Bart Blanquart from Sun Microsystems in Belgium has just sent out an email about his trip to visit Alec in hospital to see how he was and to very kindly drop off a card with messages from well wishers.

On the left a wall-length table filled with his file and medication schedule, and above the table a large collection of X-rays and scans. On the right there’s a bed, there’s heart and oxygen level monitor cabling, a saline drip, another with glucose, a drain line, and an oxygen mask and its line, and in the middle of that web of tubes there’s Alec — but he looks pretty good (considering), though quite tired.

After saying hello he starts by itemising the different parts of his body that were injured — a bunch of broken ribs (hence the oxygen mask, it allows him to breathe less deeply), kidney and spleen injured, possibly a bit of his lung as well. A broken leg, the fracture just a few centimeters below the knee, which’ll need some metalwork some time in the future.

Apparantly he was overtaking a car or truck and made an miscalculation/mis-estimation of his line and hit the curb, the impact of which catapulted him from his bike and “apparantly I also damaged a road sign. The police want to talk to me to get a statement”.

Alec has not been getting food or drink and most likely won’t be getting any for the next few days (but we’ve given him a set of aerosol cans with water, so that he can at least stop his mouth from drying out), as they’re hoping that his organs will heal by themselves — thereby avoiding a (major) operation.

Now, he’s going to have surgery at least once, even if there’s no need to operate on kidney or spleen, to set his left leg (his left side took the biggest hit), but that’ll have to wait until after his organs have stabilised.

Alec was extremely tired (he was up until 3 at night and was awake again at 6 in the morning) and dozed off a couple times, but he did take his time to scan through the card with all the messages — I printed 35 messages and pasted those in, and (on the hospital parking lot, just before heading in) added a bunch by hand that Dave relayed by phone.

(Thanks everyone for sending them in — I think it did him good to see this show of support/friendship/compassion or however you want to call it. The messages that reached me too late will be taken to him tomorrow, by Casper, and I may head down there on monday if he’s not being repatriated by then so further messages will reach him).

He’s not in pain as long as he keeps still — so he keeps still most of the day, only disturbed by the changing of the sheets (for which he asked me to write some instructions in French, so he could point the nurses to them, so they’d support his leg properly when moving him).

By now he was getting pretty sleepy, so I said goodbye and headed out.

Bart

Another update, again from Alec’s sister via Rachel:

The Dr’s are still really worried about his internal injuries, and want to stabilise these before working on his broken leg. He’s not being allowed water, and is getting very grumpy!

When…. Hopefully next week…. He is returned to the UK, the family hope is he will be put in Droitwich hospital near them. So those that want to visit him may have a bit of a trek to make. However this is not confirmed, and I’ve not heard Alec’s views on the subject.

Thanks to Rac for the latest update from Alec’s sister, this time via his other sister in the US!

M… (sis 2) has seen Alec. She describes him as ‘compos mentis’ and able to turn her fingers blue with his grip. He’s got a broken leg, and broken ribs, and they (doctors) are concerned about chest injuries, and liver and spleen damage. He’s in intensive care, but she also mentioned that they are talking about sending him to England in a few days.

That’s all for the present, and I suspect will be for a bit now.

Just been forwarded an email by a mutual friend quoting Alec’s sister.

I got hold of the hospital in St Omer . They said he was quite serious but the expect him to survive. He has many problems, spleen (not too bad), kidney (more serious), chest including blood in his chest, many broken ribs and a broken leg. They were about to put him on to a helicopter to Lille where the major trauma unit is.

I (Ed: his sister) went out to tell mother and father and to collect Euros from friends.

On my return I tried to phone Lille to find out how he was after the transfer. They couldn’t find him. Eventually they gave up and I called St Omer back. He was too big for the helicopter so they’d had to take him by road.

He is now in Lille and they have put a drain in his chest.

Just found out that my very good friend Alec has had a bike accident in France, no details yet asides from the scarey comment that The fireman said that he will probably live, but we know no more than that currently..

Hang in there mate..