Shirley Bryson, a 73-year-old retired accountant and salesperson, has had some tough luck physically.
She once broke her tailbone in a freak square-dancing accident. She got pulled in two directions at once, she explained, and her back snapped like a pulley bone.
She has been rear-ended in traffic accidents six times, she says. Six! Once the impact was so intense it knocked a wig off of her head.
Another time, she fell down a flight of stairs, the last four a backward somersault. Still another time, she injured herself when she tripped and fell on a walking track.
These accidents took a cumulative toll on her health, and Bryson found herself crippled with back pain she describes as “100 times worse than childbirth.”