My Motorcycle Injuries

June is almost over and July will bring with it various blessings and challenges. I always consider Independence Day to be a milestone within a calendar year. Summer will push forward from there toward the autumn months, and before you know it we’ll be celebrating the Holiday Season. I think that the important thing is to enjoy what you’ve got while you have it. Life’s an adventure to be appreciated every day. I’ll be going to a bunch of different medical appointments related to diabetes over the next couple of months as the summer advances. I find it all a little annoying because it takes up a lot of time and it will be costing us bookoo bucks. The most annoying part of it is the fact that I wouldn’t be diabetic if I hadn’t received some type of mystery damage to my pancreas in the motorcycle accident. It took a couple years to manifest itself fully, but yeah, it was the accident that did it. When I’m finished with all of these various appointments throughout the summer I won’t be dea...

When I was in junior high school there was this kid who could easily be referred to as an annoyance. He was the same age as me and I saw him at school often. He didn’t live too far from me so I saw him outside of school occasionally. The thing about him was that he often behaved in a way that provoked others. The combination of terms that would accurately describe him would be “annoying smart aleck  /  pain in the neck”. The thing is that he was a small guy, both in stature and in body frame. He probably couldn’t have protected himself physically against someone younger than himself. I could have easily beaten this kid into submission at any time, but I never did. I always knew that his behavior was a source of compensation for his physique and for issues that he was having at home. I chose to tolerate his behavior and withhold any retaliation. I wish now that I possessed the ability then to help him with counselling, but I was just a kid myself back then and I didn’t have the...

Things have been glaringly obvious to me lately. What I mean by that involves the condition of my body. I have settled into a routine of sorts, and it seems as though this is pretty much it for the future. I get up, I assess where things are with my hips, my leg, my arm, and my head, and I move forward toward whatever the day demands of me. The issue with my head has to do with how sober I feel (Hey, no alcohol involved. Baptist preacher, remember?). It’s just that I sometimes feel so lightheaded and fatigued that I have to be careful with what I do and how I do it. Certain tasks require a more alert spirit than others. Once the day gets going a bit I have to be careful with the twilight zone. This is the time, between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., when my body starts to give in to whatever ails me most and decides to fall into a place of weakness, or pain, or fatigue. Sometimes it’s a combination of the three and it can last for a while. Yeah. I have had to measure success concerning my health ...

I’ve mentioned often that I developed diabetes as a result of the injuries sustained in the motorcycle accident. I had an appointment this morning with my endocrinologist. The blood work needed in preparation for this visit was done last week. Everything went well during the visit today with my vital signs and such, and the blood test results from last week showed me to be in really good shape with all of the different things that he had me tested for. There are usually thirty or so items that he orders for each test. They differ from visit to visit, but certain things regarding glucose issues are consistently tested each time. My A1C, which is a number that gives an indication of my blood sugar levels over the past three months, was at  5.3 . This number is clearly below diabetic levels! I’ve been working hard with proper diet and exercise, but I’m very much thankful that the grace of God has been such a big part of my health in this battle to control diabetes. My doctor had very ...

This past Sunday I had a member of our church mention to me how much pain I seemed to be in and then ask me to go and take a pain pill between the morning services. I told her that I didn’t have any pain medication, so she told me that I should be certain to take something when I got home later that afternoon. I then clarified that I didn’t have any prescription pain pills at home either. She was a bit shocked by my response. The thing is that I don’t take drugs for pain, not even over-the-counter meds. I just endure until it’s gone because the more severe pain always goes away. I wake up to some degree of pain every day, but I really hate placing more chemicals into my body. I prefer to simply endure the nonsense until my body’s pain receptacles empty out a bit. It’s a daily issue, but most days are fairly mellow. I get a sympathetic look from others from time to time, but they don’t understand that the pain really isn’t that big of a deal. I fight against the pain in my body daily, a...

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...