Local athlete recovering from life-threatening bicycle accident
The Road to Recovery
Local athlete recovering from life-threatening bicycle accident
It can happen in the blink of an eye. A split second, the moment when life and death hangs precariously on the balance.
For Southern Indiana resident Dave Miller, that moment came on July 1 as he and three friends cycled the winding roads in Floyds Knobs.
Miller, a seasoned Ironman athlete and avid cyclist, hit a patch of wet road. A skid. The flash of oncoming car.
Miller collided with the vehicle, and the accident – that split second – changed his life. The shiny black cycling helmet he wore saved it. From his recovery room at Frazier Rehab Institute in downtown Louisville, Miller and his wife Stacy opened up to Extol about that day and the weeks that followed the accident that left him temporarily paralyzed.
Miller recalls the roads were dry that day, although it had rained the night before. He and his partners were on a 30-mile ride, leaving from Chapel Hill Road.“ The roads were dry for 29 and a half miles,” Miller says.“ We turned back on Chapel Hill Road to finish, and my buddy said‘ This is the last hill. Let’ s go!’ So, we all kind of hammered down.”
Miller, who was second in line, hit a right-hand turn across a small bridge just as a car turned from the opposite direction. Miller’ s brake locked up, and“ My bike went right and I went left into the left rear quarter panel of that SUV,” he says.“ The doctors said it was almost like a whiplash injury, and my nose was broken, too. I pretty much face-planted into the side of this car, and my shoulders and head took the brunt of the injury. I never lost consciousness. … The helmet definitely was my saving grace. I did see the blue sky, and the next thing I was on the ground, and I knew I was in trouble.” The initial effects were devastating. Two of the other riders were veterinarians and knew not to move Miller.“ When I got in the ambulance, I couldn’ t feel anything from my( upper chest) down,” Miller says.“ And then it was ICU for 12 days.”
The longtime athlete, runner and cyclist underwent a fusion on five vertebrae in his neck. Surgeons left a broken bone in his back to heal on its own.
Miller moved from University of Louisville Hospital to Frazier Rehab on July 12 to begin his long journey to recovery. Therapy starts at 8:30 a. m. with occupational therapy, helping Miller to relearn simple daily tasks, like brushing his teeth and washing his face.
“ They do a lot with my hands and bringing them back,” he says. As an employee at UPS, hand coordination is a necessity. The extremities, he says, are often the last to come back.
Miller undergoes respiratory therapy daily, as any spinal injury causes harm to the diaphragm also. The rest of the hours are passed between occupational and physical therapies.
“ The physical therapist put me in a harness to stand me up and get my legs moving because their research has proved that … repetition will bring your muscles back and have your brain‘ talk’ to your spine and that’ s going to make those muscles move again,” Miller says.
In early August, he moved to the research floor at Frazier for local motor training, where a team of therapists work together to move Miller’ s body. The first day, the harness and treadmill system found Miller to hold just 65 percent of his body weight. At last count, he was up to 96 percent.
At the time of this article, Miller was slated to return to his home in Southern Indiana. He’ ll continue at Frazier on an outpatient basis.“ There are only seven places in the country that have this special treadmill, and Frazier is one of them,” says his wife, Stacy.
“ The therapists here are amazing,” Dave Miller says.
Adds Stacy Miller:“ Just look how far you’ ve come.”
Dave can move his arms and legs now, and he says his pain level is good. His right shoulder is his biggest complaint.
By Mandy Wolf Detwiler Photos by David Harrison
26 EXTOL SPORTS / SEPTEMBER 2017