Back on the Road

By MICHAEL AYLOR

“I had so much adrenaline going on I didn’t even notice I had been hurt … then somebody ran up to me and said, ‘Dude, your leg is backwards!’”

It was just a couple weeks after school let out for the summer of 2014 when MBU student Chip Bloch was traveling on his motorcycle to the grocery store when he was suddenly struck by a car and thrown from his bike.

“I got knocked off, my bike went down; he was going probably 35 through the intersection, I was going about 40 through the street, so it was a pretty fast collision,” said Bloch.

Bloch described the severity of his injury, but also a bit of unexpected good fortune at the scene of the accident.

“When the car hit me my leg twisted 180 degrees, so the heel of my foot was pointed forwards,” said Bloch. “Sitting at the intersection, in two different cars, were an off-duty nurse and an off-duty EMT, so they were right there, that was amazingly lucky.”

The nurse and EMT examined Bloch’s leg and immediately called for an ambulance.

“It was broken in a couple of places — both the bones,” said Bloch, who was scheduled for surgery on his leg the following morning. “They cut open my knee and they put in an eight-inch-long titanium rod in my leg to support it, and then they set the bones around that.”

Even with the severity of his injury, Bloch wouldn’t let his leg sideline him for long.

“I got out of the hospital a couple days later and I started doing physical therapy that took about two or three months, until I could just walk on it without any kind of support, like without a walker, without a crutch or anything,” said Bloch.