Ted Greenwald, San Francisco CA

Here's my story:
It was just before 6pm on November 5, 2001, and I was pedaling down the San Francisco streets on my way to the train station for the evening commute home. Night falls early in November, and the daylight was fading. In those days my bike didn't have a headlight. And although I wear a helmet, I hadn't put it on; it dangled from my handlebars. I was keeping close to the right-hand side of the street and traveling at a pretty quick clip when I saw a car door opening in front of me. I swerved, but not enough to avoid clocking the door with my right pedal. My launched into the air like a missile. I remember flying, thinking about what landing would be like. I crashed into the pavement and realized that I had gotten off lightly. Rather than smashing my head, I had merely scraped my nose against the asphalt. I had instinctively put out my left hand - my dominant hand - to break the fall. The guy in the car didn't even get out to check on me; he closed the door and sat silently in his car as I picked myself up. Then I noticed that my wrist was hurting, and my only thought was to get ice on it ASAP. I ran into a nearby eatery and got a bag of ice, then picked up my bike and walked to the train station. I forgot all about the guy who had doored me. I thought my wrist was sprained, but it turned out that I had broken my left scaphoid, a tiny carpal bone that often fractures in the course of a hard fall on an outstretched hand - it's a common injury among skiers, skateboarders, motorcyclists, basketball players, and soldiers dodging incoming ordnance. Even when it's treated properly, it doesn't heal in 10 percent of cases. Over the next several months, I learned that I was in that 10 percent. Here it is, June 2005, and I'm still working on getting my wrist back into shape. I got surgery in late 2002, and which finally healed the fracture, but it left my range of motion compromised, so I put my wrist in a stretching device three times a day. The wrist is pretty functional, but it will never be back to normal; Even if I get the range of motion back, the cartilage damage is permanent, leaving me with an arthritic wrist. If you get doored and you're unfortunate enough to break your scaphoid, my advice is: don't wait to see whether it will heal naturally. Get it surgically fixed right away if you can. You'll avoid a bunch of unpleasant complications that way.

Best,
Ted