Dahon.Steve

After my accident, my heart was very week to the point where walking up stairs took all my breath. Even sitting at the office, I was still taking deep breaths and people noticed. I was very concerned and knew something happened in the Operating Room but was never told.

I did get back on the bike but very slowly. I was riding about 2 to 4 blocks at first and returned home. Walking helped alot more but in general, I stayed off the bike for nearly half a year. It took almost one year before my breathing returned back to normal. Maybe I did it wrong and should have done rehab. I still consider myself lucky. I wish you the best of luck.

gerv 

Roody I hope you are being inspired by some of the threads I've seen in the 50+ forum.

Roody

Steve, it worked so I would say you did it right. The advantages of rehab (for me) are that they monitor your heart while you exercise, and they give you a sense of confidence and hope.

Roody

Thanks, I followed your suggestion. I lurked there a while this morning and read some good posts.

Jim from Boston

I rode a bike!

Hi Roody,

I was chagrinned to read your opening post just today, written on June 10, since I read this Forum daily. I’m sure all subscribers wish you the best. It’s interesting to learn about how you came into a carfree lifestyle.

You pointedly asked for an inspirational story. I myself suffered the trauma of a rear end collision on my bike. I was in an acute care hospital for about two weeks, rehab hospital about four weeks, off work for three months and off the bike for five. But don’t cry for me. Argentina. Here’s a rehab story I learned of, almost as a mystical experience. It's also about trauma, but IMO holds out the hope of healing when things seem bleak.

When I was about two weeks into my hospital stay, I was watching an un-named, circa early 1950's black-and-white movie with the sound off because my roomate was asleep. It seemed to be a romance, with Glenn Ford and Anne Baxter. A scene came on where they were driving in a car and had a sudden collision, and Glenn threw himself in front of Anne. He awoke in a hospital bed, and she was OK.

The following scenes showed him gradually recovering, as he tried to get out of bed with a trapeze bar, then walk with a cane. Soon, he strangely, and surreptiouously from Anne Baxter, slipped away to a golf course and tried to hit some balls. She was obviously mad at him when he got back (all this still with the sound off.) Then there appeared on screen a newspaper headline that Ben Hogan was going to participate in an upcoming major golf tournament.

It turns out that the movie was “Follow the Sun,” a 1951 biopic of Ben Hogan. I looked him up on Wikipedia, especially about the accident and found this:

This episode gave me a first glimmer of hope that I would be on the bike again. Thanks for your thread, and the opportunity to write down these thoughts.

Sincerely,

Jim

Roody

Thanks, Jim! And Ben Hogan! Your stories reminded me of my own son, who used bike riding surreptitiously as a form of therapy after a bad auto accident. I don't know yet if/when I'll be able to ride again, but i am making slow progress on walking. I will wait a while before I even start thinking about riding a real bike outdoors, but using the exercise bikes in rehab is a good experience.

mstateglfr 

Well I can wrap up my day on the internet- I just read the dumbest thing I could possibly read all day.
Nobody dies early and how long we live is set when we are born?!?!
A 7yo boy was killed over the holiday weekend in Chicago due to stupid adults being stupid. His was set to only live 7 years when he was born?!?

What a total joke.
This forum is typically on the extreme, but its jumped the shark with this post.

Roody

Your posts were so inspirational an helpful to me that I thought I would pass along a quick update.

I had to change insurance plans after my employer quit paying for my plan because I wasn't working. Fortunately, the Affordable Care ACt allowed me to pay only $103 for a silver level plan, versus more than $600 for my employer's plan under COBRA. But I had to quit the cardiac rehab because it would cost $90 a week under the new insurance. However, I would strongly recommend cardiac rehab to anybody who qualifies and can afford it.

I had gotten to the point in rehab where I was doing 45 minutes on the treadmill, cross trainer and stationary bike. My speeds and power output were also increasing, and I was doing 16 % more work after about 5 weeks in the rehab program. I call that a success.

Another big success has been my own walking program. I am doing more than two hours a day already. I'm pretty slow, but getting to be almost symptom free when walking. Except that my legs and feet hurt quite a bit aftr so many years of never walking when I could ride a bike...

The biggest news of all is that I have returned to work!!! I'm in the middle of my second 12 hour shift back at the grind. This was a scary move, and it took some convincing to get the doctors to go along with it. But so far so good! I just hope that I can keep it up and return to being a good contributor to myself, my family, and society.

tandempower

I was surprised at the negative responses to the post in question in this thread because I have heard this kind of encouragement in other contexts and it is actually beneficial and inspiring from the perspective it is written. Some people feel better by eating better and by thinking of death (and thus life) in terms of predetermination. I doubt the poster could have anticipated Roody would take it the wrong way.

Roody, sorry to hear you're going through a rough patch. I think your will to get healthy again will get you there sooner or later, whether it involves stationary biking or whatever other activities make sense in your situation. The positive attitude you've expressed in this thread is inspiring. I hope I can keep the same attitude and outlook if I end up experiencing such a situation at some point.

… also I just read the post about walking two hours and being able to go back to work so it sounds like you are doing really well sooner instead of later. Glad to hear it.

mstateglfr 

It is beneficial and inspiring to hear or to believe that your life on this earth is predetermined and you have no control over it?

How is that inspiring? Such a view can lead to a total lack of responsibility towards oneself and others. For example- well, I'll die when I die, so might as well rob this bank.
When life is no longer controlled by the individual, then the individual is no longer vested in protecting their life.


The simple reality is all this is there is 0 evidence that clearly shows we die at a predetermined point in life.
It's impossible to show as the cosmos would have to predict when car accidents and heroin overdoses will occur.

Yes, I understand some people find an ignorant bliss in approaching life as some sort of Disney ride where they sit and watch everything happen until the ride ends.
But there is nothing to show we are all on such a ride.
Everything we have observed and learned leads to our fate being determined by our choices and decisions, as well as the choices and decisions of others.

tandempower

Yes, that's how I typically think about fatalism, predestination, or whatever you call it. But the way I understand this approach to thinking about death is that fear of death can be released by believing that what we control is our level of health while the moment of death is fixed. So that would lead a person to think that if they live healthy and happy, their (fixed) amount of time in this body will be better than if they neglect their health and choose a negative life orientation. In other words, you have to stick it out for as long as you do, but you can try to stay healthy and happy for that time, or you can make bad choices that increase the misery of your time. Since Roody seems to be on the positive track, I thought this post about predetermination would come across as encouraging, but he and others here clearly don't share this philosophy of predetermination.

I think it's more of a spiritual belief. On the other hand, though, you could look at any situation that seems sure to result in death and find examples where it didn't. The person might go into a coma and come out of it later or have a near-death-experience and then survive to tell about it. So maybe there's some validity to it, but of course you don't want people trying to disprove it by attempting to successfully self-determine their own death or that of others, so maybe it is not a philosophy for people who are really into proving they have more control over death (and life) than nature.

We control some aspects of life and others are out of our hands. Physics is very complex and I can't believe that our choices are somehow predetermined by the mechanical functioning of our brains based on chemical reactions that are as inevitable as the trajectory of two galaxies drifting toward a collision with one another. Still, all the possible paths various forms of energy can take form a superset of natural determination that goes beyond the simple dichotomy freedom/fate.

hedonist5

I'm recovering from my 3rd DVT (blood clot) in my left leg that nearly took me out. I went from walking with a cane to riding my bike 2-3 times a week commuting to work round trip of 23 miles. You can do it.

Roody

Thanks--that's great, and very encouraging. I know that a lot of hard work and persistence went into those accomplishments.