was taken to UVA where he was operated on by Dr. David Weiss.

Barry Meek: Because I work inside most of the time, I like to spend my free time outdoors as much as possible. I fish, I fly-fish, hike. And among the things that I really enjoy is that I'm a motorcyclist.

It was a beautiful April Sunday afternoon. We were just north of the Lexington area on the Parkway when a vehicle crossed the center line and hit us. I remember the collision. Motorcycle was on top of me. I'm conscious. I was alive and I'm here. I could visibly see that I had some significant trauma. My left arm, it was opened up from my wrist to my elbow. My jeans were split, significant injury to my knee. My boot had been essentially ripped off.

I could tell that I had significant injury to that foot, but obviously didn't really know the nature.

David Weiss, MD: When I first saw Barry, he had been admitted to the hospital after a motorcycle accident. And because you don't have a lot of protection on a motorcycle, if you hit something like a guardrail or another car or the ground, there will often be some fairly significant injuries to the lower extremities.

And so he had a lot of bad injuries to his left foot. And so most of the work that we did after the first few weeks was really getting that foot back in shape and kind of put back together.

Barry Meek: From the very early stage, Dr. Weiss explained that it was going to be a process.

Weiss: We had to take some initial steps to kind of put the bones that were out of place back in place. But we couldn't do the type of long-term surgery he needed right away. So we did some temporary surgeries, and then going back in once the swelling had gone down and starting to actually reconstruct things with plates and screws and doing more what we call internal fixation.

Barry Meek: You don't have a particular relationship with an orthopedic trauma surgeon before the trauma. And so it's not as if I was wheeled into the University of Virginia and said, oh, I'd really like to have Dr. Weiss perform the surgery. I was introduced to him through circumstance. But I found him to be extraordinarily compassionate and interested in my goals in recovery.

I remember one of the first questions he asked me was, What do you want to do? And I said, First, I want to be able to ride a motorcycle again, and second, I want to be able to put that foot-- which at the time was pretty swollen-- I want to be able to get that foot back into a Western boot, and I'd like to go fishing again. And he said, I think we can make that happen.

Weiss: Barry's recovery was outstanding. He certainly had some difficult injuries to his foot, and it took some time to get them reconstructed. But he really progressed well with the therapy, and he had set his goals of getting back on the motorcycle, and I would say that he's accomplished that in spades.

Barry Meek: Within six months I was back on a bike. I've been riding all over the country. I've taken some very long trips. And I've seen some wonderful things from the saddle of a motorcycle.