Here's what's going on, and a little more detail on what happened. I'll start with what happened. Zac and New Orleans Steve (aka sleazy Steve - he's on Stellaspeed) were riding in Stone Mountain, GA riding to meet Jeff Hyatt (The Jeff from CA that used to work at SPD out there but lives here now) at CycleGear, where Jeff works. They were riding when a woman coming the opposite way made a left in front of Zac. She had never stopped, and gave no indication she was turning, so Zac had no time to react. He hit her passenger side very hard, and being a kind of large SUV, he didn't get to fly over it, he slammed into it very hard, damaging the car badly and destroying the bike in the process.
Him and the bike flew off to the left. Sleazy Steve was about two car lengths behind and had little time to react himself, he had to lay the bike down to not hit the SUV or Zac. He is OK, but did receive an injured wrist and leg, and his bike is also messed up.
Zac had been wearing full gear, armored jacket, gloves, pants, boots, and he had the best helmet he could get. If not for that he wouldn't have even made it until the paramedics showed up. Behind the lady that hit Zac was a motorcyclist who saw the whole thing. He had honked his horn because he saw the bikes coming and was trying to warn the lady, but to no avail. Before Sleazy had even finished sliding, he said he saw the motorcyclist on top of Zac with his cell phone dialing 911.
Zac was unconscious for a full 15 minutes. When the paramedics arrived, Zac was moving and moaning some but was mostly just thrashing around, he was not at all able to talk or communicate.
He was that way all the way in to the ER, where they gave him medication to paralize him, so that the breathing machines could breathe for him. By the time I got there my first impression was that he was in a drug-induced coma, but the doctor said that no, he was in a coma from the head trama. He would still like, twitch his arm when you touch it, and twitch his chest when I put my hand on him, so there is something going on there.
He has some pretty bad facial fractures and a lot of swelling. He has a skull fracture at the bottom left rear of his skull that extends two directions, one of them to the base of the skull and up to the part of the skull that the brain rests on. They gave him a lot of sedatives just in case he could feel stuff, so the twitching stopped and he is just kinda laying there now.
We've been waiting all day for a nuerologist - but this hospital had none on call today, and the hospitals that did have one on call were COMPLETELY full...as in emergency surgeries at these hospitals were literally sitting in the hallways for hours waiting to even be seen by a doctor. Just bad timing.
I am home now, but heading back - the good news is we have a scooterist doctor who started raising hell and managed to get a bed and a nuerologist at Gwinette Medical Center, so they are transferring him now, and that's where I am going.
It may be tonight or tomorrow that the nuerologist will do the tests to see how bad it is. They will ween him off the sedatives and check pupilary response, stuff like that. They are only able to check in one eye since the other is swollen shut from the facial fractures.
I'll report as soon as I know something. Thanks for all the well wishes, we are passing them on to Zac and hoping he can hear us, that he wakes up soon, and that when he wakes up we have the same old Zac we all know and love.
