I get knocked over on my evening walk

My evening walk today was more exciting than usual, as I got knocked over in an encounter with a small child on his training-wheel-equipped bike. I didn't ask for the father's contact information at the time, and Teresa posted on a Facebook group called "Secret Montclair" to reach out to him. That prompted a flurry of comments, some quite sharply critical; the nature of those criticisms will I think be more or less clear from what follows, which is my post (accomplished by my wife on her account) in response to them. The net result is that I feel partly ridiculous and partly outraged. Anywhere, here's what my wife just posted on my behalf on "Secret Montclair," a group to which we're now saying good-bye:

*****

My name is Steve Ellmann. I am the person who was knocked over as a result of an encounter with a small child and his bicycle-on-training-wheels this evening. My wife posted a brief message about this incident, and as one commenter said, this being Montclair, 350 posts can now be expected. I should have written in the first place and I see that I must do so now. I should have asked the child’s father for his contact information, and my wife’s post and mine make that request now. I told the father that I thought I was probably okay, but wasn't sure; that remains true. 

One commenter raises his/her eyebrows because my wife’s post, based on what I told her, says that the child’s bicycle either ran into or almost ran into me. It would be nice if I could say for sure which happened, but actually people often can’t do that with sudden, startling events, and that is the case for me here. I assume the commenter would prefer that I be accurate rather than that I make up a more compelling story.

As to what actually did happen: the first I knew that anything was happening was when this little boy on his bike came up behind me. I think he called out “Sorry” as he approached me. His bike and my legs intersected – though whether I was actually hit I don’t know. I do know that I did something like a hop, skip and jump trying to stay on my feet, but I failed and eventually fell down. I stopped my fall with both wrists (they were indented afterwards from the impact with the ground); probably with my head (my glasses wound up with a leaf or two between them and my face); and probably with one knee, which is currently hurting.

The child said repeatedly that he was sorry, and I responded on the lines that I wasn’t saying anyone was bad, but that you can’t ride a bike so fast that you can’t control it. The father at one point said, perhaps to his kids, that the event was his fault. I repeated that no one had been bad, but I certainly made clear that I was mad about this happening.

What was I mad about? As I told the child’s father, I am a cancer patient. Specifically, I was diagnosed in November 2015 with stage IV cholangiocarcinoma, a cancer of the liver bile duct. No one wants to get any type of cancer, but if you look mine up you’ll see that it is a particularly nasty one. Fortunately my treatment has gone well. As it happens, the treatment included abdominal surgery in 2016 to insert in my abdomen what’s called an “intrahepatic pump.” Every two weeks, when Memorial Sloan Kettering has used this pump, it has injected chemotherapy into the pump, and then a catheter carries the medication from its insertion over to my liver. The result, the valuable result, is that the chemotherapy can be focused directly on just my liver.

But there is a catch. The pump is a once-in-a-lifetime measure. If it breaks inside me – for example, because in an otherwise minor incident something breaks in the pump mechanism – it probably has to be removed (more abdominal surgery) and cannot be replaced. That means that my chance for chemotherapy targeting just my liver by this mechanism would cease to exist. Since my survival may have depended, and might in the future depend, on this treatment, I am not happy to see it put at risk, even as the result of the actions of a small child.

It interests me that some of the comments seem to view me as clumsy or over-zealous. As to clumsiness: perhaps so; the radiation treatment I had this summer and the chemotherapy I’ve had since 2015 have all taken their toll on me in terms of side-effects. As my wife mentions in her second post, another side effect I’m dealing with is low platelets – which make me more prone to bruising from seemingly trivial events.

As to the supposed over-zealousness of my concerns: This criticism implies that in the comparison of survival from cancer and protection of the rights of inexperienced bike riders, or of riders who lack bike lanes, it is the riders whose claims should take precedence. I have to admit that I don’t recognize the moral world in which bike riding is more important than another person’s survival. I am not alone in being an older and somewhat infirm walker in Montclair's parks. There are also a lot of very young walkers. I think all of us who do so have a right to do so in relative safety.