My Motorcycle Injuries

I experienced some fairly intense nightmares and hallucinations during the first week and a half of my time in the hospital. To this day I can only remember a few fragmented minutes of reality from that time period, but I remember the nightmares and hallucinations vividly. The strangest thing about them is the fact that I never remembered dreams before the accident; never. The last dream that I remembered before the accident dated back to when I was about twelve years old. Since then I would sleep soundly at night and wake up in the morning without any memory of the things that my mind had worked out through the night. This has changed completely since the accident. I now remember dreams often when I awake. I always forget the content of these dreams soon after, but I do remember them upon waking. It’s a fairly big adjustment for me because it has changed the way in which I function mentally after more than four decades. It’s a strange thing to have my subconscious thoughts played out ...

I visited a physical therapy center today. A member of our church is staying there for a few weeks in order to recover from recent surgery. I visited with her for a while and left when one of her therapists came into the room to start the morning therapy session. It all seemed very familiar to me as I passed by the main therapy room and saw the type of equipment that I became accustomed to using. There is a strap that is placed around an individual’s torso when taking part in physical therapy and I saw many of those familiar fashion accessories as I walked through the halls. Later in the day I purchased a few 36 packs of soda for my wife at Costco. As I unloaded them at home I took the same route going in and out that I took as I entered the house when initially coming home from the hospital after the accident. Between the path that I was taking at my house and the time spent at the therapy center earlier, my mind went back to the day when I returned home after being in the hospital an...

I started the day by watching the local news. It’s been raining a lot lately, and today was going to be busy with all of the church services, so I wanted to see what the rain would be doing for the sake of convenience. There was an interview on the news with a guy who was speaking about this being “trauma awareness week”. I had no idea, but then again, who did? This guy was talking about the various ways in which trauma victims should cope with the things that they have gone through. Quite honestly, it all seemed a bit simplistic to me, but he was trying to be a helpful expert, so more power to him. In my morning message I gave a sermon illustration that involved talking about the amount of metal in my body (no worries, I’ll not be preaching in this post). I clearly got the impression that the illustration made perfect sense to everyone and that the purpose of the illustration was served well, but also that there wasn’t a whole lot of relating to it in a personal way regarding individu...

I headed out today for a while in order to do a few things at the office and run a few errands for work. One of those errands involved the need to visit a member of the church in a hospital. As the pastor of a church I’m called upon to make my share of visits to various hospitals in our county. The hospital that I visited today is located near my church and as I drove toward the visit I experienced a slowdown in traffic that was the result of an accident up ahead. It turned out to be a motorcycle accident. The road that I was on is the same road on which my accident occurred, roughly a mile away from the exact location. It looked as though there were no other vehicles involved, and the rider didn’t seem to have serious injuries. He was sitting up on the road while speaking to someone and his bike was upright on its kickstand. It looked to me as though he took a sliding dive on a turn. He was banged up, but he seemed to be “OK” in general. Several people, including a police officer, wer...