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Location
San Diego, CA, USA
A Cautionary Story from Experience
As we grow we learn(hopefully)from our mistakes.
So on a Saturday evening in March of 1976 I was racing MX and wrecked landing wrong and compression fractured a vertebrae.
Along these lines my father when I was 9 or 10 took me to a Judo studio and told the instructor to teach me how to fall & after being thrown thru the air a few hundred times I had gotten the hang of falling down it’s a very good thing you can do for some one you care about it helps in all facets of life only 2 wrecks that this didn’t help with the 1 in 76 & when I got run over by a car in 2017.
So I’ve been a mechanic all of my adult life starting out with motorcycles and moving to Boats and had been at it for right about 44 years then in the spring of 2019 I had some severely bad pain and it continued for weeks, summer came boat season got heavy and I struggled along(you know some aspects of the marine industry are very heavy)til August when my employer laid me off went to see my doctor he said I now have 4 compressed vertebrae he sent to a orthopedic he said you have Osteoporosis I was devastated.
Bought a house in Big Bear CA. Worked hard made a lot of sacrifices thru the years to have the mortgages paid down Had hopes of retiring healthy and having a great future right.
So while at the doctor he says you know you’ve likely lost a lot of your lung volume because of your rib cage coming down on top of your lungs, panic is setting in. I’m now freaking out I’m not gonna be able to ride!
So I ask my doctor to send me to see a lung doctor he says yes but you have to see a heart doctor too for the same reason.
So ok off to see the doctors heart doc doing his things, while lung doc sent me in for a CAT Scan results come back he says my lungs look like the lungs of a heavy smoker I quite in 87 so about 33 years ago fully expected to hear yes they are not fully inflating but they look good instead he’s it’s closer to having black lung like coal miner.
If you do anything that involves chemicals, dust of any kind & any exhaust please wear a respirator I did not!
He said it was job that caused this on top of living in south Cali
So he says you have COPD(stage2)you also have a 3mm nodule on your left lung already ordered a follow up CAT Scan for a few months from now(catching it early a good thing)but he also found problems with my heart and called my heart doc and then told me to stop exercising til the heart doc says it’s ok.
We are stupid please try to make better choices and please, please take care of yourselves.
I’m now 60 almost 61 in a few weeks all this explains how and why I’ve been feeling the way I do.
Geoff McMillan
As we grow we learn(hopefully)from our mistakes.
So on a Saturday evening in March of 1976 I was racing MX and wrecked landing wrong and compression fractured a vertebrae.
Along these lines my father when I was 9 or 10 took me to a Judo studio and told the instructor to teach me how to fall & after being thrown thru the air a few hundred times I had gotten the hang of falling down it’s a very good thing you can do for some one you care about it helps in all facets of life only 2 wrecks that this didn’t help with the 1 in 76 & when I got run over by a car in 2017.
So I’ve been a mechanic all of my adult life starting out with motorcycles and moving to Boats and had been at it for right about 44 years then in the spring of 2019 I had some severely bad pain and it continued for weeks, summer came boat season got heavy and I struggled along(you know some aspects of the marine industry are very heavy)til August when my employer laid me off went to see my doctor he said I now have 4 compressed vertebrae he sent to a orthopedic he said you have Osteoporosis I was devastated.
Bought a house in Big Bear CA. Worked hard made a lot of sacrifices thru the years to have the mortgages paid down Had hopes of retiring healthy and having a great future right.
So while at the doctor he says you know you’ve likely lost a lot of your lung volume because of your rib cage coming down on top of your lungs, panic is setting in. I’m now freaking out I’m not gonna be able to ride!
So I ask my doctor to send me to see a lung doctor he says yes but you have to see a heart doctor too for the same reason.
So ok off to see the doctors heart doc doing his things, while lung doc sent me in for a CAT Scan results come back he says my lungs look like the lungs of a heavy smoker I quite in 87 so about 33 years ago fully expected to hear yes they are not fully inflating but they look good instead he’s it’s closer to having black lung like coal miner.
If you do anything that involves chemicals, dust of any kind & any exhaust please wear a respirator I did not!
He said it was job that caused this on top of living in south Cali
So he says you have COPD(stage2)you also have a 3mm nodule on your left lung already ordered a follow up CAT Scan for a few months from now(catching it early a good thing)but he also found problems with my heart and called my heart doc and then told me to stop exercising til the heart doc says it’s ok.
We are stupid please try to make better choices and please, please take care of yourselves.
I’m now 60 almost 61 in a few weeks all this explains how and why I’ve been feeling the way I do.
Geoff McMillan
Probably the worst mistake was listening to the doctors telling me no exercise that screwed me worse. So it’s walking until it hurts then start walking again carrying a can of Boost Oxygen with me while walking or riding, on a bike path all this only being done with my wife being with me in case something happens while I’m out trying to get better.
I still love Big Bear it’s just that Big Bear stopped loving me now living at about 700ft elevation instead of 7000ft and trying to get strong enough to ride on the dirt once again.
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