My Motorcycle Injuries

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 mentioned before that I help to take care of my baby niece during the week. This is the third baby that I’ve helped to raise (my own daughter and this baby’s older sister included), but I seem to learn new things with each one. What I’m noticing with this little cutie is the fact that everything seems to change from day to day. I’d forgotten that about babies through the years. I’m realizing now that her sleep patterns, her eating patterns, and the kind of mood that she’s in (hyper/mellow, playful/fussy, silly/serious) all seem to change from day to day. Every time that I think I’m on top of who she is and what she needs, she changes again. I can only be careful to watch daily and adjust accordingly. Do you want to know the weird thing about these thoughts? My mind and my body are the same as the baby’s. My physical condition, along with my mood and perspective, seems to change as time rolls on. I believe that things change constantly within my mind concerning my physical circumst...

Simpler things such as injuries and pain don’t seem like such a big deal these days. I mean, there is physical pain and there is the inconvenience of what the injuries have done to my daily function. Those things do, without question, constantly present themselves. However, the thing that needs to be dealt with more often in perhaps a more prominent way is the so-called bigger picture. It’s the thought within my mind that “this thing happened to me and I’m being held subject to it”. The strange thing about dealing with that concept involves how it goes from being a fairly big issue to being almost non-existent within my mind from day to day. It’s the proverbial mood swing, except that it involves some fairly serious stuff playing with my mind. You would think that the pain and discomfort would be the bigger issue, but the games that your mind plays with you can often overshadow the physical stuff. I know that it’s all a part of having to deal with the injuries that I sustained in the a...

I lost a member of the church today to death. She was 84 years old, but a very strong woman with a desire to live. She had worked as a nurse before retiring many years ago. She had suffered many health setbacks throughout her life and had battled things such as heart problems and cancer, but she overcame all of it many times over. She was tough. Throughout the years I had visited her many times in hospitals and rehab centers, and I consequently grew to know her better than I ordinarily would have. She had a great deal of regard for the office of the pastor and always treated me with far more respect than I deserved. I have had to do the funeral services of many church members over the years, and I will be doing her service sometime in the near future. I spoke to her husband and sister earlier today and they will let me know what is needed from me on Monday. These things never come easy for me because it almost always involves people that I know and love, and in a sense I cannot grieve ...

I have an irony to share. It involves a leg that was broken from the hip down to the shin. It also involves an arm that was broken near the wrist with a compound fracture. I always thought that the leg would eclipse anything else wrong with me in relation to my motorcycle accident injuries. It took so much work for me to walk normally over time, and the pain has been so pronounced over time that I always assumed that the leg injuries would be the biggest hindrance to my daily living. The leg truly is a hindrance, but my hand has been getting worse with time. I’ve had some fairly serious nerve damage done at the wrist, and the combination of pain and numbness to my hand is at times consuming. There was also some tendon damage and it affects primarily the index finger. I have full use of the hand, but when I wake up in the morning it doesn’t open and close easily. Things loosen up within a short amount of time, but then the pain (strong discomfort?) begins to settle in. I have less stren...

I had someone ask me today about the accident injuries. He felt that it was a little odd that I’m always pretty much happy every time that he sees me. As I explained my mindset concerning the accident and all of the resulting changes in my life, one of the things that he had a harder time accepting was the fact that I expressed no bitterness toward the driver that caused the accident. I tried to explain to him that I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my life, and that running a red light on the morning of the accident was one of her mistakes. I tried to share my perspective concerning the fact that I see it as an accident, as opposed to a deliberate act of malice. He couldn’t really accept my logic. I also told him that I’m a Christian and that my faith grants to me a better sense of peace and forgiveness. Still, he just couldn’t really get past the fact that she almost killed me. I am certain of the fact that I would rather have peace in my heart than strength in my bones. While it’s cert...

I haven’t written anything here over the past few weeks, and I’m typing now to simply say that I don’t really have a lot to say at this time. I think that there are points in life where you deal with the things at hand while facing each day with a sense of duty and/or determination. Things hurt, things don’t always work right, you feel your body fighting against your efforts to function normally, and you just have to move forward anyway. This accident has changed a lot of things for me, but it hasn’t changed me. Life is for living, and that’s what I’ve been doing over the past several weeks. Busy, distracted, and balancing every concern with every assurance. There are things that are far more important than my body, and I’m a little intrigued these days by the way in which life just goes on. In the end it’s all about living.