October 2011
2 posts
I'm pretty well overdue for some sort of update on... →
Vacation and PT
For those who don’t know, my wife and I went on vacation with her family a few weeks ago to North Myrtle Beach. The family was sharing a house near the beach, which is how we were able to afford going down there. Well, I was pretty upset, at first, to find out that my wheelchair did not fit through the interior doors of the house. So, once inside, I had to use my walker to get around in...
August 2011
4 posts
5 tags
Looking forward to PAX East
It’s true, I’m looking forward to PAX East, the East coast version of a video game and webcomic convention that normally takes place in Seattle. I can honestly say; however, that I’m not excited for the “normal” reasons. You see, I have a number of friends that I only see at PAX, usually due to how far away they live from me. These friends have only ever known me...
4 tags
3 tags
3 tags
Septembeard Team Created →
I have started up a team for Septembeard. If you’re not familiar, it’s a marathon…of sorts…in which teams get people to pledge money that goes towards researching cures for cancer. It’s just, in this case, rather than running or swimming…we’re growing beards. So, if you’d like to join my team and help with the cause, please let me know. If, on...
July 2011
2 posts
4 tags
4 tags
The News We've Been Waiting For...
Whew, almost forgot where this blog was, it’s been so long since I’ve updated. Honestly, I can say there are three main reasons for that. 1) We got a PS3. 2) We got PS3 games. 3) For a long time, I was stuck in a holding pattern. Only now, roughly four months after getting out of in-patient therapy at Passavant hospital, is the blister that I developed at the end of my time...
May 2011
1 post
5 tags
An Open Letter
The “Dear 16 year old me” video that’s been going around reminded me of an old note I wrote on Facebook a while back. It still rings true to me, so I thought I’d repost it here. So, here you go!
An open letter to the individual who would have ended up with cancer, Dir Sir or Madam, I’ve said since this whole ordeal started that, “if this had to happen,...
March 2011
9 posts
Questions?
Good morning, folks! Sometimes, it helps me to remember stuff for the journal (and book) if people ask me questions about my whole experience. Also, I’m sure that there are people out there who have questions about what I’ve been through and are just afraid to ask. So today, I’m giving you full permission! Ask away! Any questions will be answered to the best of my ability....
Why it's Awesome to be a Double Amputee
I’ve been talking about this for a while, but I wanted to post something and make it official, so I actually have a real numbering scheme in place.
Reasons Why it’s Awesome to be a Double Amputee
Wet socks no longer bother you at ALL.
You’ll never stub your toe again…ever.
You don’t have to worry about breaking in new shoes.
Cold bathroom floors in the morning...
4 tags
PAX: Saturday
Saturday at PAX East started with working the lines some more for the Cookie Brigade! (I really tried to get as much time in as possible, and I think, by the end, Becca and I really had it down to a science. Next year, the only thing we can do better is better cookie diversity and scheduling.) After an hour or so of working the lines, it was time for the Make-A-Strip panel.
As with the...
5 tags
PAX East: Friday
Friday started out with the first Cookie Brigade meeting in the lobby of the Westin. The Cookie Brigade, for those who don’t know, is a volunteer group that raises money for Child’s Play. We bake and distribute cookies for free to people at PAX, then take a (strictly optional) donation to Child’s Play. This year…spoiler…we raised $9,600. Aside from just being...
3 tags
PAX East; Thursday
Though PAX doesn’t officially start until Friday, there are some people who prefer to show up on Thursday. Becca and I are, as you’d guess, among those people. I always prefer to get my medical badge early, and this time, Becca had something to drop off with the Enforcers.
We found that the BCEC was much easier to get to than the convention center from last year. Our driving...
PAX East 2011
This past weekend was the amazingly cool and gigantic gaming convention known as PAX. For those of you who aren’t familiar, PAX stands for Penny Arcade eXpo. Gabe and Tycho, the creators of the webcomic Penny Arcade, decided a while back that there just wasn’t the kind of gaming convention that they wanted. The closest was E3 which, while cool, catered to the big companies rather...
5 tags
The Year of New Stuff
Ok, the official title of this should be “The Year of Doing Stuff I’ve Always Wanted to Do.” This year is a big year. Really, I can’t even stress how big. This year will mark the first year where I will have nothing new wrong with me. Every day since January 16th, 2008, I have been fighting. Some days, I fought for my life. Some days, I fought for my legs. Even on...
4 tags
I'm still here, I swear!
Wow, sorry about that, everyone. I got home and managed to fall off the face of the Earth, completely! Let me catch you up on what’s going on with everything.
Just before I got sent home from PT, I developed a blister on the bottom of my left leg. It opened a few days before I left, and by the time I got home, it had developed into a layer of escar, which is kind of like a hard scab...
February 2011
16 posts
3 tags
PT: Done!
While there remains a lot of work to be done yet in out-patient PT, not to mention exercising at home and the gym, my time at in-patient PT has come to an end. I’m home!
I apologize for not updating for the past few days, but my schedule, which was hectic to begin with, became even more jam-packed with things to do to get ready to go home. When today rolled around, the actual process of...
3 tags
PT: Day 29
The countdown to my discharge date is well and truly on the way!
Things started off pretty routinely today, at first. I performed a skin check along with Nate and Jen (my physical therapists), then I put my prosthetics on and got ready to walk. Today; however, we started with the crutch canes rather than the walker. I got in a couple nice walks, about double the distance that I’ve...
3 tags
PT: Day 28
It’s official, if all goes as planned, I will be going home this coming Tuesday!
Little adjustments continue to be made in both the thickness of the ply I’m wearing and the prosthetics, themselves. My left leg, oddly enough, still feels like it’s a little too long. Bjorn will be stopping by tomorrow to make some more adjustments including, I hope, shortening the left leg by...
4 tags
PT: Day 27
I was warned when I first got my prosthetics not to be discouraged by the process that would follow. Many, many adjustments need to be made before the legs settle in to their final state. Really, the process of adjusting the legs never really stops, they’ll always need little tweaks, here and there. Today was another round of those little adjustments. Bjorn came in this morning and...
3 tags
3 tags
3 tags
3 tags
3 tags
PT: Day 23
When I was learning to drive, my mom insisted that I learn on a manual transmission car. Her reasoning was that if I learned on a stick shift, I’d have no trouble driving an automatic. (Whereas if you learn on an automatic, it can sometimes be a pain to drive a stick.) I cursed that manual transmission every step of the way. At the end of the road our house was on, there was a stop sign...
3 tags
PT: Day 21-22
Big news for the past few days! The reason I didn’t post yesterday was because I was dead tired from some incredible walking! Again, the changes made on Friday made all the difference as, with the techniques learned then, I was able to start walking with a smooth, continuous movement!
Up until now, my walking has been very…jerky. My gait is step, pause, step, pause, repeat. With...
5 tags
3 tags
PT: Day 19
I can’t tell you how excited I am right now. I mean, I’ve been excited the whole time, but things are starting to really to click. Allow me to explain.
Yesterday, if you’ll recall, was the super long day in which my legs were adjusted, I walked a whole bunch and everything kinda came together in the end. Well, day 19 was my first full day with the new adjustments, and I was...
3 tags
PT: Day 18
Day 18, I have to say, was a marked improvement over the past few days. It was a long day, and it was definitely a difficult day, but in the end, it was entirely worth it. We knew that Bjorn (or someone from Hanger) would be coming out in the afternoon to look at the prosthetics, so we planned on taking it a little easy in the morning. To diagnose and adjust the prosthetics requires an awful...
3 tags
PT: Day 16-17
I have tried to maintain a certain amount of honesty and transparency in this blog. Since it serves not only as an update to my friends and family, but as a journal for myself, it makes sense to be pretty up front here. With that in mind, let me share the bad news and the good news.
The bad news is that for the past few days, I’ve been having a pretty rough time, emotionally speaking....
4 tags
PT: Day 15
If you’ve been following these updates, you are familiar with the problem I’ve been having with my right knee. If you haven’t, in summary, it’s severely arthritic and has been causing me some pretty intense pain when I put any kind of weight on it. My therapists, hoping to find some other source of the pain, called Bjorn (my prosthetic mechanic) to take a look at the...
3 tags
PT: Day 14
Wow, the two week mark caught me a little by surprise! Of course, being the incredibly modest person that I am, I’ve been saying all along that I believe I’m making advances every day in my therapy. What’s nice; however, is actually hearing those same things from the doctors, nurses and therapists. I can feel the difference when doing bed exercises or even walking. Things...
January 2011
17 posts
3 tags
PT: Day 13
I forgot to mention in earlier posts, the sore throat that I was experiencing was diagnosed. I learned something new, turns out you can get a yeast infection in your throat. Who knew? Fortunately, I’m using some truly awful tasting rinse now that is treating it very effectively. Already it barely hurts to swallow, and the problem should be completely gone soon.
Walking on the right...
PT: Day 12
There are a couple of benchmarks I can use to judge, roughly, how I’m doing from day to day in my physical and occupational therapy. The first is how tired I am at the end of the day. When I first got here, I had trouble sleeping. Whether it was from nerves or some other reason doesn’t really matter. Now, I am no longer taking the sleeping pills and I’m sometimes having...
3 tags
PT: Day 11
There’s sort of an unwritten rule when going through physical therapy that meshes nicely with my own motto of “Progredi Semper.” (Always move forward) Put simply, you’re not allowed to move backwards. So, when I walked a combined total of 150 feet yesterday, I knew that there was no way I’d be allowed to do anything less today. So, after beginning my morning PT by...
3 tags
PT: Day 10
When last I spoke…about five minutes ago…I indicated that there was a reason why I wasn’t concerned today by the so-so news of yesterday. Well, don’t let it be said that I don’t deliver.
I WALKED ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY FEET TODAY
Now, in all fairness, that’s over the course of the entire day, five trips in total. Even considering that; however, I am thrilled...
7 tags
PT: Day 9 (slightly late)
First, allow me to apologize for the late post. I got some news yesterday that left me slightly bummed out, and I was super-tired by the end of the day. The bright side of things is that I am not bummed out at all today, for reasons that will become clear in the next post, and I feel almost re-energized by today’s workouts.
Tuesday afternoon, after PT was all done for the day, I was...
4 tags
PT: Day 8, Bring the Pain
“Pain is just weakness leaving the body.” -Old Marine saying
For those of you who haven’t followed my story from the beginning, let me catch you up on one particular aspect of my past three years. Over that time, I have been keeping track of the most painful experiences of my life…all of which happened within said three years. It is my understanding, upon talking to...
PT: Day 7
All kinds of news to report today! First, the wound vac went on today. This, if you’ve never heard me talk about one before, is a portable vacuum pump that applies negative pressure to the wound bed. This results in getting any drainage out of there, as well as promoting healing from the inside out, which is what we want.
Second, I talked to an Orthopedic doctor about my knee today, and...
3 tags
PT: Day 6
Well, I hit a (very) minor setback today. My right knee has been acting up. After a few laps of walking, out to the end of the parallel bars and back, it would start to cause me some pretty serious pain. Jamie, my physical therapist, was under the impression that it could be bursitis, which may or may not be spelled correctly, and I’m too tired to check. The solution was pretty simple,...
my-quarterlifecrisis asked: I came across your blog since I have Physical Therapy as a tracked tag, and I just want to say that your story is inspiring and I love the motivation and optimism that you have. I'm a first year physical therapy student and will be doing my first clinical in a major hospital this summer in acute care/some rehab, and while that isn't the setting that I ultimately want to work in (I want...
5 tags
PT: Day 5 (Late edition)
First off, I’m sorry that I didn’t get this done yesterday. Allow me to make the reason for that delay the subject of today’s entry. (err…yesterday’s entry)
Did you ever, say as the result of a New Year’s resolution or something, head to the gym after being particularly lazy for, say, the past year. You’d work out at the gym for an hour or so, doing...
4 tags
PT: Day 3
Well, if we can gauge how well I did on any given day of PT by how tired and/or sore I am at the end of the day, then today was a very successful day! Today, I wore my prosthetics for the longest amount of time so far in a single day; an hour and a half in the morning and an additional hour in the afternoon. I did a number of bed exercises (with the legs on and off) that have left me tired and...
3 tags
PT: Day 2
Let me begin by saying I can’t tell you how satisfied I am with the events of today…but I’ll certainly try. The day started with some pleasant news. Originally, upon arrival here, I was told that a nurse would always have to be present when I got out of bed and someone would have to be here when I got cleaned up in the morning. This is a safety measure to make sure people that...
4 tags
PT: Day 1
Well, it’s official. PT has actually started! Today was my first full day of actual therapy, both PT and OT. (Physical therapy and occupational therapy) It’s now about 10:00 in the evening. Becca’s gone for the evening and I’m getting ready to hit the sack for tomorrow. Before I do, let me give you a quick run-down of how things went today.
The morning started with...
4 tags
2 tags
Legs Day!
Well, Friday was a HUGE day! Despite not being quite healed up from my surgical wound yet, my doctor gave me the OK to go in for the final fitting of my new legs! We headed out to Mars to Hanger and met with Bjorn, my prosthetist, who had my new legs waiting for me. Suffice to say, things went incredibly! He even let me take them home! (not just take them home, but WEAR them home!) I’m...