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Reflections November 2013

Wit and Grit

Bike Accident Wake-up Call

By Mary Stobie

So if aging changes our judgment, how do I gauge what is safe to do? If I don’t risk at all I’ll feel my world has shut down.

Would someone who is mature please share with me the secret to aging gracefully? I’m at an age high enough in years to qualify for Medicare, but not young enough to avoid a nasty bike accident.

After 30 years of riding bikes, and a few harmless falls, I finally did the big one — flew over the handlebars and smashed my shoulder into the pavement — in the dark. Seeing headlights coming toward me, I hit the brakes hard — way too hard. The bike stopped but I didn’t. Pain, ouch, hurt, ache, and more pain.

Unable to move, I was taken by ambulance to ER.

After x-ray, the ER doc announced, “You have a broken humerus — the bone in your right upper arm near your rotator cuff.”

“Darn!”

“You can wear a sling, we can’t set it.”

What shocked me for weeks after was how little I could move my arm without pain. I had to write and eat with my left hand, and I am right handed. I couldn’t tie my shoes and wearing the sling, I looked like a war victim for six weeks. Friendly people who observed my sling told me countless stories of other bike accidents involving broken collar bones, broken hips, intensive care units and even death.

I wondered if someone up above was trying to warn me to stay off my bike? Forever?

After my accident, when I knew the damage was limited to my shoulder, I murmured Thank God I’m alive – it could have been so much worse.

Time has gone by (the accident happened July 14) and I’m out of the sling and the heavy pain, but I’m still in physical therapy for range-of-motion exercises. And I wonder if I want to risk injury again if I get back on the bike? I’m not sure. Mobility is important to me. I rode a bike with a video screen of mountain scenery in the gym today and it was quite pleasant and SAFE. Interestingly enough, it was more social than riding outside — I thought of my friend’s mother, Dorothy, from my old neighborhood where I grew up. She’s almost 90 and still exercising in the gym. She is an example of aging gracefully, but her daughter and I have both pleaded with her to stop climbing the ladder to her roof and cleaning out her gutters. We’re afraid she’ll lose her balance and fall.

So if aging changes our judgment, how do I gauge what is safe to do? If I don’t risk at all I’ll feel my world has shut down.

These are issues I am pondering — my own mother stopped exercising and ended up on a walker. Dorothy, my friend’s mother is still out there playing tennis and in her own home.

Unless you believe in reincarnation, the aging process is something we only go through once.

I hope to make wise choices about my activities in the future, and at the same time make the most of my life.

Isn’t that what we all want?

 

Mary Stobie is finishing her untitled book containing her best columns from the last 30 years. Mary's book contains new material about her life in Hollywood acting in films, writing screenplays and performing standup comedy, before she became a column writer.

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