Motorcycle Accident

On May 17, 2022 I was riding my motorcycle when I apparently got involved in a collision with an Uber. I'd be more specific except that I literally don't remember what happened.

A screenshot of Google Maps showing where I was in an accident

Fortunately, my parents and younger brother were visiting me about then and were able to come see me in the hospital. So it turns out I had a lot of injuries: my sternum, scapula, spleen, ribs, and cervical spine. I also had an incredible concussion. But perhaps worst of all was the fact that my fingers were done on my left hand: I broke my thumb, and had a small fracture on the left ring finger.

A photograph of me at ZSFGH showing me in my ICU bed

On the day that I had the accident I discovered a cool device called a fluoroscope that is a live-motion X-ray machine, something I did not know was possible. This part is a bit hazy since I was in the ICU and drugged up on painkillers, but I have a vivid memory of the nurse or a doctor trying to put my hand back together while we watched the thumb just fall apart on the fluoroscope.

In my time in the ICU, they decided that I had to get surgery for my hand but that the rest of me would recover in time. The hand surgery involved something called Percutaneous Pinning which involved, in my case, placing two metal rods into my thumb to hold the bones in place as they healed. I was fortunate in that I had good advice through the whole process since my parents are both doctors, and perhaps most relevantly, my dad was the Chairman of AO Trauma India - the Indian arm of an organization that focuses on musculoskeletal injuries. Anyway, this surgery went well and the pins were inserted neatly. Unfortunately, the only way to get a digital copy of the x-rays is to get a CD-ROM from them which I have since lost.

A month or so later, I had the pins out, and began hand therapy to fix my mobility. There were a few things the hand therapists offered me, but the best workout for my thumb was loosening and then tightening the Lyft bike seat lever. It requires you to apply a lot of force, and after long enough, my left thumb became strong again. And with the help of the therapists, I was able to achieve quite a bit of mobility with it.

The only really lasting damage is to my ring finger, which is now permanently bent at an angle.

A photograph of my hand with a bent ring finger

The real terror came a few months later when the medical bills arrived. I received an Explanation of Benefits. Despite the fact that the top of the document says "This is not a bill", there is a prominent line telling me that I have to pay some $160k. And that wasn't the only one!

A screenshot of one of my Anthem EOBs after my motorcycle accident

It turns out that EOBs are, in fact, not bills. The reason my 'not a bill' was so high was that Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital is not in-network with any insurance provider, or at least the trauma center isn't. And it is the only Tier 1 Trauma Center in the region (which was fortunate for me, being so close). Anyway, the reason I didn't eventually end up paying that is that there's a No Surprises Act which makes it so that I can't be billed an out-of-network rate for emergency care. Real benefits to there being Democratic Party administrations in power, I suppose.

In the end, I paid a little over $2k for the care, which was top-notch!