SPOKANE — When Barbara Smit retired in 2015 she lost her equilibrium.
Literally.
The then-61-year-old, who worked as an eye doctor in Spokane, was diagnosed with a rare inner-ear condition which caused spinning and vertigo to the point where the life-long athlete had to hug the floor for hours. Eventually she had part of her inner ear removed, a surgery for Ménière’s disease, which helped but was no magic bullet; she spent months using a walker.
“I thought I’d never be able to do stuff again,” she said, noting that to this day her balance is shaky.
She wouldn’t have been alone.
Those who retire early (defined as before age 65) are 11 percent more likely to die, according to an 18-year-study published in 2016. Other studies have shown a general decrease in health after retirement. And while the research isn’t clear-cut (another study found that if you were already healthy, retiring early increased your life expectancy, for instance) there does seem to be some truth in a saying Smit’s 81-year-old husband loves repeating: “If you rest, you rust.”
And so Smit, “decided I was not somebody who could watch daytime TV.” Instead she “pushed and pushed” to rehabilitate and regain her former mobility. All that pushing culminated this fall at the top of an Argentinian pass after an 8,000-foot bike climb up a dirt road in the Andes Mountains, all of which was part of a 3,000-mile, 62-day bike tour through South America. The tour featured gale-force winds that nearly swept Smit and her bike away, 18 hours of nonstop rain, sore butts, “highly variable camping,” including one memorable night in a barnyard, and 200,000 vertical feet of climbing.