Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/609129
P92 BY STEVE BAUER CN III FRIENDLY FIRE M otorcycle racing is inher- ently dangerous and as racers, we accept the fact that injuries are just part of the deal. Most of you reading this probably know your orthopedic doctor better than you know your regular doctor. I've heard riders complain about doctors having a bad attitude towards them because they got hurt on a dirt bike, usually along the lines of, "You got what you deserved, kid." That attitude is nothing new. I dealt with the same thing in the early '70s. There are bad docs, there are good docs, I'm going to tell you about a great one. My first Ortho was Dr. Haller, an old-school grumpy German who never wasted a chance to brow- beat me (in his thick German ac- cent) about how dangerous motor- cycles were, usually while paying as little attention as possible to the task-at-hand. Besides being anti- motorcycle, he was condescend- ing, obtuse and disregarded any input from me. We clearly disliked each other, so I was totally stoked when he handed me off to his new associate, Dr. Jerome Wall. The year was 1975. Dr. Wall had just completed his residency in Chicago and moved with his family to Riverside to build a practice. He could not have been more differ- ent from Haller. A straight shooter, he sugarcoated nothing and seemed genuinely interested in what I had to say. He understood and accepted that this relatively nascent sport of motocross was "my thing." When he accompa- nied my dad to Corona Raceway to learn more about it, I thought how rare for a doctor to be more interested in discovering ways to prevent injuries and subsequent surgeries than he was in making a buck off his patients. I liked that Jerry was the con- summate wiseass and did not let me get away with anything. He loved to give me a hard time and did not hesitate to tell me to "stop being such a wimp" if I whined, or slacked off on my physical therapy. He had a great bedside manner and a way of making every patient feel special. Over the years, Dr. Wall per- formed several surgeries on my knees, including a reconstruction of the ACL/MCL in my left knee that I blew out in 1979. There were also nine broken collarbones, a few broken hands, several ribs, a punctured lung, numerous ankle sprains, some concussions and a right wrist that never healed correctly from my Dr. Haller days. Each time, Dr. Wall was there to fix me up and get me back on my bike. I remember waking up in post-op on at least two different occasions and Dr. Wall's smiling face was the first thing I saw. When I retired from racing in 1984, I gave Dr. Wall a poster that Carl's Jr. was selling for 49 cents with a medium Dr. Pepper. It was actually a placemat with a shot of me stuffing my YZ250 into a sandy berm with, "Get it On!" writ- DR. GOOD GUY