Trauma Care - first hand!

Normally it is good when you get to use the products you sell, but in my case it wasn't such a good thing. I was riding dirt bikes with friends and wife in SE Oklahoma, about 30 miles west of Clayton in the rocky Kiamichi mountains. It was the first day of a long, fun four day weekend. Blasting along a rutted logging road about 30 mph on my Suzuki DRZ-400, my front wheel washed out in a particularly nasty rut and the bike tossed me into a great big rock pile, back first. I had full riding gear on, but a particularly hard Oklahoma rock decided to suddenly stop my forward progress by jamming into by ribs. It knocked the breath out of me and I knew it was going to be bad - I just lay there in severe pain, could not move and could barely breath. Usually I can just rest a bit, saddle up and ride out, but not this time. There was no walking, much less riding.

So I had to just lay there in pain for 2 hours while my buddies went to get help. They came back with my Toyota FJ Cruiser and we spent another three hours inching our way down these rugged rock strewn trails, my whimpering like a baby every 5 seconds. In all it took 5 hours to get to Pushmataha Hospital in Antlers. Lucky for me, I had just recently installed a Kodak CR Classic for them. In no time they had me on the table, shot the requisite x-rays, transmitted them via telerad to Dr O'Brien in McAlester, and discovered I had three broken ribs. OUCH!!!

I also figured out why the new DR-9500 works so great in a trauma setting. It can easily rotate around the patient, taking x-rays from all sorts of positions without ever moving the patient. I certainly could have used that, since it was extremely painful for them to move me around to get various views of my ribs.

So now two weeks later I am healing up and hoping to get an electronic copy of my pics the next time I stop in at Antlers. Thanks for the great care!