My Motorcycle Injuries

I bashed one of my toes today on the metal flashing at the floor of my front door entrance. I was barefooted, so my toes were fully exposed. Today's mishap involved the leg that was injured in the accident. That leg sometimes doesn't lift as high as it should when I'm taking steps. The floor on the inside of my house is a couple of inches higher than the ground outside at the entrance, so it's a slight lift to get inside. This same problem with my leg sometimes causes me to stumble a little when I'm walking on flat ground. My one leg is weaker than the other and it sometimes causes me to experience hindrances with my mobility. When it first happened this morning I thought, "ouch", but then I began to notice that it hurt far more than usual. When I looked down I noticed that my toe was bleeding. It's all fine now, but the Band-Aid and slight pain serve to remind me that I need to be more careful with each step that I take. Can you imagine? Walking is su...

                                                                                                                                                                                                                Before                                                                    After One of the stranger thi...

The pain in my body continues, but I still feel that it’s not worth any medical effort. It’s not the type of pain that hinders me from functioning. It’s rather the type of pain that serves to annoy me throughout the day without any great consequences. I googled the topic of knee replacements yesterday and every website continues to confirm that I really should wait for anything like that until my issue with pain and physical hindrances become unbearable. I’m not even close to that level yet. The rest of my body (emphasis on my hand) hurts to a certain degree at any given point in a day, but life moves on. The thing about all of this is that the pain remains subtle at most times, but always progresses throughout the day regardless of my level of activity. My hand, wrist, knee, thigh, and hip always serve to remind me to some extent of the damage done to my body, but none of it warrants the attention of a surgeon. Well, not yet anyway. Today I spent some time cleaning things up after a s...

My jaw was double-broken, upper and lower, in the accident. It was reset and wired shut while I was still unconscious during the first days after the accident. The wiring was taken off a couple of months later and I was able to resume normal use of my mouth. The first thing that I ate after the wiring was taken off was pizza. I have to admit that it was a dumb move. The crust was really difficult to chew and provided more pain than pleasure. I endured an enormous amount of work done to my mouth over the next year, but my teeth and my jaw were eventually restored and life went on. But now…over the past weeks my jaw has begun hurting. It has happened before in the past, but this time the pain has been more pronounced and it continues to linger. I can’t bring myself to even consider the option of going to see someone about it because the year after the accident produced enough visits to the oral maxillofacial surgeon and the cosmetic dentist to last a lifetime. Although this current pain ...

Here’s a weird thing concerning today’s topic…consistent pain is easier to manage than pain that comes and goes with time and activity. My mind can adapt to consistent pain and learn to ignore it. It’s something that you sort of train yourself to live with. On the other hand, occasional or circumstantial pain leaves no reasonable time for mental adjustment or adaptation. The problem is that my brain relaxes, enjoys life, and then has to cope with the onslaught of pain all over again. Yesterday was an unusually difficult day for me. To be truthful, I experience some level of pain somewhere on my body every day. The motorcycle accident caused enough injuries to leave my body with several options for pain location and severity daily. It’s usually something that can easily be considered as “mild pain”, but yesterday the discomfort involved a greater degree of pain with my pelvis and my lower leg. It all became a hindrance to being able to walk normally as the day progressed. I was also 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...

Can I just start this post by stating that I feel really beat up and tired? Thanks. Between taking care of my 8 month old niece for over 9 hours a day on weekdays, doing some necessary landscaping at my house (when your wife mentions it from time to time for a few years, it becomes necessary), and the general condition of my post-accident body…yeah, I’m tired. The thing is that I can never be certain that it’s just the accident injuries and the ensuing diabetes that’s killing me so slowly. The accident occurred just about a month shy of 6 years ago. I was fifty years old then. That’s somewhere between the middle age to early-bird-special age brackets, right? I’m now 56. I mean, that’s like 9 in dog years, know what I’m sayin’?   So…I’m left wondering if some of my problems are age related as opposed to accident injury related. I just know that my wrist, hand, knee, shin, and hip hurt more than the rest of my body. By coincidence, those are some of the areas hurt when my bike ate th...

I’ve made a lot of progress in healing from my latest surgery. Things are nowhere near 100%, but I am much better. I’ve been told that I’ll be free to resume normal living after another three weeks.  I noticed something unusual last week about my accident injuries. The thing is that I couldn’t feel them. All day. The pain from this latest surgery was so pronounced that it eclipsed the “normal” pain that I feel daily. It’s all back now, but it was pretty much gone for a few days. I still feel a degree of pain from the surgery now, but not enough to make the other pains seem nonexistent. I guess the lesson to be learned is that things could always be worse and that I should be in no hurry when reacting to pain. It’s just there, and it doesn’t mean all that much. If my mind is stronger than my body, I really don’t need to consider the need for further surgery on my leg or arm quite so much. I think that the same lesson guides me to relax a little, live life, and endure the annoyance o...

I finally had the surgery this past Wednesday. It was performed early in the morning and I was home before noon. The surgeon told my wife that everything went well. I expected to be past the worst of any pain or discomfort within a couple of days, but that hasn’t been the case. I was in some fairly debilitating pain for the first two days, and I’ve experienced really annoying pain since then. I didn’t attend church services yesterday, and I’m trying to lay low today. My wife and daughter were home all last week, but they are both back to work today. I promised that I would behave while they’re gone today, so here I am behaving. It frustrates me to some extent that I have to go through all of this. I honestly believed that my recovery would be simpler and quicker (recovery was far simpler the last time that I had an incisional hernia). The last one was higher on my waist, but I thought that this one would be the same nonetheless. I was wrong. The pain has been severe at times, but not s...

I’ve been having a more difficult time with my leg the past few weeks. I’m not sure if it’s just the way that things are, or if I’ve been doing something to aggravate it. I’ve been forced to limp at times, and the pain focuses on my knee and shin. Pain has had the tendency to come and go throughout various points in my body over the years since the accident, so I’m not really going to think that much about it just yet. The problem is that I always harbor the thought of knee replacement surgery in the back of my mind. There’s a real contrast within my mind regarding this issue. Part of me doesn’t ever want to be a patient in a hospital again. That part of me would much rather endure the inconvenience of a bad leg and just move on with life. No more surgery, no more thin robes that open in the back when you stand, no more gross food, no more being bothered in the middle of the night, and no more nurses in charge of touching and measuring and dispensing. The other part of me would like to...

This past weekend was a little rough on the body. On Friday and Saturday I did some work in the yard and had some things to do inside of the house that required a lot of standing and moving around. Sundays are more taxing simply because they are a work day for me and usually involve a good amount of physical exertion. I felt weak and fatigued most of the day because of the work done the two days previous. The damage to my bone structure causes pain in several places and it becomes prohibitive in functioning normally, sometimes even with simple movements like getting up out of a chair when I’ve sat for too long a period of time. It’s now Monday afternoon and for the most part I’m feeling alright. I’m thankful to God for a quick recovery. I once honestly believed that I would never get sick, injured, or fatigued. It was before the motorcycle accident, but I felt that sense of invincibility for most of my life. I think that one of the things that the accident injuries have taught me invol...