My Motorcycle Injuries

This past week I held a funeral service for someone who was associated with the church that I pastor. She wasn’t a member, but she and her husband would visit in a worship service once a year or so. She was a very nice person and had fought a disease bravely for many years. Her husband asked if I would be willing to have the memorial service in our church auditorium, along with a time of fellowship with family and friends afterward in our dining hall. It seems like a strange statement to make as I prepare to type it, but the truth is that funeral services involve a lot of work. Family members have to put forth a great deal of thought and effort in order to plan and implement every detail involved. As a pastor I always attempt to accommodate every need according to the things that family members express. In this case, there was a need to prepare the church auditorium (usually easier to achieve, but we were trying to get things ready for Easter Sunday services this week). Also, there was...

The past couple of weeks have been a little more rough for me. Things have gone great personally in several areas of my life and I can hardly count the blessings, but my body has been  (warning: bad pun ahead)  a bit of a pain. It becomes a source of frustration because I will go through periods of time where everything is still a mess, but generally OK. My body has experienced some permanent damage as a result of the motorcycle accident, but at times it seems negligible for the most part within any given day. I often experience a comparatively minimal amount of pain and hindrance. Within the past week or two, however, not so much. A few days ago I actually had to use a hand brace for two days because of the pain in my wrist. The nerve damage done to my hand and wrist leaves me with discomfort and/or pain at all times, but the pain experienced a few days ago went beyond the usual stuff. I woke up in the night and couldn’t get back to sleep because of the pain in my wrist....

One aspect of my motorcycle accident that I never really talk about involves money. My lawyer initially said that my case had the potential for a substantial payout. The other driver was completely at fault, she had insurance, and I had a multitude of injuries. Several of those injuries involve lifelong complications and care. I pay monthly for doctor visits and medicines that are all directly related to injuries sustained through the accident, and I have been told that I will require further surgery in the future. Financial compensation time right? Wrong. I had medical bills from the initial care that made the available insurance coverage amounts seem like pennies in a jar. The problem was twofold: (1) The insurance companies granted payments that included the maximum amount of coverage for which they had agreed to pay within the policies. They did not hesitate at all to pay the full amounts, but their “good faith” payments involved everything for which they had contracted to pay. As ...

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...