My Motorcycle Injuries

                          The Red Sox won the World Series last night. I got home from the evening church service in time to watch the game. I missed roughly 15 games out of 162 during the regular season, and I caught every game of the postseason. Yeah, I love the game and the team. We celebrated a little last night, but things are quieter at home now. My wife and my daughter have gone to work and I’m here alone getting some work done with MLBN on the TV. It’s been a fun season and the playoffs, along with the World Series, were all well played. Way to go Sox! A little while ago I left for a few minutes to make a deposit at the bank for the church. When I returned I noticed that the TV was on with World Series talk blaring loud and clear within the house. The unusual thing about this was that I never leave the TV on when I leave the house since the accident. I wrote about this once several entries ago within this blog....

Are you old enough to remember the days when FM radio guided your knowledge of new music? Regardless of the genre, you turned on the radio for hours and listened to the songs, all the while saving money in order to buy an album. Radio and albums…crazy stuff.           I realize that the music industry is completely different now in the way that things are run, along with the way in which people listen to music, but I can still remember lying in the sand at the beach for hours and listening to the radio without headphones or earbuds. If your bedroom never had a stereo that included a turntable and really huge speakers when you were a teenager, then you probably don’t know the heartache of scratching an album on your favorite song. You’re just a pup. The thing about FM radio was that you had to listen to a bunch of songs that you really didn’t like over and again in order to hear the ones that you actually did like. It always involved the need to tolerate a l...

                                            I know this man who received very serious injuries in an accident several years ago. He fell off of a cliff while riding a horse. The horse then fell off of the cliff and landed on top of him. He had very severe injuries and thought that he would never be able to get out of a bed and walk again. Through some “tough love” from a family member he was prompted to get himself up and eventually he recovered enough to walk again (with some level of difficulty). He even recovered enough to ride horses again. I met him after all of this happened, but I have always known him to be a physically disabled individual who is very positive and happy. I would only see him for short periods of time because he lives in another state and would only come to visit relatives here for a month or so at a time. I heard recently that he is not doing well at all...

I had an appointment with my endocrinologist yesterday morning. I go every four months for a checkup to monitor my diabetes. This disease remains a lasting gift due to the damage done to my pancreas by the accident. All of the numbers directly related to blood glucose and such were good. It seems that I’m managing this disease very well thus far. However, there was a problem with my triglycerides level. Triglycerides levels involve the amount of fat in your blood. Triglycerides serve the purpose of providing you with energy by storing unused calories in your fat cells. Too much of them can cause damage to your pancreas and liver, along with increasing the risk for heart disease and strokes. I had damage done to both my pancreas and liver in the accident, and diabetes helps to create major problems with the threat of heart disease and stroke. Yeah, needless to say this wasn’t good news. The doctor couldn’t understand how this happened because I’ve been in such good shape with all of my ...

I’ve very recently started to lift weights again. I have had this bizarre pain in my arm that runs from the area of my forearm near the wrist where my arm was broken, up the inner part of my forearm, and then up the center of my bicep. It started around January of this year and at times it was so severe that I couldn’t carry my bible with that arm when heading into the church auditorium. Wacky stuff. I have no idea what caused this pain, except to say that it originates in the part of my arm that received a compound fracture through the accident, but it’s been getting better over the past two months or so. It’s been a little strange to have my arm in such a state of weakness for the better part of this past year, but I’m really glad that things are getting better. I’m just now getting to the point where I can use the arm for heavier tasks and lift things without grimacing in pain. I have started the weightlifting with very light dumbbells. I’m using roughly 15% of the weight that I’ve ...

My health insurance changed this month. I’m insured through my wife’s work and the policies provide both primary and supplemental coverage. The previous company through which we were insured offered a good primary policy, but this new insurance company is even better. They offer more coverage for less money, so yay. In the years before my motorcycle accident my wife and I only had health insurance for a couple of years, back in the 1990’s. We didn’t even have insurance when my daughter was born and we ended up paying the hospital debt for years. We went to doctors during the time that we did have insurance and I even had surgery performed on one of my fingers, but the insurance coverage back then became too expensive and we dropped it. Our age always kept us fairly confident against any major issues with our health, and most of our medical problems over the years were handled by going to walk-in clinics. We hadn’t signed up for the available health insurance at my wife’s current place ...

I have a young niece that I’m really close to, much more so than any of my other nieces and nephews. I’ve helped to take care of her to one extent or another over the years and we’re very fond of each other. She’s been sick for several weeks and wound up being admitted to the hospital earlier this week. She was there for a few days and was released yesterday. I can’t describe how difficult it was for me to see her in the hospital, waiting for a diagnosis that never really came while having to endure the IV’s and all of the hospital “stuff”. I remembered how extremely unpleasant it was for me to stay in the hospital (1 ½ months) and it bothered me a little to think that she was going through some of the same things. I’ve never thought of her as being able to become this sick. She’s just always been…OK. It’s weird how we tend to neglect having a thankful spirit until things change and someone is in jeopardy. We never really consider the possibilities of harmful things in this life until ...