Well, my dear, dear, DH got home from mountain biking with a friend a little while ago. They went to some harder trails about 40 miles north of here. When he got home, he said he thought he'd broken a rib. He just left for the ER. I didn't go with him - he'd driven the 40 miles home, and really there isn't anything I can do. The ER is 5 miles from here. (OK, torn between feeling like I should go with him, and knowing I would be useless and he isn't any danger, and I have to go to work in the morning).

This is only the latest in a long line of ER visits. 2 broken collar bones (2 separate incidents - 2 separate sides of his body), 2 dislocated shoulders (I believe the left was from falling off the 2-story roof while shoveling it on Christmas Eve a few years ago, the right was cross country skiing a year later), various sprained ankles that swelled way up and turned black, a number of attacks of some mysterious intestinal tract thing that they can't track down, and I can't even remember the rest. Is this normal, or is he fragile? Maybe I'm just overly cautious and so I don't get hurt, but wow! This is the 3rd or 4th trip in the past 6 months (okay, most of them were for the intestinal thing). By comparison, I'm quite sturdy.

The weird thing is that the friend he was riding with is an ER doctor and anaesthesiologist. He checked it out, seemed to think it was more than a bruise, and later said "yeah, I broke a rib once - it hurt!". Never said "maybe you should go in" or anything like that. I seem to recall that they can't really do anything for a broken rib, but it should be checked out to see what is wrong, and he's in a lot of pain, and probably needs a prescription.

Okay, the really weird thing is that anybody could tip over on their bike (couldn't get unclipped), and break a rib on a tree that was 6-8 feet away to begin with!