Mary Dennison at home in her room at Timber Ridge. Photo by Barbara Clark

Three months ago we planned a feature story about senior activist Mary Dennison, who will turn 84 on Feb. 20. She has been a member of the California Commission on Aging and the California Senior Legislature and a longtime advocate for senior health issues.

That was before the October Senior Legislature session at which she presided as president pro-tem of the Senate. Leaving the podium that day changed her life. She fell from the podium steps and immediately entered the realm of the nurse-turned-patient. For several days in the U.C. Davis Medical Center ICU, she remembered little except trips to the X-ray department. She learned that she had broken her left hand and three cervical vertebrae.

She was lucky - her spinal cord was not severed. And as a public figure, she felt she got the best treatment possible anywhere, beginning with the emergency technicians always at the ready outside the California Senate chambers where the CSL Senate was meeting that fateful day. Her longtime friendship with former Area 1 Agency on Aging director Sandy Fitzpatrick helped as well, as Fitzpatrick, now the executive director of the California Commission on Aging, was present as an advocate.

But it will still be a long road back for this undauntable octogenarian. She can't live at home alone right now, so she is living temporarily at Timber Ridge in Eureka. In late January she got to remove the neck brace and can strengthen her neck muscles.

Dennison went off the Commission on Aging in the fall; members are appointed by the governor, and she didn't expect to be reappointed by Schwarzenegger. On the commission for six years, she was active in creating a statewide plan to get agencies and departments ready for the aging population, a plan that Assemblywoman Patty Berg is carrying forward now. Dennison said that different committees of the commission explored every aspect of state life - transportation, housing, long-term care and recreation.

Dennison spent much of her professional life working in community health and home health. She was with the Humboldt/Del Norte Health Department from which she retired in 1989.

Her proudest achievement of that period was her work with a committee that created a plan for the senior health clinics, a plan that was accepted by the state.

"We've had the senior health clinics now for 22 years," she said. "Only 16 counties offer these clinics." They were funded by the state at first, then less and less every year. Now they are funded by the counties that still offer them." The clinics are available to any senior who wants to come in and talk to a county public health nurse about a personal health plan. (See clinic schedule, p. 13, and story, p. 14.)

Being a nurse gives her a perspective on her role now as a patient. Managing pain is still a dicey problem from both sides of the issue. "I think pain is one of the least thought of in people's illnesses," she explained. "Most feel that if people are on a narcotic, they will become addicted, so we must be careful with it. I don't think that's necessarily true if they're on it because of the pain. The trick is to figure out how pain can be controlled without narcotics."

Dennison said that she is holding a positive view of her accident and this recovery period. "I will recover and get out and go again," she said. "I keep that in the forefront." And her spirits? "They're still in the bottle at home," she quipped.