Guess what I’ve got in my pocket?

i have to go to the hospital this month you have my neck checked out.

still causing me problems when i ride my road bike. all coz of that muppit crashing into me.

hope i get a pay out [:^(]

 

good luck with it all.

 

cheers i think ill need it after what i hear you been through!

 

it only took 5 years and 11 months.............

 

wow! still at least you persisted with it and got what you diserved. most people probably would have given up

 

I only got about 40% of what I could have got if I'd gone to court and won, decided to settle out of court instead.

 

about 12k?

good on you, but you prob should've got more.

you gonna tell the story now?

 

a hole

 

Nice one for getting it all sorted... This for your crash then? Any word on your eyes?

Tom

 

yeah what actually happened? And whats wrong with your arm?

 

OK, here goes.

6 years ago, at Bug Jam 12, Santa Pod. I'd had a right skin full on the Friday night, so I was staying off the booze on the Saturday, had a couple or tinnys, BBQ and all that jazz then went on a wander around the site with my mates. got to the top of the strip and in the field near "The Barn" there was a bloke doing Grass Karting. a grass kart being a go kart with knobbly tyres and a roll cage. There was 3 karts, but he only let 2 on at a time as the other was a spare.

so, one of my mates decided he wasn't that bothered, so me and my other mate went on. he staggered the start so we weren't too close to each other. but I clipped the tyres and lost out on a lap so I had some catching up to do. getting towards the last bend, and I braked and turned in amd the stepped on the gas. as you'd guess the back end stepped out, and I was expecting it to slide around the bend, but mid corner I hit something, a rut or rock or something I couldn't see and it jolted the steering really hard. now, this normally wouldn't be a problem, but I had my hands tied to the wheel. so I got a really nasty jolt on my left arm as the strap dug in and it also bent my thumb back. The kart also stated to roll at this point, and I was told later it went over twice, then set on fire, upseide down. so, I don't know if I broke my arm on the strap, or whether the steap failed and I caught in in the roll cage, I just know I flet the jpolt, knew it was tipping over, then blacked out.

I came round, to find a rather nasty big black mark on my arm, and a hole where the bone had been through, as you can imagine, it was p1sing with blood, and I was covered in it. it lookedlike someone had just killed a pig.

had to wait about half an hour for the ambulance to arrive. it wasn't hurting that much, it was just burning, it felt REALLY hot and I knew it was broken. got taken to bedford hospital, where they put a plate in it and stiched it up.

afew days later I developed compartment syndrome, and the muscles in my forearm had gone a bit mental which mean I couldn't move my hand as it was all curled up. the stiches started coming out too as marm was swolling up like a ballon.

so they had to open it up again and perform a fasciotomy, an operation on the muscles. I then had to wait a week for a bed in the plastics ward, but it was too busy. I waited and waited, with nothing to eat, and no visitors, they didn't even change my dressings.

when my g/f and mother come down to see me they demanded I was transferred closer to home, up to middlesbrough. so I got taken up there in the back of an abulance. green slime was coming out of the bottom of my bandages by the time I got there. I didn't know this at the time, but I had an infection in the wound, and if it'd got to my bones they'd have had to cut my arm off!!

anyway, had to wait another wek whilst the ming cleared up. which meant having to have all my dressing stripped off and it scraped out evry morning just before breakfast, which is when I took the pic you all love. after a week, it was cleared up, and I went and had the plactic surgery. they took the graft off my left thigh. that took another week to heal before I could go home.

I then went through a good 6-8 months of physio before I could drive my car, and nearly 2 years of after care for the scar (including wearing a daft pressure garment that made me look like michael jackson).

now, it's still a mess, and will never get better. the skin is baggy, I have a scar the same size as the cheque they just sent, another scar along the bottom (the anterior side) and I have limited movement in my wrist and thumb. it aches when it's cold, and it's got about half the strength of the right hand.

I got a lousy 10K aofter 6 years of legal battling, and all becasue there was no legislation for those type of karts, so basically they hadn't broken any saftey laws, and I was just accusing them of negligence, which wasn't really strong enough to take them to court for. they offered to settle out of court, so I was advised to just take the money and run, so I did.

 

nice one

 

Kinda wish I hadn't read that

Hope you enjoy the poppy - you deserve it.

One question. Why were your hands tied to the wheel??



Edit dodgy grammar
Edited by: mincecfc2

 

was it a Honda Pilot? i was in one and my hands were thru straps on the steering wheel (or steering bar)..

 

after reading that story im staying off those things...that sounded so nasty paul, i would av sh*t myself if it was me!!!

 

well, they are MEANT to have 2" wide cavas straps, hoops, tied to the steering column on the wheel boss, so you put your arms through and that means your arms can't go flailing about and get trapped int he cage if you roll it. but this fella had used a nylon cord, like a washing line (as I remember it anyway, he reckoned it was bungy cord). but had tied it to the bottom spoke of the wheel not the coulmn, so the further you steered, the tighter it got. as I was already on full left lock, the cord was tight on my elft arm, then when the wheels hit whatever I hit, the steering moved even more and made the cord dig in. I doubt it was strong enough to break my arm, but it definitely detached a large priton of skin from my are, and pulled my arm so much that it bent may thumb right back.

but, I couldn't prove the existence of the straps, or what they were made of, and there wre no legal guidleines about them. so i the eyes of the law, I didn't have a leg to stand on on that regard.

 

Nasty! Good you finally got some compensation at least, although I bet you'd sooner have full use of your arm again!

 

Sounds v nasty

It takes so long for compensation claims...my mum was squashed between a portugese lorry and the central reservation on the M1 at 70mph back in 1996. She got a pay out in 2002 Her back is properly fudged and got less pay out than my sister who got whiplash in a 15mph shunt!

Congrats on getting the money

 

think i'd rather risk it with no straps on my arms if i ever came to have a go on one.

 

so did I, but the marshall told me to use them