My Motorcycle Injuries

Each year, on the anniversary of my motorcycle accident, I try to do something different to commemorate the event. It always ranges to some extent from meaningful to symbolic, but I try to do something that marks the day as being distinct. This year is a little unique because it’s the first time since the accident that the day and the date match; the day after Thanksgiving on Friday, November 29 th . So…I’ve been thinking of what I should do this year because the day actually matches the 2013 calendar. My decision? Do whatever I would ordinarily do throughout the normal course of the day. My reasoning this year is fairly simple. I had first thought that I would travel to the hospital and give doughnuts or something similar to the workers in the ICU and the stepdown ICU as a way of telling them that I haven’t forgotten the importance of the work that they do. Appreciation is always needed, right? But as I thought about it more, I decided that a better way to pass the day this year would...

I did a little bit of Christmas work last night. This may sound a little crazy, but we keep an enormous amount of Christmas stuff in the attic. How much, you wonder? We have eighty plastic storage boxes that are a little bigger than cardboard office file storage boxes, two trees, a bunch of different wreaths and floor decorations, a train with roughly thirty feet of track, and a bunch of other stuff that I can’t describe accurately because I’m not really certain as to what it is. Yeah, my wife really loves the whole Christmas thing. Me, I doubt that I would even put up a tree if it were my call. My wife and my daughter worked the garage floor while I worked the attic. It takes about an hour to get it all down, and I will be doing very little from this point forward. My wife pretty much takes over from here, and I just handle the heavier and more cumbersome things. While up in the attic, I was positioned to think of something that I don’t often consider. Here’s the thing…I sometimes fee...

My hand and wrist have been hurting more than usual lately. I keep thinking to myself that I should set an appointment with an orthopedic hand specialist to see if someone could help to rework some of the things originally done after the accident. I’ve got a bone/nerve/tendon thing going on that ranges from uncomfortable to painful on any given day. Lately, it’s just more noticeable to me and leaning toward the side of painful. I mentioned the pain in my hand a week ago to a relative who is well aware of the injuries caused by the accident. He asked me “why?” when I mentioned to him that my hand was really hurting. My answer? A subtle yet somewhat sarcastic, “ you see, I was in this accident six years ago and I got really banged up”. I cannot forget that these things are a part of me now. I cannot forget that my life is different in many ways, that my body is never going to be the same, and that I am called upon to remain stronger than the sum total of everything that has happened to m...

I continue to live the life and enjoy the days. Things have been busy for me while I balance my job responsibilities with my commitment to taking care of my infant niece. She’s nine months old and I taught her to say “cup” today, so yeah, we’re moving toward a membership to Mensa at a young age. My job duties and the baby duties don’t leave me with that much time for home chores, but I get them done with the time left between sermons and diaper changes. No room for boredom, right? The thing is that my body has started complaining to me in a louder way since this new schedule with the baby began. Last night I had a really hard time sleeping because my hip hurt throughout. It’s not really an “ow, this hurts” type of pain, but rather the kind of pain that can be compared to an annoying friend that talks to you during an interesting movie. It just makes it hard for me to focus on resting mentally and physically. The thing is that some of the hip pain is getting worse because I sit on the f...