In my very first blog post I covered an 8-day period after being struck by a drunk driver in January of 2018.  This day changed my life entirely, even though I didn’t know it at the time.  My second post jumps from January 11, 2018 all the way to December 9^th of that year.  From there is covers a few moments of my prior recovery plan up until the point where I learned that my injuries were permanent.

I’ve had a few people ask me, “What happened in between?”.  I never really got into any of that.  The first few months started with optimism that this was only going to be a 3-4-month injury which would end with a full recovery.  Things changed as time progressed. I was only slightly better after 4 months.

I was sent for an MRI in April 2018.  Yup, that machine showed there was a bit more damage under the hood.  It was then that I started decompression therapy.  I was at the chiropractor 2-3 times per week.  Each appointment took over 2 hours.  This also meant that I was arriving to work an hour late each day; luckily my chiropractor office opened at 7am so I would only miss an hour of work.  My workload was heavy during this time, so I was generally at work a few hours late every night.  I was exhausted. I decided it was time to seek out a second opinion. 

I was given 4 choices: 

1.  Keep doing what I am doing.

2.  Add physical therapy (either to complement or replace chiropractic care). 

3.  Get epidural shots. 

4.  Have surgery. 

I was not going to consider surgery at this point and was not in a hurry for the epidural shots.  I am not a fan of unnecessary chemicals in my system and there was a possibility it would not work.  Epidural shots have steroids, which usually give me hellacious side effects.  I had to pass on this as well. 

I eventually added PT on top of the chiropractic care as my back was hurting and I was ready to move on.  I couldn’t believe we were at 6 months and I felt my quality of life began to decline.  The summer months were horrible.  I wanted to be active, but I couldn’t be.  My life was work, doctor appointments, eat, sleep.  Not much time for anything else.  My neck and shoulders improved rapidly through PT, but things were not moving fast enough with my lower back.  During a work trip in August, my back gave me horrible fits for the entire week. The trip involved 6-7 hours in a conference room each day while sleeping in a different bed and taking time off from my doctor’s appointments.  We had an offsite team event in DC on Thursday which involved a lot of walking.  I aggravated my back early in the day and knew I had to fight through it for the next 9-10 hours.  Long day.

Prior to the accident, my wife and I had been planning to downsize into a smaller house but only if we found the perfect one in the neighborhood we wanted to move in to.  The house we currently live in and absolutely love, was listed for sale in October 2018.  This move has been an amazing benefit for our family, but the timing sucked.  I can’t even begin to describe how hard it is to prepare a downsize from 2,800 square feet to 1,100 with a destroyed back.  We had a death in the family just two days after closing.  Then another death in the family the next day after that.  I would need to leave to attend funerals in Montana and Canada, taking all the moving help, since my family would be on this same trip. This left my wife with all the responsibility of moving and hiring last minute help to get out of our old house and get into the new house.  Everything involving the move was a disaster, but too long of a story to get into now.  There was a lot of work to be done when I got home as everything was unloaded into the living room or garage and needed relocation to its permanent spot in our new home.

The move and the funeral trip destroyed my back.  The 6-day trip to the funerals involved two full days of flying/layovers plus a 4-hour car ride, 7-hour car ride and a 9-hour car ride.  Five days of travel over a 6-day period.  I did not move any large or heavy items but did try to move items less than 20 pounds.  Those small items involved movement to aggravate my injuries.  I also missed several doctor’s appointments.  I did not do one single thing to set my injuries back—it was called life.  I was cautious.  I did rehab work every day.  It didn’t matter.

The mental impact took its toll.  My back was in constant pain, my house was a wreck and I was emotionally drained.  Why me?  In many ways, the car wreck was just the tip of the iceberg.  Life threw many challenges at me in 2016 and 2017, including a major health scare, deaths of multiple friends’ way too young, fighting off and winning a frivolous lawsuit and ending a 17-year friendship after they embezzled thousands of dollars.  I started 2018 with a fresh attitude, thinking 2018 would be the year that I could turn the page.  Not so much.  I was at rock bottom.

Days later, it was December 9 and we’re into the second blog post.  The point of writing this isn’t to share what happened, but what I learned from it.

What I learned smacked me in the face.  I was letting myself fall victim anytime I started to reflect on everything that occurred between 2016-2018. 

You see, I started to think of everything I mentioned above and all the other things I chose not to write about at this time.  None of these events makes me special.  Those things are called life.  Maybe I had a few things come up that not everyone will experience in life, but everyone will experience other difficult and trying times.  Everyone on this planet will lose people close to them at one point or another.  Maybe I just had too much thrown at me in a short period of time.  Maybe I didn’t have enough time to heal before the next thing came up.  I’m not sure.  All I know is that it put me in a funk until I realized that sitting around upset about things fixes nothing.  Being the victim does nothing.  I got through that stuff and survived.  I got through all of that and learned a lot about myself. I got through it and learned to be a better person.  I survived it all. I will survive anything else life throws at me until I’m thrown in the grave.  No longer will I allow things that happen to me define me; I will be defined by how I persevere and use my experiences to help others.  That’s life.