John Roberts

[Orange Juice]

2 weeks ago a very good friend of mine was involved in a very bad accident at Highland Park Resort (http://www.highlandparkresort.com/) in Cedartown GA.
It was Easter Sunday and John was riding with a friend who was camping for the weekend.
At the end of the day his friend had to break down camp and John was going to go out for one last ride. He never even made it to the trails.
John is a very conservative rider and is not one to Nitro Circus his way on the way down the 15mph trail access Rd.
Shortly after he left his friend another rider went to the lodge to report a guy down and not moving... people suspect he was the cause of the accident but neither had he admitted to it nor had anyone witnessed it (or if anyone did, they are not talking) Speculation is a head on collision that John got the worst of.
My friend John spent the last two weeks in ICU at Atlanta Medical Center. His injuries, primarily to the right side of his body include a broken pelvis, broken rib (upper very tough one), cracked sternum, right shoulder totally blown apart (will need to be replaced), broken neck C1 / C2, and a brain injury. So many people were there that day but no on can explain how so much damage could have been caused by a single rider on a flat wide open trail who was wearing a helmet, chest protector, pads,,, full gear.
He was life flighted out and the local hospital could not take care of all of the trauma so he was flown to Atlanta Medical Center. He was in a semi coma state for about 4 or 5 days.
Fortunately he is able to move his limbs and there is spinal damage that they have determined. They repaired his pelvis with some pins and put on a halo to fix the head in position so the neck can heal. They have yet to work on the shoulder.
John was moved to The Shepherd Spinal Center (http://www.shepherd.org/) in Atlanta to their ICU late last week and was just moved out of ICU in the last days.
He was moved to their Acquired Brain Injury unit.
He has sustained significant trauma and the doctors are still evaluating his condition and prognosis.

I am a regular rider at Highland Park but was not there that day. I am truly saddened by these events and absolutely am furious that the person responsible for this event did not own up to it.
In the end, it really does not matter as knowing who caused this will not take away the pain and effects of this incident on so many but to know that such people exist is disheartening.

John is a Mechanical Engineer with a wife and two teenage daughters.

Your thoughts and prayers for his recovery are appreciated by myself and the family.

I am making updates to John's condition and progress on our local forum, Georgiaoffroad.com (http://www.georgiaoffroad.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=35361)

http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h132/moto-princess/John_1.jpg

http://i63.photobucket.com/albums/h132/moto-princess/S5002058.jpg

[mx24mom]

I am so sorry to hear about John. He and his family will be in our thoughts and prayers!

[Gatlin5]

Hey OJ, thanks for posting about your friend John that sounds like a horrible accident. I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like to be so pumped and doing your favorite past time activity and then the next moment you are waking up in a hospital with all those challenges ahead of you. Not to mention the worry the family has been put through. What a nightmare. Keep the positive thoughts about his recovery going it will help him immensely.

John will be in our thoughts and prayers. Please keep us updated.

God Bless.

[mx24mom]

Erik and I spoke again today. John is lucky to have such a wonderful and dedicated friend. John is progressing slowly, but is showing some amazing progress already! Please keep John's family and friends in your prayers! They are going to need our love and support for a long time to come!

[mx24mom]

This came from Georgiaoffroad.com and made my day!! This was an update from John's sister:

His sister put in a P.S. at the bottom of her update...
"P.S. Erik, I forgot to mention that I was talking to him about motorcycles. I said who do you ride motorcycles with and he said "Losers" and then he smiled.

[Orange Juice]

This came from Georgiaoffroad.com and made my day!! This was an update from John's sister:

His sister put in a P.S. at the bottom of her update...
"P.S. Erik, I forgot to mention that I was talking to him about motorcycles. I said who do you ride motorcycles with and he said "Losers" and then he smiled.

I'm not exactly sure who he was talking about... :):)

[mx24mom]

here is Erik's update on John

Just got back from a visit with John at the hospital.
I went down with Steve Anderson, a current and old friend of John's.
John was in a wheel chair when we arrived. He is not doing too bad.
His short term memory is pretty bad but hearing John and Steve talk about old school friends, the long term memory is pretty good.

He is eating on his own, no more feeding tube...
He is not able to walk yet, pretty weak at the moment.
He's going through therapy during the week for several hours a day.

They are saying that he'll be getting out at the end of the month so that is a great sign. He's got 6 to 8 weeks with the halo and the shoulder still needs to get some attention at some point.

Several times during the conversations John was asking for a beer... He even made the "click, pssssshhh" sound that the can makes when you open one... That got us laughing.

He did get the messages that were sent through the Shepherd web site and appreciated them. One of them had a picture that I guess was taken the day of the accident and had John's bike in the foreground and a bunch of riders standing behind it.
They are all up on the bulletin board in his room.

It was really good to see him and the stark contrast to when I saw him a couple weeks ago in the ICU. Hopefully the improvements continue at the same pace.
hn:

[Tatonka]

John - you and your family are in my thoughts and prayers. I really hope your recovery continues to go well. Sounds like you have a great bunch of friends around for support. Please keep us updated!

[Orange Juice]

My update from Georgia Off Road...

I stopped in to see John last night. He is continuing to do better. His short term memory won't be back on track for a while but certain things he does recall. He remembered that Steve and I stopped in on Friday night... That was good.
He is starting physical therapy now and they were working his right arm (that still has a blown up shoulder! ) I'm not sure if the therapists actually looked at an X Ray of it or not...
John is getting a bit more mobile and will switch to a wheel chair he can move around on his own today or tomorrow.
He wants to walk but the pelvic injury needs time to heal. He's up with the therapists but only for a few steps at a time. His whole right side is really weak.

On a bright note he is in pretty good spirits. A bit worried that he will loose his job over the story but we just keep telling him to focus on getting better and what ever happens will happen.

He has no recollection of the accident but lots of questions, like everyone, and all we can do is keep telling him that he was in a wreck on his bike and that he's at the Shepherd Center to get better... He trusts that we are telling him the truth, but I can not imagine how I would deal with it if I were in his shoes...

Anyway, he's on the road to recovery. Still looking at the end of the month to get out and back home. It's going to be a busy month I think.

John says hey to everyone and will post when he gets a chance.

Erik

[mx24mom]

Thanks for the update Erik! Please tell John and his family that we will continue to keep them in our prayers.

[Orange Juice]

John's sister posted an update on Care Pages about his condition and the future for John.
If you want to read the full text, http://www.carepages.com/carepages/RexRacer/updates/2132289

Briefly though,
The doctors told him that due to the brain injury he will have to give up riding and any other dangerous activity as well as any alcohol or tobacco for the rest of his life. This saddens me greatly (not so much on the tobacco) and John is pretty depressed that he won't ride anymore.
His recovery will be a while in the making and at the end of the month he will be discharged and go into an outpatient rehab program.

On a bright note, his employer said that he would wait for John to recover and he would keep his job. John enjoyed where he works so this is really good news.

This has and will continue to be a life changing experience for John and his family and I can only hope that his recovery is quick and he gets back to some state of normal life as fast as possible.

Life can obviously change in an instant, enjoy it as much as you can while you can.

I'll stop the updates for now unless something major comes up... You can always PM me if you like.

[fastlearner]

Glad that recovery is in John's future.

[Tatonka]

OJ - thanks for the update on John. I'm glad to hear that he is recovering and that his employer is standing by him. Yes, life can certainly change in an instant and it's hard to accept something so drastic when we didn't ask for it. We never know what's around that next corner only that we need to go all the way around the bend............

[Orange Juice]

Went and saw John last night and gave him a birthday card.
We got in a little late so we could only stay for 45 minutes or so but John is getting better each day.
His short term memory is coming back.
They took Xrays yesterday to check the progress of the pelvis break and how it's healing so they may get him to start walking in the next few days.
He is mobile in a wheel chair and can drive it around on his own.

A few of his work buddies stopped in yesterday and gave him a nice cash gift from the whole shop that should help to take care of some of the bills at home.

His sister brought his two dogs down for a visit a couple days ago and surprised him. He was really happy and says that at least the dogs know he's not dead, just living somewhere else for a while.

He is really anxious to get out (he is referring to himself as one of the "inmates") and get back home and once better out to HP to try and figure out what put him in the hospital in the first place. I've told him there are just as few answers there but maybe if he sees where it happened and can talk to some of the first responders he can get some sense of what he was involved in.

He's got a couple weeks left at Shepperd and then a bunch of PT to go to for the foreseeable future.

He says thanks for the well wishes and Happy B' day thoughts to everyone.

[Tatonka]

Thanks again OJ....I really hope that John can find some answers to the cause of his crash and put his mind somewhat at ease. The physical rehab is hard enough without dealing with the question of what the heck happened?!

Glad to hear that he is making progress and getting around better, hopefully John will be able to give us an update on here himself soon! :thumb

[oldquadridr]

So glad to hear John is making progress, he is in my prayers and I llok forward to more updates on how he is doing