Do climber’s deal with severe injury/ illness better?

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formerclimber

Boulder climber

May 21, 2019 - 09:17am PT

Financially well-to-do folks "deal with severe injury/ illness better", I'm pretty sure on that one.

Happy Cowboy

Social climber

Boz MT

May 21, 2019 - 09:27am PT

Interesting question and one I’ll be hoping a positive result from. I know it’s helped me in the past particularly post surgery with the pt/recovery.

I’ll be giving the thought another test in about a week when I travel to Mayo/Rochester to have a complete Revision of my right knee’s TKA...replace the original knee replacement, arg. it lasted 15 years barely after a 25 year expected life. The original injury to my knee was near 50 years ago, and early surgery set the stage for where I’m at now. Also more than fifty is the years I’ve climbed, skied, biked on said injury(and others). Throughout the desire to rebuild/remend and get back to activity is key. I’m hopeful Revision is my Revival!

Paradoxically surgery’s on the 30th, and I had expected ST to keep me interested while hospital bound...

SC seagoat

Trad climber

Santa Cruz, Moab, Bozeman, the ocean, or ?

May 21, 2019 - 12:25pm PT

I think your thoughts about an in-depth study would be a welcome addition to the knowledge base on pain, suffering and recovery and who gets through it and why. While most climbers certainly are “badass” I’m not sure they are the “original 1%”. I would have to say that the men (initially), then later women, that went to sea may be the original hardcore “WTFers”. Even today those that choose to single hand far off shore, or around the world, are very extreme. Far off shore, the chance of rescue, if all goes bad can be days, weeks, maybe never...whereas your chances of land based rescue is typically hours. Having done a fair amount of short handed off shore sailing in shitty conditions and climbing epics in shitty conditions it was drawing on those experiences that helped me the most with a life limiting illness a few years back.

The significance of this picture is that ten days later I was Dx with a 17 cm cystic mass with solid components...ovarian cancer. During this climb I was in considerable pain, thinking it was IBS ... and my mind set “goddamn it, I’m not letting IBS get in the way of what I love to do.

Finding out I had to do chemo was rather discouraging but what I had is that I could MOVE UPRIGHT. Having the capacity for upright movement, I believe, is a key component to attitude, mind set and dealing with the rigors of recovery. I’ve had Ortho injuries, food surgery, shoulder surgery .. all which limited my ability to move upright. In those instances my outlook was much more dampened. I once suffered sciatica (nothing like yours Riley...but I did have the “crawl” factor) and I have to tell you, losing movement was far more taxing on my mental state than suffering from cancer. Those that suffer significant loss of movement, temporary or permanent, and still remain optimistic are my heroes. Movement is life. those whose whole life centers around significant to extreme movement, and have it shattered, but still soldier on are beyond inspiring to me.

Since movement is so important to me I would show up for my infusions in my running tights. My protocol was long, 8 hours, and there is no way, I would sit through that. So the nurses would get me mobile and away I’d go through the hospital. More than once i’d Hear the loud speaker call my name to return for the next bag.

Movement again...hiking Yosemite Falls Trail lovingly called Chemo Dome, Half Dome and Michael Dome

Finally, back to climbing. I was on blood thinners during chemo, and while tolerating chemo quite well, being on thinners it was not recommended I climb, bike, ski or run outside. That was hard. In fact Riley, if you do research, I think looking at the whole component of human powered movement, how much or how restricted, plays in recovery and attitude would be worth looking at. Knowing that outdoors people, especially climbers,

I wish you fast healing Riley...compromised ability to move is actually one of my greatest fears. My few episodes of that type of incapacitation left me quite chilled.

Susan

Radical Rebirth

Trad climber

Texas

Topic Author's Reply - May 21, 2019 - 08:49pm PT

Your're a very strong woman, Susan . And I’m so glad you got chemo and every one of the medicines they gave you. You sound like you had good oncologists. Crazy how much difference there is in care. Glad they made sure to try and kill every last bad cell that could be hiding.

I think you are higher energy than me. Movement for me takes effort. I’m so damn tired sometimes I can lay around for days. It can take me days to recover from big shifts in the ER. So for me the movement and pain was worse -as long as I could be lazy I was semi ok.🤣🤣🤣. I’m very happy just on my phone or in books looking stuff up or watching movies or just texting with people. To a limit of course and then I go crazy. It’s horrible, an old emergency nurse with a burnt out neuroendocrine system. Or just always been like that - need stress and excitement to motivate me.

Funny thing concerning body chemistry and our motivations. Last time I was on here all wild I had started testosterone. Grad school , work, kids and all of it was just too much - high cortisol stress dropped my T to such low levels. I ended up being on T for two years; it was great energy and got me through school and 18 hour work days when I couldn’t even move the summer before. But levels can get too high; too too much wild teenager. The T put me in a great mood and I was funny and kind and had energy. Hormones are often a 100 percent cure for depression. But it’s still testosterone and so, instead of subtle pondering and wise melancholy, I was a steamroller. Nothing against steamrollers, but they aren’t known for thoughtfulness. So many subtle decisions are made related to endocrine changes. Instead of laying in bed and singing songs and talking with my daughter, I’m motivated to do other less worth while things.
I love the calm wisdom that comes with age. I value caring for and taking care of my kids and wife and being funny for them, instead of wanting to run around all wild looking for excitement. I was a nightmare as a kid so I just want to be normal now -at least as normal as I can be.

You expose me to things I haven’t experienced. This sailing the ocean thing - My genetics are Norwegian as well as Dutch. So I’m very drawn to the sea. I got a feel for the vast loneliness and danger of the ocean in Antarctica . I mean our oceans, this is a thing that makes Everest seem like our back yard snow hill. I really need to consider making some ocean trips occur. Maybe I can sleep a lot on my boat too. That guy who floated across the Atlantic in a barrel last month -perfect !
How about those guy’s who race around the Southern Oceans.

Back to our original points. So much of us, our motivations, seem to be the result of our own neuroendocrine systems. A little change and we are a different person. A person goes from being a 5.14 motivated climber to committing suicide
Much to be studied.

Had the post this fast cause phone was dying and I would have lost it. Fix stuff later

A tribe in Southern Madagascar - outrigger sailers.