05/17/08
As I sit here in Detroit, packing my things and fresh out of the emergency room,
I felt it may be a good time to post. For those of you who have no idea what I
am talking about, I should probably elaborate.
Following the last post I went into finals and finished up another semester of
school. It was a semester that at times seemed pretty rough, but ended up
rather well with three A-‘s and a B. I will take that any time, especially
with a semester consisting of differential equations, thermodynamics and dynamics.
Early on in the fall semester I had decided to return Detroit this spring. I
felt I had made significant progress the first time I was there, and it was
worthy of at least one more shot. So when the beginning of January rolled
around and all of my classmates were headed back to…well…class, I continued
working and increased my workouts to fill my free time. Then the beginning of
March I packed my things and headed off for another Michigan adventure.
When I arrived, I found that the person who had been the head of the program
when I left had since been replaced. The meeting with the new head was
disheartening at best. I was told that therapy would not benefit me and that I
would be better off to save my money and return home, but I knew better. Also,
that if I did choose to stay I would not be allowed to participate in weight
bearing therapy, i.e. walking, crawling, kneeling, or anything else really. So
I decided go against his suggestions and stay for a few months, and see what
would happen. Now I just needed that bone scan. It seems like a relatively
simple concept, go to the doctor and get it done. However, due to conflicts
with scheduling and with my insurance company, I had the pleasure of making the
20 hour round trip for the weekend to get it done. It did work out all right,
though because it happened to be Easter weekend and my roommate had some of our
friends in from out of town.
Once I got back and the doctor got my bone density results there was relatively
little headache before I was back in full swing with my therapy. It again
consisted of a lot of, coupled with PNF therapies, working on a slide board to
improve hip flexer and glute contractions, crawling, tall kneel crawling in a
second step, and KAFO walking. I don’t have enough room to get too specific
about these things in this particular post, but if you have any questions, let
me know. A typical three hour session may consist of any combination of these.
I have been walking about 600 feet at a time, tall kneel crawling about 300
feet, and crawling about 150 feet at a time, all of which are improvements of
the last time I was here. Also while I was here I have been continuing with my
strength training as well as doing a lot of handcycling. I competed in a 25k
race in Grand Rapids, MI a week ago. I finished 10th out of 27 cycles with a
time of 68 minutes. Considering the fact that it was my first race, and my lack
of training compared to many of the other riders, I was pretty happy with my
finish. For those of you in the Des Moines area, I am sure you a familiar with
the 20k Dam to Dam run. I will be competing in that in two weeks.
Now to address that perplexing opening sentence, my intention had been to stay
here one more week before returning home. Therapy has been going well. I had
just wanted to be home to enjoy the summer. Well things here got a little
hectic. Thursday during therapy I was really not myself. I was incredibly sore
and achy and suffering from pretty serious bouts of dysreflexia. That afternoon
after returning to my room I found myself fighting a high fever, headache, and
all round miserable evening. At that point I was convinced I had contracted
another UTI. When I awoke the next morning I found it was something very
different. There had been a spot on my back where it hits my seat back which
had been slightly discolored for some time, but I had never had any problems
with skin breakdown there. However, at some point during the night it had
turned into an open wound. I headed over so the therapists could check it out
and tell me what they thought. They immediately dismissed it as a pressure
issue, because of the massive amount of swelling and obvious infection of the
site. The general consensus was go to the ER, so I did. There they diagnosed
it as an abscess caused my staph or a similar infection. It was pretty large,
about 5 inches long and 3 inches long, right in the center of my spine. So they
lanced it drained it, and put me on two different antibiotics. So with
combination of the now open wound and the side effects of the antibiotics, I
talked to my therapists and decided that if may be time to just return home.
I am planning on driving to Toledo tonight so stay with some friends of mine,
then making the long journey home tomorrow. So here I sit, packing my things,
fresh out of the emergency room.
This is Me, and this is My Mission, FOREVER IS NOT AN OPTION.
