My Motorcycle Injuries

Eight months ago I took a nasty spill in my kitchen. Not with milk, but rather with my body. I wrote about it in this blog that same day. The fall occurred when my foot hit a small, yea, miniscule blotch of water on the tile floor. My "accident leg" isn't really strong enough to remain stable when something like that happens, and I went down hard. I thought that I had broken my hip, but things got better daily and in time I thought that it was nothing. I now believe that it's something. The hip in question hurts from time to time as I function throughout the day, and I often feel pain that causes me to have to roll over to the other side when I lay on it in bed. The real drag about this is that the other side involves the hip that was broken in the accident and repaired surgically with metal screws. That side has been painful for years. What's that you're thinking, gentle reader?  "Hey bonehead, just lay flat on your back instead of on your side when in b...

  I've been dealing with leg pains over the past several months during the night. I mean, I always have leg pains, but I rarely experience any prominent pain while either waking up in the night or just plain not sleeping. I've had serious issues with improper sleep since the accident, but I've never really felt any annoyingly noticeable pain in my leg during the night. Now...yeah, I do. I sometimes can't find a comfortable position that lasts for more than five or ten minutes. The nightly pain doesn't hurt to the extent that I want to scream or anything like that. It's just that the pain is enough to cause me to constantly change my physical position as I search for some semblance of comfort. It's a new thrill that serves to remind me that my life is slowly creeping toward the day when I have to undergo another round of surgery.  Maybe I'll ask a nurse to photograph the procedure for me for the sake of this blog when the time comes for surgery. I should ...

I have sometimes written on this blog about my inability to sleep well. It's been going on for eleven years now, so no biggie. The latest thing, however, involves discomfort. Yeah, physical inquietude of the body, that's what it is. I have always just laid there staring out, but now I just can't seem to get my body to rest in a comfortable, pain-free way. I have to change my position several times in order to find the proper physical arrangement that grants limited pain and maximum relaxation. It didn't used to be this way. In the past I couldn't sleep, but it was just because...I couldn't fall asleep. Now, I have to spend my time finding a good position in order to optimize the potential for sleep. A "no need to focus on your bod" orientation, if you will. When I wake up in the night, I have to shift things around again in order to stand a chance for further sleep. Tiring? You betcha! Frustrating? Uh-huh... The aftereffects of the motorcycle accident ...

  Yeah, I made a funny. See, Kawasaki's main slogan years ago was "let the good times roll", and I rode a Kawasaki. Hilarious, right? Wrong?  Anyhoo, the times continue to roll in my life. The thing that I've been dealing with this past week is the bottom half of my leg. I've had pretty savage cramps in my "injured" leg since I came home from the hospital years ago. It starts in my calf but works its way down to my foot. If I try to bend my foot at the ankle in any way, I then experience pain that causes me to dream of a morphine addiction. The only way to make it ease up involves standing up and bending my ankle into a full standing position. The process is slow and excruciating. I had a pretty bad episode of this thing in my lower leg two nights ago, and the pain is now lingering all day in my calf. There's always pain throughout my entire leg, but this is more of a special, I deserve all of your attention type of pain. I can only hope that I cramp...

I went to sleep last night at 11 o'clock. Not too early, not too late. I woke up at 2 o'clock in the morning. I remained in bed, wide awake, until 4 a.m. I then got up to watch a little tv until about 5 a.m., and then I went back to bed and stayed there until about 6:30. I then got up for the day and started to work on everything that needed to be ready for my niece's arrival later in the morning. It's all a little brutal, but it's part of the price paid for riding my bike to get a haircut nine years ago. I was in the hospital from late November until mid-January. I couldn't sleep in the hospital at all, and I really didn't do any better after I finally made it back home. My thought back then was that I would eventually resume a normal sleep pattern after my leg healed and I could lay in bed more normally. Sadly, time has proven me wrong. Every 2-4 weeks my body breaks down and I sleep better hours for one or two nights in a row, but my normal pattern invo...

There has to be more than one reason as to why I always feel so beat up and tired. There are times when I feel as though I'm going to actually pass out. When I'm at my worse, my vision actually becomes a bit blurred (like, right now as I squint to type this blog entry). My guess as to why this happens so often includes the following: 1. The constant toll taken on my body with all af the aftereffects of the injuries that I received in the accident. 2. The consistently improper sleep that I've endured for the eight years since the accident. 3. Diabetes, which my endocrinologist claims is due to damage done to my pancreas in the accident. I know a guy in church who keeps telling me that it's age, but the thing is that my issue with fatigue and the fact that I often feel generally beat up always comes and goes, and seems to consistently affect parts of my body that are associated with the accident. Coincidence? I don't know, but I think not.  I can only say that I get r...

I get so tired of being tired. I woke up about four times last night. I haven't slept right since the accident, and last night was super annoying because I kept falling back asleep (lightly) and then waking up after just a little while. I got out of bed this morning and went through my exercise routine. It only took about forty-five minutes. Next up was breakfast, a ton of typing for my job, and working on some online Christmas shopping. I then had lunch, followed by some gardening work out in the front yard of my house. When I was finished I came inside to do some more online browsing. Sounds mundane, yes? Why then do I feel as though I've been hiking in the Andes for a week with no food or shelter? I hate the thought of going to bed tonight because I can't stand the torment involved in "sorta" sleeping. I feel so sore and burned out physically that it's starting to effect my mental aptitude. In other words, I'm feeling as though my mental state just isn...

I’ve been pretty much tired since the accident seven years ago. Sleep deprivation and physical “whatever” has me tired all of the time. I haven’t slept in any way that can be considered as normal since my stay in the hospital so long ago. I slept like clockwork before the accident but now nothing about my sleep pattern is regular or even gratifying. I’m thinking of getting one of those tranquilizer rifles with the darts that can put down a lion. My wife will need to practice her aim. My body continues to function pretty well, all things considered, but my energy levels have never been the same since the injuries from the accident. I don’t really know what it is about my body that is doing this. Oddly, the fatigue occurs in different levels of intensity. I know a guy who placed things in a better perspective for me a few days ago. He said that a car is never the same after an accident. You can get it repaired, but there’s always a noise or a shake or a grind that remains and it serves...

Today was a little busy for me. I mentioned previously in a blog entry ( see here ) that I thought I had a new incisional hernia. It turns out that I do. I’m not certain that I can fully describe how much I hate that this has happened. It seems that every time I gain some ground on recovering my body from the aftereffects of my accident, it’s my body that actually takes itself back. I don’t mind progressing one step at a time; honest. I’ve been doing it for five years now. It’s just that every once in a while my body steals a bunch of those steps away from me and I’m stuck dealing with the need to gain it all back again. It’s like cleaning up after a flood and having the river rise again the next morning. Anyway, after having come to terms with the reality of this latest accident related thrill, I told my wife this morning about the hernia. She was unhappy with me for not telling her sooner, and there was no way for me to properly explain to her what it took for me to come to ...

So yeah, I’ve mentioned in the past my inability to sleep properly since the accident. It was getting better a few months ago, but things have regressed a bit. It’s currently Tuesday morning around eleven. Last night I went to bed at 11:30 and I woke up around 3:00. I couldn’t get back to sleep, so after laying there for about 45 minutes I got up and did some work. I usually have something that I can be doing and it wasn’t hard to get things started for the day. I honestly don’t go to bed thinking about problems or unfinished business, but I wake up far too soon and can’t seem to get back to sleep. It was a bit worse the first couple of years after I came home from the hospital. I would lie down in bed for the night and remain awake for hours. I would then finally fall asleep and wake up within an hour or two. Over the years my sleep patterns have fluctuated, but the actual time spent asleep has remained pretty grim. However, the past few months have been different. I’ve been able to f...