Page 74 - Forbes - USA (October 2019)
P. 74
PROMOTION
Back To The
SKIES By K.H. Queen
Post-Hip Surgery, Former Pararescueman
Makes Record-Setting Return To Skydiving
Doctors told Ray Medley he’d never run again. Skydiving? won his age group in a major competition. I have had a yoga
Don’t even ask. But a year after his hip replacement with Dr. instructor back doing full splits and backbends six weeks after
Richard A. Berger, the former special operations parares- a hip replacement. Yes, I have even had patients participate in
cueman returned to skydiving after a decades-long hiatus. extreme sports like skydiving—though I wouldn’t recommend
Five years later, he was part of a team that broke a world that for everyone!”
skydiving record. For Medley, skydiving is fun—hard landings and all. Pre-
“Dr. Berger told me, ‘I’m giving you this new hip to be active— viously, skydiving was also his career. As a U.S. Air Force
not to sit in front of the TV,’” Medley recalls. “He told me, ‘You pararescueman, Medley rescued downed pilots around the
want to run, run. If you come into surgery an athlete, you’ll go world for four years.
out an athlete.’” In 2014, one year after surgery, he resumed skydiving and
In March 2013, Medley returned to work just 10 days after his has completed about 800 skydives since, including landings
surgery with Dr. Berger at Midwest Orthopaedics at Rush Univer- that sent him to urgent care.
sity Medical Center in Chicago. He resumed running two months He earned his instructor’s license in 2015 and in 2018 was
later. Five months after his surgery, Medley hiked Longs Peak in invited to be part of a World Record Formation for Skydivers
Rocky Mountain National Park. Over Sixty (SOS). According to the United States Parachute
Association, the team first set a record in April 2018 with a
PATIENTS RETURN TO SPORTS THAT BRING JOY formation of 66 SOS skydivers. That August, they set a record
“I have had patients return to every activity you can imagine, with a formation of 75 people, according to the Parachutists
and quickly,” Dr. Berger says. “I had a patient run the Chicago Over Phorty Society.
Marathon six weeks after her hip replacement, finishing in “I have put this hip through the test, and it comes out great,”
under four hours. I have had a man return to triathlons, who Medley says.
HEALTHCARE
