My Motorcycle Injuries

So, it's officially summer and things are busy. I don't have to take care of my niece for several weeks during the summer and it allows for me the opportunity to do other things more freely. I've been going to appointments without having to set the times around her, and I've been able to get a lot of maintenance work done around the house and at the church property as well. It's been good to accomplish so many things, but it really takes a toll on my body parts. Some days it just feels as though my body is waiting to break down. The pain, the stiffness, and the fatigue are a constant reminder of the injuries sustained years ago in the motorcycle accident. Still, I'm getting a lot of things done this summer, and I look forward to the coming weeks. I just wonder sometimes if I'll ever stop feeling as though I'm fading away a little more each day.

  I spoke of some serious leg pain in my last blog entry (here) . I assumed that it involved the aftereffects of my once-broken femur. I still think that some of the pain was related to a small piece of bone that I’ve been told has grown into muscle within my thigh, but that wasn’t even close to being the main problem. I started to feel symptoms that were eerily similar to shingles, and yesterday I started to develop a rash in a small area of my thigh. I went to a clinic and, sure enough, I have shingles. The person examining me asked about stress in relation to the cause of my illness, but my pulse and blood pressure helped to prove that I was, generally speaking, a calm guy. The outbreak and pain are on my damaged leg, and one of the assumed potential causes of shingles involves injury, so I’m thinking that maybe I overworked a messed up leg and it triggered something inside of me (I’m not a doctor, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express once). Anyhoo, this shingles thing is...

      +      =     I did it again to myself. If you don't know what I'm talking about, read this . Years ago my wife and I were told by the owner of a local nursery that a couple fruit-bearing bushes could be trained to grow into the shape of trees over the course of a few years, sort of like a Japanese bonsai, only much bigger. He lied. After several years of looking at these big, ugly bushes in our back yard we decided that they had to go. I went out there this past Saturday and hacked them both into several pieces. I then dragged them into the front of the house near the road so that the trash collection could haul them off later this week. The problem lies in the fact that I dragged a bunch of large branches while walking backward for a total of about a dozen trips from the back yard to the front of the house. Well...I haven't really felt any sense of physical comfort since. There was something about the backward walking while hauling bundles ...

I’m kind of vacillating lately in dealing with what I expect to do with my leg in the future. There is an enormous part of me that does not want to have surgery to help with what ails me…ever. I can’t stand the thought of subjecting myself to the whole surgeon/hospital/nurse thing again. The prospect of surgery and the ensuing physical rehab that will be necessary to recover properly is something that keeps me saying that I’ll live with the progressive decline of my leg over the rest of my life. However, I’m growing tired of dealing with the constant discomfort and hindrance, along with the inability to stand up after sitting for a while and just walking away normally. Simple activities are always hindered by my damaged leg and it would be nice to revive the common freedoms associated with a pain-free leg. So, is surgery some type of panacea, or is it just a way to feel somewhat “better”? And what would all of that mean after enduring the hassles of going through the whole medical ...

I once felt the need to prove certain things within the earlier years after the motorcycle accident. Whether to myself, someone else, or the world in general, yeah, the need to accomplish certain things sometimes lurked within the recesses of my mind. I once had a fairly subtle need to ride a motorcle again. The truth is that I was never really a biker, but rather a guy who happened to ride a motorcyle. However, I sometimes felt as though I had to "overcome" my circumstances, losses, and life in general by actually riding again. I also once had a need to accomplish certain goals related to things such as manual labor, or things that I did without hindrance before the accident. I once had a need to reach degrees of progress in what my body could do, but it really didn't involve any true necessity toward advancing physically in my healing, per se. I think that instead it all related to advancing within my own mind the concept that I had the ability to overcome any harm that...

There has to be more than one reason as to why I always feel so beat up and tired. There are times when I feel as though I'm going to actually pass out. When I'm at my worse, my vision actually becomes a bit blurred (like, right now as I squint to type this blog entry). My guess as to why this happens so often includes the following: 1. The constant toll taken on my body with all af the aftereffects of the injuries that I recieved in the accident. 2. The consistently improper sleep that I've endured for the eight years since the accident. 3. Diabetes, which my endocrinologist claims is due to damage done to my pancreas in the accident. I know a guy in church who keeps telling me that it's age, but the thing is that my issue with fatigue and the fact that I often feel generally beat up always comes and goes, and seems to consistently affect parts of my body that are associated with the accident. Coincidence? I don't know, but I think not.  I can only say that I get r...

I have told people in the past that one of the greater differences between pre-accident and post-accident me involves the aftereffects concerning the things that I do. My body still allows me to do a great percentage of the type of things that I did before, but the difference lies in what is left of me afterward. It’s not as much an issue of inability as it is my body’s response to the things that I do afterward. I did a lot of physical work today that is not typical for me. A neighbor of the church called a while back to ask that we cut some pine trees that are growing sideways across a canal from our property and into his backyard area. I decided to handle this myself because I didn’t want the church to pay for a professional service and I also didn’t want any of the guys in the church to spend hours working on such an unpleasant task. So…I went out early in the morning and determined to do the tree cutting alone. I did get the job done after several hours and a handful of setbac...