Doug Stolle Motorcycle Accident

Memorial Day Weekend started like they have most years since I retired – Camping with extended family, looking forward to shuffleboard, paddle boarding and eating. My oldest son Doug got up and decided to take a Motorcycle ride along the countryside around Rifle Lake, and said he’d be back before the shuffle board competition started. About 2 hours later and two miles away from the campsite, he was injured by a car that turned in front of him coming from the opposite direction. The young man told the state patrol that he just wasn’t paying enough attention. Doug only had time to have the thought “this is going to happen”. Doug blacked out and woke up to a good Samaritan holding his hand saying the ambulance was coming and he was going to be ok. He was 30 feet from his bike, which was totaled. He was taken by ambulance to the local hospital in Centralia, surprisingly with “only” 2 broken legs. His right leg was a broken knee cap that had broken thru the skin. His left leg was a broken Tibia and a “closed bicondylar fracture of the tibial plateau”…he shattered the bottom of his knee joint bone and would need ortho surgery. The hospital shopped around for a hospital/Orthopedic surgeon closer to home, and all of them declined due to the extent of the injury and advised he be taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, where he ended up for 13 days, 3 surgeries, lots of pins and screws. The head surgeon said it was the worst she had seen and if he was older, they would have been better off doing an artificial joint. They are pretty certain he will need one when he gets older.

Fast forward to now, it’s been 5 months since the accident. He spent his summer in my guest room, since he was unable to get to the bathroom or care for himself. He is just now cleared for partial weight bearing on that leg, which means he has graduated to walking with crutches. It’s a slow process with PT, but they have told him he has a long way to go yet. He is not able to get back to work and exhausted his savings last month.

The young man that hit him was driving an older car, with minimum insurance and lives with his parents. Doug unfortunately wasn’t much better for medical because he didn’t revisit it when he stopped teaching and lost his insurance. After the car insurance pays out all the medical liens for his care, it leaves him with enough to pay the rest of the medical bills, ambulance charges and keep him in the lifestyle he has been in since the accident (eat, sleep, PT) until it runs out approximately the end of December, or not pay the bills and get by until April, which is the realistic timeframe the Drs and PT are giving him. Both options have pegged his stress meter.

First picture is what he would have been doing had he made it back safely to the camp site. Bottom picture was my first look at his leg after the first surgery...along with all the breaks, he ended up having Compartment Syndrome. He would have 2 more surgeries before he got released .

The Go Fund me is to pay off those remaining bills so he can keep focused on his PT.