I wanted to share a story with you all. Nearly three dozen years ago I was riding my Honda 750cc down a suburban avenue, doing around 50mph, when the light turned yellow. I had 30 feet to stop and I tried.
Let me tell you first about the laws in that state. If you are on an avenue wanting to turn left but the arrow to do so changes red, you can wait until the light changes and continue your turn. Anyone that was in the intersection can turn without getting a ticket after oncoming traffic comes to a stop. I was the oncoming traffic on the avenue that day. I was also taking a co-worker on the back of the bike, I forget where I was taking him.
I was in the right lane and there was a mid-seventies GTO to my left. Apparently the lady driving a mid-size Nissan was just watching for the yellow and forgot the other part of the law.... She saw yellow and went to complete her turn, across my flight path.
I looked to my left and saw smoke billowing from the front tires of that Pontiac. I did not look to see if my tires were also billowing, but he was going to clear the rear of the Nissan. I could try swinging right to go around the obstacle, provided she stops... no sign of that happening.
You cannot steer if your tires are skidding, brakes locked up, so I aimed for where her right rear tire was, she was still moving, I released the brakes and maneuvered. The GTO cleared without impact, but I saw the woman's face as she heard and saw the skidding vehicles, and she hit the hooks. I hit her right rear quarter panel.
I do not remember the flight I took. My passenger and I were on the grass about fifty feet from where we impacted. My glasses were split at the bridge. My bike was in the intersection and the throttle was full at full rev. I ran out and killed the ignition hoping to save the engine. After shutting it off, I realized that nothing about the bike mattered.
The fork was twisted, the front tire was under the bike, it was touching the rear tired as if the motorcycle had tried really hard to bend down and kiss the rear tire with the front tire.
I left the scene in an ambulance. This was the one and only 3 month span in my entire life that I did not have insurance. I will detail a bit about that below.
I got to the hospital and laid on a gurney and answered some intake questions. They gave me a shot for the pain - only my head hurt (no helmet laws - I am hard headed though) - and I had an x-ray.
I was there for a couple hours. During those hours, at least 8 different doctors touched my neck and signed my chart. I began to protest and request leaving the hospital. I felt I was getting scammed. The literally did nothing but give me demerol and a couple x-rays.
I was let go and left. I went to work the next day with the usual aches and pains and some road rash. The passenger was at work as well. Now my worries were law suits and money.
Weeks later, after I had health insurance, I went for an MRI to see if there was any damage. They told me that I need surgery - they will need to put some pins in my C3, whatever that is, or I will be paralyzed.
I worried about that for some time. A friend told me about Chiropractic. This was a trusted friend and talented natural therapist. Her son in law had a practice so I went.
I know I have written about the bone snappers before, but this post is the whole story of when I was introduced to it.
The Chiropractor felt around down my spine and cracked this and that (only after seeing x-rays he ordered), he put electrodes on my muscles after adjusting every adjustment, and showed me how to put some traction on my upper spine using a rolled up towel. I did that religiously for years.
Later on in life, I found out he also does acupuncture, which was painless. It was intended to stop me from smoking and it worked. I could not physically smoke a cigarette for weeks.
The long and the short of this story is that I gained a distrust for the medical industry and a love for alternative medicine in the same year.
Lately, I have had some dizziness. I knew I had experienced some of that in the past so I turned to my journal and found out what had caused it some three years ago. When you have solved a problem in the past, you know that your own handwriting will not lie to you or over charge you, there is no need to go to a man in a butcher coat so he can run tests to see what the cause is.
Three years ago, I had solved the difficulty when a friend told me that he had a problem in his neck and was very dizzy until he found the problem, that led me to see my chiropractor (I had to find one first).
In my notes, I also had the vitamins I was taking at the time. I started looking at the old boxes in a drawer and found one, a B12 supplement and a link to an article on how B12 should not be taken with sleeping pills. The box said, "causes dizziness" on the back of it.
For the last six weeks, I have been going through all of this. It was not just dizziness. It was a specific kind of dizziness - dizzy only when changing from the standing to laying down position. Well, anytime my head changed orientation. If I looked down at my feet, I would get dizzy. The dizziness was like the kind when you drink too much and the room spins. That is pretty specific and it was exactly what I had written to myself over three years ago.
I simply followed the same steps that I had followed three years ago. I found a chiropractor, recommended by a friend, and made an appointment. I waited until he was back from vacation, a common thing where I now live because people go on a lot of long vacations here, and he saw me. He is an old school nerve doctor and he treated me in much the same way as I had been used to when I lived up north. Two treatments with him and eliminating any supplements with B12 in them and I am good to go!
Back to the accident 35 years ago, it ended up being 80% the fault of the woman in the Nissan. They said if I had chosen to go around that car to the right, around the front end of the car, it would have been 100% her fault. The police had eye witness accounts of the details. She was ticketed. My rider was okay and did not sue me. The hospital bill in today's dollars was about $25,000 and all of those "doctors" had billed several thousand each.
Her insurance paid my hospital bill and because of the automatic awarding of "three times damages for pain and suffering" policies, I ended up getting a check for like $12,000 free and clear and I got a car this time.
I was on my brother-in-law's Harley within a few weeks because of the old adage to "get back on the horse" so to speak. It was an uneasy ride. I did get another motorcycle years later, an electric one, and you all know what my main form of transportation is today - again, no helmet laws in force for it - the electric unicycle.
I never had the surgery and I am fine, and you know how active I am. I was out on my wheel today, after two month of not trusting my balance. It was very sweet to weave through traffic again to get where I am going.
I would not have been able to fly the way I like to fly if the cause of the dizziness had not been solved. Piloting a plane requires your attitude to change when ascending, descending, and turning. It would be a nightmare if my world started spinning while in flight.
I am off of all pharmaceutical products and am sleeping well - no bed spins. Life is back on track. That is my story and I am sticking to it.
Originally posted on DClub Community Articles. Hive blog powered by ENGRAVE.