Last night was a fairly sleepless night, I think. The painkillers seemed more like pain ticklers. But we had an early morning appointment, and that brought out two trips to the biggest pharmacy in town — and several phone calls with the doctor’s offices and the insurance company because, the best I can tell, American healthcare — and drugs that can get the job done.

The Yankee had more X-rays following her bike crash last evening. And they all confirmed how lucky we are.

To recap: some jerk cut her off and she crashed her bike to avoid hitting his red pickup truck. There are witnesses. So we spent most of the night in the ER, and the rest of the night in the drive through of the pharmacy.

She has a few broken bones. This we knew. Two ribs will heal on their own in time, and we knew that. The particular ribs were an initial worry yesterday, because they often lead to other damage, but that’s not the case here. Today’s doctor visit was to consult a specialist about her collarbone, which is also broken.

More X-rays were taken. After several painful rounds of that, the doctor thinks that she might be able to avoid surgery. (Which, having had that surgery myself, I say “Good!”) We’ll go back for more scans next week. And, for the next while we’re just gritting through everything, moving slowly, using one hand, and finding out that there’s no position that is actually comfortable.

And counting our blessings.

Let’s look at her helmet.

By the way, never buy a used helmet. Not all helmets are made the same, some are better than others. Like most anything these days, there are tiers to modern helmets in terms of price and tech and protection, but all helmets on the market have to pass certain minimum standards. The Smith Ignite MIPS Helmet you see here is a good aero helmet.

And should you crash your helmet, retire it and get another one. Also, depending on who you ask, it’s a good thing to upgrade every three-to-five years because of age or heat or sun damage. There’s no real consensus opinion on their lifespan, but three-to-five years are the most agreed upon windows.

This is the left side of her helmet. All of the scratches on the polycarbonate shell came from this accident.

This part is important. The shell on this helmet is molded to the expanded polystyrene foam, but you see where that got ruptured in the crash. This would be just above the left ear.

Here’s the overhead view, with the rider facing the top of the shot. There are some impressive gouges and scratches across the crown of the helmet. All of this, of course, means the helmet is doing it’s job. The helmet gets eaten up by the road so your cranium doesn’t.

See this cracking in the EPS foam? That’s not supposed to be there. That’s crash damage.

Again, better the helmet than the head. Here’s another view of where the EPS foam was destroyed. The green stuff, the straw looking stuff, or the honeycomb stuff, is called Koroyd. This stuff is designed to crumple on impact and absorb crash force in a controlled manner, minimizing energy to the noggin.

The point of this is plastic deformation. Look at how it got squished up. The Koroyd did it’s job.

Altogether, it seems the many bits of technology in this helmet worked. You can see a fair amount of damage, and no head trauma.

A guy in a truck caused this wreck. A helmet very well might have kept it from being a life-changing wreck.

Be kind to cyclists; wear a helmet.