My Motorcycle Injuries

I have done a lot of walking over the years since the accident. It started in physical therapy and continued at home after my therapy ended. I still do a lot of the things that they had me doing in therapy and I find that it all helps me to use the various muscles in my legs. The first thing that they had me doing involved walking sideways, but doing so between the parallel bars for safety. I still walk sideways for a certain distance daily and I feel that I still benefit from it. I also walk backwards quite a bit and that also seems to work on different muscles in my leg. Additionally, I walk for a certain distance doing leg lifts with each step, and I also “trot” for roughly 300 steps daily. I can’t really run, but I can trot fast enough to escape slow moving zombie hordes, should the need ever arise. I wear a Fitbit device to log my steps in order to make sure that I’m covering the necessary distance each day. I sometimes don’t wear it for weeks at a time because I’m fairly consiste...

Yesterday I had an early morning appointment with my endocrinologist. It all went well and he says that my diabetes is under good control. My blood pressure, pulse, blood glucose, weight, and general health were all declared to be in good condition. My blood work also seems to indicate good stuff overall. He then said that he would like to mention a couple of small things because my health was so good that he needed to talk about  something . Why? Anyway, he said that he wanted to check on the condition of my liver through some type of diagnostic test the next time that my blood is taken due to one of my current test numbers. He told me that although I am at the tail end of the baby boomer age limit, he wants to check for something along the line of Hepatitis C. I was given a lot of blood in the hospital after my accident and as a result he wants to have me checked. I then reminded him that my liver was lacerated during the accident and that my numbers may be off a bit as a result....

Last night I went to a restaurant with a bunch of family members for a birthday celebration. We went to a Tex-Mex place nearby. We all had a good time and stayed a couple of hours as we talked with each other and played a gift-giving game (yes, the birthday was for an adult, but it’s a tradition in the family and we have fun with it). I had a nice time and the fajitas were gooood. All in all it was a nice time for everyone and the service was great as they handled a party of 17 people who felt like having fun. We sat on a second story balcony with a nice view, but it required a fairly long flight of steps to get up there. I have been practicing steps more than usual lately because I have a more difficult time with the steps at our church. The individual steps there are a bit “taller” than the ones on most staircases so it requires more effort for me to pull up with my bad leg. Consequently, I have grown accustomed to using my good leg to climb so that I go up unevenly by using only one...

The last time that I saw my original orthopedic surgeon his last words to me were, “come see me when your knee hurts”.  I didn’t know what to say in response because my knee hurt as he spoke those words. He was a very skilled surgeon and a nice man, but he really wasn’t a good communicator in any sense of the term. A year later I wondered about the condition of my knee and thought that perhaps I needed knee replacement surgery so I set up an appointment with a reputable orthopedic surgeon who had an office about a half an hour closer to my home than my original surgeon. This doctor explained everything to me in detail concerning my various injuries. When I asked him about the parting statement made by my original surgeon he explained to me that he was referring to the inevitable onset of arthritis in my knee. He told me that the work done by my original surgeon was very good, but the damage was too extensive for a “full” recovery. He said that arthritis would eventually cause me so...