He Didn’t Have A Pulse

 

I’m a Road Captain for the Myrtle Beach HOG chapter.  We were out doing a group ride one day, and I was riding wing, when I heard the RC riding sweep say there was a rider down. I immediately turned and went back and found one of our riders had gone off of the road. He was a rider who hadn’t rode in a year and was a little rusty with his riding skills that had over rode a curve. Thankfully we had a couple of members on the ride with medical training, as well as several riders who had been trained in ASM.

Immediately we had people controlling traffic and making sure there was room to let in emergency vehicles. When we got to the downed rider, he wasn’t breathing and didn’t have a pulse. Me and Dee, a fellow rider and nurse, had taken the Advanced ASM course and proceeded to remove his helmet since he wasn’t breathing. About 4 minutes in he started to seize. Right as we were about to start delivering rescue breaths, he took a deep breath and started breathing on his own.

Thankfully, due to room being made for EMS, a medevac helicopter was able to land near, and within 41 minutes of the crash he was being transported to the nearest trauma center. The first responders that remained on scene mentioned that it was clear to them that our group had training.

One of our riders had a camera and we were able to look back at the incident and identify exactly what happened. The good thing that came out of this incident is that our group was able to take a look at exactly how we could handle and respond to any future situations better. We’ve put new protocols in place that include who will take charge of a scene if something were to happen. In looking back too we realized that exactly how we trained in class, was exactly how we handled treating our friend, with Dee at his head and me taking his body.

Our friend has since been released from the hospital after spending almost 2 weeks in ICU. He was treated for a skull fracture, lacerated spleen, cracked ribs and received blood transfusions. We are thankful we were prepared with the proper training at the scene, as well as the ability to look at how we can improve our process for safer future rides.

-Todd Cartner

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