My Motorcycle Injuries

  Yeah, I made a funny. See, Kawasaki's main slogan years ago was "let the good times roll", and I rode a Kawasaki. Hilarious, right? Wrong?  Anyhoo, the times contunue to roll in my life. The thing that I've been dealing with this past week is the bottom half of my leg. I've had pretty savage cramps in my "injured" leg since I came home from the hospital years ago. It starts in my calf but works its way down to my foot. If I try to bend my foot at the ankle in any way, I then experience pain that causes me to dream of a morphine addiction. The only way to make it ease up involves standing up and bending my ankle into a full standing position. The process is slow and excruciating. I had a pretty bad episode of this thing in my lower leg two nights ago, and the pain is now lingering all day in my calf. There's always pain throughout my entire leg, but this is more of a special, I deserve all of your attention type of pain. I can only hope that I cramp...

  Time is a weird thing. It defines our lives in so many ways, yet it can only carry as much significance as we allow within our hearts and minds.  The past several weeks have been both demanding and fleeting. I've been really busy both professionally and personally, and at times it seems as though each day is a dream that passes as quickly as it occurs. I've always seen July 4th as a point in the year that ends a host of holidays and events, while also being a point on the calandar that ushers in everything that leads to the "holiday season" and the culmination of a year's events. It's sort of a beginning of the end within each year for me. I know, I'm freakishly exibiting a weird philosophical vibe here. The thing is that time is moving quickly and it contnues to leave the past even further back. This accident of mine continues to effect my body in everchanging negative ways as life progresses, but time also continues to move me further away from a lot o...

  Things continue to hurt and hinder, but today is not a day for complaint. These days I'm getting plenty of things done for my job, I'm getting things done around the house, and I have the ability to love my family and enjoy the life that I've been given. Tomorrow night I'll be leaving after the evening church service with my wife and my daughter for a long weekend trip together. We don't take these trips nearly as often as we once did, so I'm looking forward to being together for some fun family time. Ten years ago I was still working on being able to function physically, and here I am living life and enjoying everything that God allows for me within each day. He has been kind to me and I look forward to the coming days. Not too shabby for a guy with a messed up body, yes?

I received diabetes as a late gift from my motorcycle accident. My pancreas was somehow hurt during the accident and it triggered diabetes. I was sick for a couple of years and finally figured it out. I discovered that it was far worse than I had thought when I was examined by an endocrinologist, but over time things stabilized and now it's a matter of daily maintenance. It takes some personal discipline, but things are very much under control. I know this man who was diagnosed with diabetes a little later in life. He believes that diabetes can be "cured" and he has, on several occasions, told me that he has beaten diabetes. He honestly believes that he can somehow rid himself of this disease, and he has attempted to teach me how to do it from time to time. I only see him every few years, but the last time that I spoke to him a few months ago he started his first sentence after saying "hello" by stating that he had beaten diabetes. I gave him a very polite ...

Yes, that's another photo of my arm. Narcissistic, isn't it? I took that photo a few days ago while having a CT Scan taken of my chest. It's an annual ritual for me and this photo involves the IV needed for the tracer scan that they pump into my body for the procedure. I think that it's radioactive, but I never fully read the warnings that they make me sign before the appointment. Blissful peace of mind until it kills me, right? The story related to this procedure is a little whacky. My aorta ruptured near my heart due to the force of impact during the accident. Something in my circulatory system landed in the hole and caused the internal bleeding to minimize. That same "thing" either disolved or moved along when they installed the stent and didn't cause me any further problems. Consequently, the staff at the original cardiologist's office called me "the miracle man". Life's a freak show. My current cardiologist insists on having my chest...

So...I've been belly-aching in the past few blog entries about my knee. I thought that it was getting ready to fall apart because of some very unusual pain that I've been experiencing but, yeah, it's gone now. I don't know how or why, but it came and went. I still have the "usual" pain and discomfort in my knee, but the funky stuff that I was feeling for several weeks has faded. Conseq uently,  I've been duped by my body again. These things that occur with the various injury locations related to the motorcycle accident really can be an annoyance. The constant changes within the various injury loctions on my body leave me a little leery concerning the coming years and all of the things that I will probably have to endure. I remember a Twilight Zone episode where an older couple went to a futuristic company for the sake of body transplants. They ultimately chose to remain old and live out the remainder of their lives together. Hmm, I'm wondering which wa...

Yesterday I spent the majority of my time watching my niece because of a sick day from school. My knee wasn't feeling its best, but I took her to the grocery store in order to buy her a snack. As I strolled through the aisles with her riding in a shopping cart, I ran through a few of those aisles while pushing the cart because it's something that she has always loved to do. My knee hadn't been feeling well before this, but a few hours later it began to feel really loose. I've mentioned this problem with my knee in previous blog posts, but it feels as though my leg is going to separate into two pieces at the middle. Weird. I can't simply blame it on the grocery store activity because I've had it happen while simply walking a very short distance at a fairly slow pace. The feeling went away overnight and I only feel the normal pain and discomfort today, so yay for me. One of the annoying things about my motorcycle accident injuries is the uncertainties that they pr...