DENVER -- For nearly an hour, Lisa Ludwig had worked her way through a physical therapy session led by a therapist in Nebraska who was watching, instructing and encouraging her via Zoom video. After some exercises in the living room of her home high on a mountain near Evergreen, she’d gone outside for walking drills on a wrap-around deck with a stunning view of Mount Evans, cracking jokes and teasing her husband, Dave.
Still suffering from cognitive deficits caused by a traumatic brain injury that she sustained on Father’s Day last year when she was struck by a hit-and-run driver while cycling with friends, she took slow, halting steps — with a walker, with two poles, with one hand on the railing of the deck, and then hand-in-hand with Dave.
Suddenly Ludwig decided to try something that wasn’t on her PT program last Tuesday. And for the first time in 359 days since she was rushed from a roadside trauma scene near El Rancho to St. Anthony Hospital where she lay in a coma for 19 days, Ludwig walked about 20 feet without the assistance of her walker, poles or Dave’s hand.
It was a memorable milestone and moment of freedom in a recovery that has included seven months of inpatient hospital care and five months of outpatient care.
“It makes me feel like, ‘Oh my God, maybe I am an athlete still, maybe I can go back to being like I used to be,'” said Ludwig, 62. “The progress and the improvement makes me feel hope that I can keep going.”
She still has a long struggle ahead, and may never be like she was before she was hit. Still, it was a precious moment.
“That was great,” said Dave. “I was super surprised. I didn’t think we were quite there yet.”
Father’s Day weekend this year marked a sad anniversary for the Ludwigs and for a second avid cyclist who was struck by another hit-and-run driver the day before Lisa. Greg Johnson was hit on West 32nd Avenue that Saturday morning, not far from his home in Wheat Ridge.
When Ludwig arrived at the emergency room the next day, Johnson was in ICU at the same hospital, following the first of three surgeries for his injuries. He was coming out of anesthesia, imagining spiders crawling on the ceiling because of the drugs he was on, but he distinctly remembers hearing nurses discussing Ludwig’s arrival.
Johnson was spared the cognitive injuries that continue to impair Ludwig 12 months later, but he had 21 broken bones, including both femurs and a broken pelvis. His right femur was shattered into more than 40 pieces. He still lives with pain from his injuries, can’t ride a bike and can’t bend his lower back because of steel rods that are holding his pelvis together. He longs to ride a bike, or simply to go fly fishing, but he’s still too unsteady on his feet to be confident walking beside a creek.
Ludwig suffered multiple fractures, including three ribs, a shoulder blade and two vertebrae. Because of the brain injury, she still needs physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy. She and Dave moved to Colorado four years ago to take advantage of the outdoors, but now they are planning a move back to Massachusetts because she can no longer enjoy the things that brought them here.
“It was like my dream of retirement, but I wasn’t retired yet,” Lisa said of her time here before she was injured, when she routinely went on bike rides of 50 to 100 miles and did lots of hiking with her dog, a beloved Samoyed named Niko, that she since had to give up for adoption. “My friends would describe me as a crazy athlete. I loved to be active.”
The Ludwigs feel the justice system is letting them down. Six of the eight charges against the person who hit her have been dismissed by the district attorney for Jefferson and Gilpin counties in a plea deal that comes with a prison sentence of 10 to 20 years. Dave says that’s too lenient, and he hopes the judge rejects the deal at sentencing on June 26.
“The DA led us and Dave to believe that they cared about Dave’s wishes on behalf of his wife Lisa,” read a statement from Megan Hottman and Andrew Phillips, attorneys representing the Ludwigs in a firm known as TheCyclist-lawyer.com, which specializes in cycling cases. “Dave repeatedly asked the DA to take this matter to trial so that the community would hear more about it in the news, be able to attend and watch the trial, and to hopefully send the message that if you hit a cyclist, you’re going to stand trial for your actions. He wanted the driver to face a jury. Instead, over Dave’s wishes, the DA declined to set the case for trial and advanced the plea offer range of 10-20, from which the judge will decide the sentence.”
Johnson hasn’t seen justice done, either. The Colorado State Patrol investigated but no charges have been filed.
“They identified the vehicle through an anonymous tip, but there were multiple occupants and they all said they were too intoxicated to know who was driving,” said Johnson, who was hit around 7 a.m. “The owner of the vehicle was an uninsured, unlicensed 18-year-old, due to prior DUIs. There was no way of knowing if that was the individual who was driving the car.”
That’s upsetting to Phillips, an avid cyclist.
“So frustrating that they can’t figure that out, and that they aren’t able to discover the truth in that matter,” Phillips said. “It feels so unfair and so unjust.”
Johnson, 65, has had to endure lots of pain and physical hardships. He was in the hospital for five weeks and returned home the last week of July. At first, he spent most of his time laying on cushions spread out on the living room floor because it was the least painful position for enduring the surgical hardware in his back.
“We referred to it as my apartment, and I was just there all day, staring at the window,” Johnson said. “There was this really neat spider, called a cat-faced spider, that developed this big huge web. We called him Spidey. Every day he would come up and down, and that was my daily game, watching the spider come down and trap whatever bug was in his web.”
He was able to get around with a walker when he left the hospital. He began walking with crutches in September, and then with a cane in December. About a month ago, he started walking without the cane. He estimates he does more than three hours of physical therapy every day. He can walk about 3 miles at a time and rides an indoor bike trainer. He and his wife, Deb, say they’ve both experienced PTSD.
“I don’t know that I’ve had a day since June 18 last year that I haven’t had pain at some level of significance,” said Johnson, who had surgeries on both legs. “I mean, this (right) leg, it’s always a problem. And it’s always swollen. When I first get up in the morning, it feels like I’m walking on rocks. It’s always numb. It’s always burning from nerve pain, and from being swollen.”
Sometimes he has dreams in which he’s riding his bike.
“And I’m riding the way I used to ride,” Johnson said. “Just the other day I had a dream that I was coming down Robinson Hill Road, the backside of the Golden Gate area. I’ve had multiple dreams about riding my bike and it has really felt nice. Then I wake up.”
The Johnsons live near Lutheran Hospital, where he was taken before he was transferred to St. Anthony. Deb says it took a long time before she could drive by Lutheran without hyperventilating.
“I’m doing a lot better than I was,” Deb said. “I’ve just kind of allowed myself to feel all the things. It’s been hard. Greg is pretty brave, and I try to match that. But for a long time I had a broken heart. To see him so limited and suffering is very hard.”
Johnson, who used to ride to work at DIA three times a week — more than 30 miles each way — has approached his recovery with an athlete’s mentality. So has Ludwig.
“I want to get back to myself, I want to get back to doing what I was doing,” Lisa said. “I never sat there and thought, ‘Oh my God, I’m never going to get better.’ I just thought, ‘I’ve got to keep working at this. I’m going to get better. I’m going to be running and riding my bike.’ As crazy as I am, that’s how I think. I know I’m not realistic sometimes.”
She likes to say she’s a feisty Irish girl with a temper, but conversations with her are filled with laughter. She enjoys teasing Dave:
Dave: “Every morning, Lisa has to go on the treadmill, which is very hard for her.”
Lisa: “Why is it hard for me? I like it.”
Dave: “I know you do, but it’s still hard work. She just was able to do 14 minutes of walking at 1 mph, to maybe 1.2. She just started to do little inclines.”
Lisa: “Little inclines? I was doing 6% grade, that’s not little. See, I remember.”
Lisa punctuates those exchanges with laughs, and it’s evident how much she appreciates Dave caring for her 24/7.
“I am probably the luckiest woman in the world,” Lisa said. “I have probably the nicest, kindest, loving husband there is. He has done nothing but take great care of me. He’s always by me. He never gave up on me. He knows that I am persistent, and I will do everything I can to get better. But even if I didn’t, he would still care for me.”
