Council member Hans Riemer suffered a serious injury that required emergency surgery while on vacation with his family this week in upstate New York.
Riemer said he was bouncing on a trampoline with his kids and wife Angela around 5 p.m. Tuesday when he realized he was close to landing on one of his kids. He avoided the collision but landed awkwardly. Because it had started to rain, Riemer said he lost traction on a slightly wet surface and landed full force in a split.
The result was a fractured femur just inside his hip.
“I guess a 42-year-old man has no business on a trampoline,” Riemer said Friday from a hospital room in Hartford, Conn.
Riemer was transported via ambulance to the hospital, the nearest trauma center to where he was staying in New York’s Hudson River Valley. The drive took about two hours.
“Every pothole or bump in the road was excruciating,” Riemer said.
He said he arrived at the hospital around 1 a.m. Wednesday and went into surgery a few hours later.
He expects to be discharged from the hospital over the weekend.
“The challenge is it’s tricky to figure out how I’m going to get home because I’m very immobilized and can’t just easily get back,” Riemer said. “But in general, I’m glad that it didn’t end up worse and that I already had this time set aside for vacation.”
Riemer said he fully expects to be back at work in Rockville in the weeks leading up to the council’s Sept. 15 session, its first full session after the August recess.
He’ll have to use crutches for the next eight to 10 weeks and might have to use a cane for some period of time after that.
“Basically, I’m going to have to minimize the number of trips I take every day,” Riemer said. “I won’t be doing meetings outside of the office for the first couple weeks probably and I won’t be able to get out too much in the community. But I’ll be there on Tuesday, Sept. 15.”