And now, a wee rant

[mme_hardy]

...which may just have been building for some time.

Migraine is not ... a headache.
Depression is not ... the blues.
Autism is not ... bad social skills.
Hyperemesis gravidarum is not ... morning sickness.

If you have, or know somebody who has, any of the problems on the right, this tells you nothing about coping with the problems on the left.

Comments

[legionseagle]

Actually, if you're a nervous rider and have been run away with, this comes over as patronising and dismissive. No matter that you could have died from concussion, no matter if you spent six weeks lying immobilised on a sofa with a broken ankle, no matter how much guilt you were already feeling because you should have stood up (I tried; I felt my broken bone shift sideways in my boot as I put weight on it and fell fainting and vomiting to the icy lane) and GOT BACK ON THE FUCKING HORSE apparently one was only "run away with" so even daring to suggest that one might have been - yanno - permanently (mildly) disabled means one's clearly over-reacting.

[green_knight]

I am sorry that you had a bad experience and that it had such a horrid outcome.

But I think there are three things in play here.

(Zero: I can't judge what happened on that day and whether it was a genuine accident or an accident-waiting-to-happen: given how moronic the person chasing you back on the horse was, there's a good chance that there were other things lacking from their horsemanship.)

But assuming that the horse had run away with you -

- in the grand scheme of things, it's not a big deal, behaviourwise. It becomes dangerous due to outside factors (running away around cars, on slippery surfaces, when there are dangerous items or vulnerable people about), but _behaviourally_, it's NBD. Horses do this, and you can train them - and their riders - to avoid it happening.

- nobody said that the 'lesser' thing was trivial in itself, see painfulness of cluster headache. Just that they are not the same, and experience of one does not give you experience of the other.

- for you, personally, it was a lousy experience. It was dangerous, and it was extremely badly handled, and you're not overreacting to your pain and the consequences of your injury at all, nor are you overreacting to mistreatment you received when you said that you were injured - there's absolutely no excuse for that. Ever.
That you were just as badly scared or injured on a runaway as I was as the result of a bolt (shattered collarbone, torn rotator cuff, strained back muscle) isn't a reflection on the equine behaviour, anymore than the same injuries sustained if the horse had gone 'eek' and slipped on the tarmac would make that behaviour in any way comparable to bolting.

I'm sorry if I came across as trivialising your injuries - that's the last thing I meant to do, and just as you deal with the horse in front of you, regardless of what you think it 'should' be doing, you deal with the rider in front of you - and if someone is injured you don't tell them that the injury doesn't count because of how it was attained. As I said, that was not my intention.

[kore]

Nobody even said anything close to that. The original remark was "A bolt is the equine equivalent of a panic attack" and the only even vaguely critical thing was that a runaway horse can be "preventable or easily remedied by a good rider." Nobody's saying you weren't terrified or your pain wasn't real or that you weren't in a horrible situation, and you're being super-defensive, insulting and angry about stuff that nobody said.

[mme_hardy]

I think green knight and Recessional have done a good job of reaching a solid common ground without further conflict, and I'd like to stay on that common ground.

[kore]

Well, I see people humouring someone who's entirely derailing the conversation out of misplaced anger like a toddler who needs a time-out, but it's obviously your call.

[mme_hardy]

It is my call. Please stop it.