A pedicab in Ruili. In the background, the moped rider is wearing a long raincoat. The boy in my journal was severely injured because of something like that.

Journal and photo by Nancy Olson

Today started out like any other day. It’s a border day, so we had planned to roll out at 0500. The nice young Chinese man at the hotel was set to wake us at 0415. Realizing that we would need our sleep to drive off that early, he was running around last night asking everybody if we were sleepy and saying he’d be waking us at the prescribed hour.

Well, 0415 came and went without anybody in the Chinese guesthouse stirring, and then we were all saved by Todd’s camera alarm going off at 0430. He rousted the troops while I grabbed the two Santa Cruz mountain bikes and dashed off to affix them to their racks on D1 and D3. I’d put them in our room for security, and I’d require extra time to ready them and myself for departure. By the time it was all done, I was sweating, and a little bit angry, but I did manage to make it to the driver’s seat in time to avoid holding up the convoy.

We rolled out at 0517. We were heading to the border city of Ruili, where we’d have to negotiate how we were going to manage two counter-situations which, on one hand, were the fact that our vehicles’ Chinese “visas” would expire today, and, secondly, the fact that our Myanmar guide and permits would not be ready for six more days. Technically, the vehicles cannot stay in China, and they cannot enter Myanmar. We’ll see what happens…

The drive was easy enough along China’s smooth thoroughfare north, and then we moved onto a narrow, winding, cobblestoned road that brought us down a detour through the mountains and villages situated amongst rice paddies. It was breathtaking (my favorite Seinfeld word). We saw people on bicycles in the poring rain, each wearing wide rice-paddy hats that acted like umbrellas to keep the rain off. I seriously need to get one of those hats.

We were driving along a smooth road now, and I was occasionally looking from side to side for any hats that might be for sale, when Nick came over the radio and said “Looks like a kid may have fallen off a moped up here.” Last in the convoy, Chanda and I rolled to a stop on the shoulder and prepared for the worst. Todd came running from the front to grab me for assistance. I had no medical kit handy, so I grabbed a clean Thai Ultimate Car towel from behind my seat and ran forward to where a distraught father was holding a very sluggishly moving, bloody son.

He had very large tear wounds to the top of his head and behind his left ear. I gave the towel to Chanda, who put pressure on those to stop the bleeding. He also had a puncture wound in the vicinity of his left cheekbone, and a minor scrape to his entire left cheek. I looked in his mouth because I though he had broken his front teeth out, or perhaps even had one shoved up into his jaw, but I was relieved to see this typical seven-year-old had lost them naturally, before the accident.

Somebody grabbed a Thermarest and another Thai Ultimate Car towel, and we laid the boy on his back, taking the burden from his frightened father and trying to prevent further damage in the very likely case of a spinal cord injury.

Justin, who had been in the lead and had rolled past the moped parked in the right lane and hadn’t seen the man and child, parked his car and ran back to the scene with the team med kit. I cursed myself for not being familiar with its contents. Let’s see, a bleeding head wound, possible neck and spine injury, certainly a concussion if not worse. I searched for a compression bandage and gauze. Justin grabbed them. I saw a space blanket, and I grabbed that. It was cold and rainy, and the boy would certainly be going into shock. The first-response medical training I had received through Wilderness Medical Associates several years ago in my weeklong Wilderness First Responder course flashed into my mind very clearly.

Todd had sent Neil to ensure the flashers were on in the rear vehicle. With the convoy safely out of harm’s way, we focused on the patient. This was going to be an excellent team effort. [The film guys recorded the event, once Colin got over his aversion to the sight of blood and gore.]

We wrapped him in the space blanket (it looks like aluminum foil, and it reflects body heat like nobody’s business to keep the victim warm and alive). Chanda and Justin were looking at the boy’s head wounds, which had stopped bleeding, and trying to keep the boy conscious. I was suddenly afraid he might have some life-threatening wounds hidden under his clothes, so I opened up his jacket and shirt and felt down each arm and leg, as well as his back and chest. There was no visible or palpable damage, and he didn’t wince at my touch.

A glance at the moped explained what had happened. A rain jacket was shredded and wrapped around the rear chain and axel. The boy had been wearing it when it became caught in the wheel, wrapped around the rear axel in an instant, and ripped the kid off the back of the moped, head first, into the street. Dad must have been really on the ball (and traveling slowly) to stop the cycle before dragging his son down the road.

The boy was in a bad state, and he really wanted to just go to sleep, but the crazy white people standing around him wouldn’t let him. Todd asked the father to keep talking to his boy, to keep him awake. Our guide, Ma Xiaowei, explained in Chinese that he and Nick were going up the road to fetch a doctor, and that an ambulance was on its way from the hospital 60 km back the other way.

With help on its way, our job was to keep the boy stable until we could turn him over to professionals. That meant keeping him warm and comfortable, keeping him alert, and keeping his head still. It also meant comforting the distraught father. “Nay-OHn,” he would say. “Nay-ohn, lots of stuff in Chinese.” We repeated the boy’s name, Nay-ohn, and spoke to him soothingly. Chanda did a wonderful job of calming him, while I struggled to get his legs comfortable and warm. I removed his Spider-Man sandals and checked his toes for capillary refill, which indicates how circulation is at the extremities. He was alright, but his feet were like icicles. I wrapped his little legs in the space blanket and the towel.

Occasionally, he would go into a fit and start crying and kicking his legs. We didn’t want him flailing, but that was a good sign that his legs and pelvis were likely ok. Later, his eyes would roll back as he fought desperately to just go to sleep. Each time, we’d wake him up. If he was alert, we knew he was breathing. We wanted him alert. We wanted him still. We wanted him comfortable (Poor boy was soooo uncomfortable), and we wanted the doctor to hurry up.

His feet began to warm up, and we felt confident we could keep him conscious until help arrived. I wanted to put gauze over his wounds to prevent infection from jumping into that delicate area of the body. We talked to the boy and comforted the father. Oh, the poor father!

Finally, Nick and Xiaowei arrived with the doctor, a young woman whose emergency bag consisted of gauze and a stethoscope. Chanda and I backed off and let her do her thing. Moments later, the ambulance arrived. They wrapped his head in gauze and loaded him up. We helped a friend of the father cut the jacket out of the moped’s gears. We wrapped all the bloody gauze and towels up and asked the EMTs to dispose of it for us. I retained the magical space blanket, which had no blood on it. The ambulance left, the lady doctor hopped onto the back of the moped, and they all drove off, sans helmets.

We had a border and customs agents to reach, so we packed up, too, and left without ceremony. I’m really proud Chanda, and of Todd, and the way we worked together as a team. There’s always some initial fear at entering an unknown situation like that. I’m always nervous about what I might see. This boy’s head was a mess. The wounds were deep, and they were bloody. But for some reason, it was not gross, it was not scary, and it was not intimidating. Chanda has had nurse training. I had First Responder training. I have a lot of confidence in my abilities to stabilize a patient and handle an emergency. I was pleased that the team worked together so well during this real-life drama.

In the Discovery, I reflected on how much worse this situation could have been. The boy was ripped headlong off the back of a moped. No broken bones were sticking out. He was breathing, he was conscious, and his heart was pumping. His head, although we don’t know the extent of his internal injuries, looked pretty good. It was intact. He’s young, and the wounds will heal. By the time he’s our age, I bet you won’t even notice the scars. All in all, I’d say he’s a very lucky boy.

I’m really glad Drive Around the World was there to help. I can’t imagine how terrified that father would have been if he’d been there by himself, alone and helpless. He didn’t know what to do, and he didn’t know if his son would make it. He was terrified, and he felt awful. I’m glad we were there to assist him.

If we had left Dali at 0500, when we were supposed to; if we had received our 0415 wakeup and left on time, rather than at 0517, we would have passed that moped before the accident, and that father would have been alone with his wounded son. All things happen for a reason, don’t they?

We stored up a lot of good Kharma from that event, and it helped us when we got to the border. The Chinese customs officials were awesome, and they were in favor of giving us an extension to keep our vehicles in China until the 14th, when our Myanmar guide and permits would be ready. They sent us to the border police for their approval, and the cops were just as friendly and just as supportive. We got our extension. We’ll stay here in Ruili until the 14th, unless our agent arrives sooner, and then we’ll begin our adventure in Myanmar. Life is good.

Help support our cause: The LONGITUDE Expedition is the longest journey ever attempted with a focus on Parkinson's Disease. The Drive Around the World team aims to raise money for Parkinson’s Disease research by driving four Certified, Pre-Owned Land Rover Discoverys around the globe following lines of longitude. Readers are encouraged to pledge small amounts of money per expedition-kilometer via a pledge form that can be found on our Parkinson’s page by clicking HERE. One hundred percent of donations received go directly to Parkinson's research, and all who donate $10 or more will be entered into a raffle to win an expedition-equipped Land Rover Discovery.