My Motorcycle Injuries

January will be a little busier than usual for me concerning medical visits. I went for my annual CT scan last week, and I will need to go for a five vial bloodletting within a week from now for the sake of diabetic testing. I’ll then have to go for an appointment with my endocrinologist to make certain that the numbers related to the blood tests are acceptable. I’ll finish the month with an annual appointment with my cardiologist that involves an electrocardiogram along with a general physical exam that will involve things related to heart health.  I’ve already been informed by phone that the CT scan showed that the stent in my aorta shows no sign of movement or leakage. Good news, yes? I realize that all of these things are a necessity, but I grow tired of it all. It interferes with my schedule, involves needles and sticky things attached to chest hair that are pulled off with a sense of disregard, requires money because of insurance deductibles, and serves to remind me that the ...

A short time before the accident I bought a couple of pairs of identical work boots on a buy one, get one half-off sale. They were actually my second and third pairs of the same boots. I know that it makes me sound a little weird, but I used that particular brand of boots every weekday for the sake of maintenance work at the church property and I really liked them. I was wearing the original pair when I got into the motorcycle accident, and the rescue workers must have cut them off because I never got them back. I tried to wear a pair of the new ones to work a few times about a year after the accident, but they felt so heavy and cumbersom on my bad leg that I switched to sneakers. I don’t do as much maintenance work at the church anymore, so no biggie, but I remember thinking that I was stuck with these two pairs of new work boots because I would never have any use for them again. Yeah, that's them. The boots still feel a bit heavy on my one leg, but I do wear them occasionally. I ...

Christmas will be here in just under a week. This is always a very busy time of the year for me and my family. Things get a little hectic and demanding between ministry events, family activities and obligations, and our home in general. It’s been a bit of a ride, but I know that everything will work out well in the end. It’s a little odd how we take such a wonderful event in spiritual history and turn it into such a time of personal commotiion. Human nature, I guess. My body has been telling me that it doesn’t appreciate all of the holiday activity, but I don’t really have the privilege of listening to it right now. I have far too much to do between today and next Wednesday. I’m thinking of taking a break more toward the weekend after Christmas, but I’ll have to wait and see what everyone needs from me before I lay me down to rest. I don’t really know why exactly, but my mind keeps drifting back to where I was at this time six years ago. I keep seeing mental pictures of the things that...

Sometimes light shows up in the strangest of dark places. Taking care of my 10 month old niece during the workweek has become a full-time job. It takes up an enormous amount of my time and energy, regardless of my body’s mood for the day. I start setting things up for her arrival around 6:45 in the morning for an 8 o’clock drop-off, and she usually gets picked up between 4:45 and 5:30 in the afternoon. I sometimes have to fight the fatigue for scattered hours throughout the day. In the end it’s the energy that I often don’t really have within me to give. I often have to dig deep inside of myself to find the things that are required for taking care of a baby all day long. It wears me down sometimes in ways that leave me wishing that I could just lie down and not wake back up…ever. That’s the dark place. Over time taking care of the baby has taught me that I can do just about anything that I need to do within the course of a given day. Taking care of a young baby will do that to you. No ...

Each year, on the anniversary of my motorcycle accident, I try to do something different to commemorate the event. It always ranges to some extent from meaningful to symbolic, but I try to do something that marks the day as being distinct. This year is a little unique because it’s the first time since the accident that the day and the date match; the day after Thanksgiving on Friday, November 29 th . So…I’ve been thinking of what I should do this year because the day actually matches the 2013 calendar. My decision? Do whatever I would ordinarily do throughout the normal course of the day. My reasoning this year is fairly simple. I had first thought that I would travel to the hospital and give doughnuts or something similar to the workers in the ICU and the stepdown ICU as a way of telling them that I haven’t forgotten the importance of the work that they do. Appreciation is always needed, right? But as I thought about it more, I decided that a better way to pass the day this year would...

I did a little bit of Christmas work last night. This may sound a little crazy, but we keep an enormous amount of Christmas stuff in the attic. How much, you wonder? We have eighty plastic storage boxes that are a little bigger than cardboard office file storage boxes, two trees, a bunch of different wreaths and floor decorations, a train with roughly thirty feet of track, and a bunch of other stuff that I can’t describe accurately because I’m not really certain as to what it is. Yeah, my wife really loves the whole Christmas thing. Me, I doubt that I would even put up a tree if it were my call. My wife and my daughter worked the garage floor while I worked the attic. It takes about an hour to get it all down, and I will be doing very little from this point forward. My wife pretty much takes over from here, and I just handle the heavier and more cumbersome things. While up in the attic, I was positioned to think of something that I don’t often consider. Here’s the thing…I sometimes fee...

My hand and wrist have been hurting more than usual lately. I keep thinking to myself that I should set an appointment with an orthopedic hand specialist to see if someone could help to rework some of the things originally done after the accident. I’ve got a bone/nerve/tendon thing going on that ranges from uncomfortable to painful on any given day. Lately, it’s just more noticeable to me and leaning toward the side of painful. I mentioned the pain in my hand a week ago to a relative who is well aware of the injuries caused by the accident. He asked me “why?” when I mentioned to him that my hand was really hurting. My answer? A subtle yet somewhat sarcastic, “ you see, I was in this accident six years ago and I got really banged up”. I cannot forget that these things are a part of me now. I cannot forget that my life is different in many ways, that my body is never going to be the same, and that I am called upon to remain stronger than the sum total of everything that has happened to m...