Get On Your Bike and Ride

Yesterday, after posting about mental health and its importance to the overall workers' compensation claims process I went for my morning bicycle ride.

Those of you who know me, or who have followed me for a while, know that I'm obsessed with cycling. I don't "follow" the sport like most sports aficionados because I can't sit long enough to "watch" anything, but I like to ride.

I have always been that way - I'm one of those "doers" - and I've been "doing" pretty much anything related to 2 wheels since I could ride without training wheels.

That also means that I have had more experience with the downside of two wheels than most people - aka crashing, or at least falling.

That's just a part of life on two wheels; eventually you WILL go down. Hopefully it is not that traumatic of an event, but it is a fall, and it does hurt.

I'm also fortunate (or maybe not) to have a very high tolerance for pain. Pain doesn't affect me as much as most people. Yep, things still hurt when I'm stupid and fall off my bicycle, but for the most part I just pick myself up, utter a few curse words, try to wipe up the blood as well as possible, and carry on.

Sometimes, like when I ended up in intensive care for a week due to a host of serious internal injuries after a particularly bad get-off, I endure a bit more pain than normal. In those situations it's just my body telling me that, yep, it really IS bad this time! I was thankful for the Demerol drip that time...

But for the  most part injuries are just part of my life. Which means pain is also just a part of my life.

Bowzer crashed into a wall, but dealt with the pain.

My wife can't tolerate any pain. She is a s frail a flower as I know. She complains of the slightest discomfort. Any minor bruise, burn or laceration causes her great irritation and misery.

The sight of blood terrifies my wife and she goes into shock - like the time I was riding "trials" on the rock jetty in front of my house on my mountain bike a few years back. I missed a step and got gored in the leg by a piece of rebar. Blood was spurting everywhere and of course I knew I needed stitches (and a tetanus shot), but my wife was so overwhelmed by the sight of blood that she couldn't drive me to the emergency room - she had to sit shot gun while I operated the throttle and brake with my left foot.

What is it that makes some people so resilient and able to deal with adversity, pain and suffering only to come back better, stronger and ready to take on more?

And others who can't tolerate nearly any pain or get set back by seemingly minor issues?

I was reminded of this yesterday after, serendipitously, posting about mental health. Took a little spill on my bicycle after only about seven or eight miles of what I had planned to be about a fifty mile ride.

The worst part is that I wasn't even going fast, which made me mad - there's nothing worse than an active person sustaining injuries in a relatively non-active way...

After picking myself up off the pavement I assessed my injuries: blood gushing from my right hand, blood all over my left calf and thigh, left shoulder abraded but thankfully no damage to the new cycling jersey I was wearing.

I hosed myself off with the water bottle, cursed a whole bunch for being stupid, saw that blood was spurting out everywhere ... and got on and rode to complete that fifty miles.

The injuries sort of hurt - I mean, lacerations, abrasions and contusions eventually induce some pain. But what I noticed most is that the cut on my right thumb wouldn't stop ejecting blood and that damned red stuff was getting all over everything.

To my compulsive way of thinking this was a huge inconvenience. I had a mission - complete my ride! But blood was getting in the way of that mission.

I was reminded of the time I went windsurfing in some big surf before work one day, ended up "biting" the sail boom on my first tack out through the waves and spit out my broken front tooth. Most rational people would call it a day, head back to shore and get an emergency dental appointment.

Not me! No sirree ... give up premium wave sailing just because of a broken tooth, cut lip, and enough blood to attract an entire school of sharks?!

And so it was with my thumb ... what do I have on me that I could tourniquet that thumb so I can complete my ride? Sunglass bag in my pocket! Wrapped it up, tied it up, thumb throbbed and wasn't much good for griping the handlebars, but I could still ride.

In the good old days when I was less tolerant of others I could not understand why some injured workers couldn't just wrap it up and still ride. I didn't have any compassion for those people who were unable to overcome a little pain and discomfort.

I've matured now, and understand that a lot of people can't tolerate pain like I can. And that's just part of the mental profile of being human - the variance in which we perceive and deal with pain is huge.

This is what makes the issue of "pain" in workers' compensation so controversial. Some people, like me, have something going on either psychiatrically, or psychologically, or both, that minimizes the perception of pain. To those of us, pain is an inconvenience but we adapt.

There are others, like my wife, who perceive pain in a much different way and for whom pain is a major concern, interferes with nearly all daily living activity, and which has no place in life.

In workers' compensation schemes we try to account for pain. There are pain scales. Some doctors specialize in treating pain. Impairment tries to adjust for pain.

For some people accounting for pain is over-compensation. For many others there isn't any adequate compensation.

In the civil world a jury awards money based on "pain and suffering." It's up to a dozen people of the community, with their collective experience, judgement and knowledge, to determine if someone is really experiencing pain and what that pain is "worth."

In workers' compensation we have disability guidelines and statutory schedules that tell us what an impairment is worth, and sometimes there is a factor to adjust for pain perception.

We know now that prescribing certain medications, e.g. opioids, is more risky and has worse effects on the pain patient than the pain itself.

And there will always be injured workers for whom the remedy is inadequate. There is no adequate answer for them, unfortunately, other than perhaps providing as much emotional and psychological support as possible to assist those persons in dealing with pain.

Mental health treatment is as much a part of workers' compensation as physical health treatment.

As for me, I'm going on my bike ride now.