MY ACCIDENT

i have some new fb friends who do not know about my accident and therefore may not understand my postings, so i am going to back up a little and give some contextual history.

about 5:40pm the day before last thanksgiving - nov 24, 2010 - i fell in the bathroom and was severely hurt.  the details of the accident and the immediate aftermath make for a nice long story, but to cut to the chase, i severely bruised my spinal cord.  i was paralyzed from the neck down but could still breethe ok - by contrast christopher reeves wore a respirator for the rest of his life.

within hours the doctors determined that my injury was high in my neck, which was bad news.  the good news was that i did not break my neck and therefore did not completely sever my spinal cord completely. that meant i had a good chance for significant recovery.  the bad news was that when i fell, bone spurs had dug into my spinal cord - resulting in a very significant injury.  the surgeon said i had an excellent chance at a full recovery - but that it would take me a year.  a full recovery in only a year sounded pretty good to me.  to date his is the most optimistic prognosis i have received - and therefore the one i choose to hang onto.   while pleased with my recovery so far, other doctors find a complete recovery 'unlikely'.

they gave me massive amounts of steroids and spinal decompression surgery,  followed by every pill known to man and i think maybe even a few more than that.  i also got lots of morphine and other narcotic drugs for the pain.  the pain was worse than anything i could ever have imaged.  i always thought being paralyzed meant no pain - but it is actually common for even complete spinal cord injuries to have massive amounts of pain.  i don't believe i or anyone could survive the pain without super pain killers.  i wondered what people did 150 years ago and decided that they simply died from the pain.

late one night a few weeks latter i told a doctor my pain was simply too bad to go on and to just shot me.  he laughed at me - not nice  - and said 'this is a hospital.  we can't shoot you here.'  i said 'then drag me out to a pasture and shoot me there'.  he went to get me a stronger shot.  joanne was not there, but i said silent apologies and goodbyes to her because i was reasonable convinced i could not - and frankly did not want to even try to - survive the pain.   20 minutes latter the shot kicked in and life was worth living again.

when i got out of icu i spent about a week in general population just stabilizing.  joanne got me into tirr hospital which my surgeon had recommended - if i could get in.  tirr is the same place they latter sent gabby gifford - the u.s. congress woman from Arizona who got shot.  i spent about 8 weeks there and got much better - but all they and insurance really wanted to do was kick me out as soon as possible.  there was absolutely no way i could have actually gone home after only 8 weeks at tirr.

joanne fought and got the insurance to put me in a nursing home until i got better.  my stay there is a whole story in itself - but suffice it to say that i continued to get better.  after 3 months in the nursing home, insurance decided to send me back to tirr to again try to get me ready to go home.

i spent 5 weeks my second stay at tirr which was 2 weeks longer than they initially wanted.  this time around, joanne and i knew how the system worked.  first, we changed doctors to one who worked more for me than the insurance company.  then we gave them a list of things they had to do, things they had to train me how to do, and equipment they had to get us before i would go home. otherwise, i would return to the nursing home - an option the insurance company really did not want. 

well, tirr jumped through hoops and got it all done - including some items that i thought were pretty tall orders.  they even waited a couple of days longer for joanne to get ramps installed and while the doctor played chicken with the insurance company over the hospital bed i needed.  insurance wanted me to go home before they approved the bed i needed.  i felt that made it too convenient for insurance to only supply me with a cheaper bed.  my doctor didn't think insurance would stiff me on the bed, but he fought the good fight for me anyway - and won.  every thing boiled down to a day and a couple of hours longer than insurance wanted.  this made the case worker at tirr - who actually works for the insurance company - angry.  she and i had the final heated exchange when i simply told her that all her arguments to send me home before the bed was delivered and set up were moot - i wasn't leaving until then unless she had the cops haul me out.  once we got the call  - about an hour latter - joanne told the case worker that we were leaving.  i'm sure not a minute too soon for the case worker - or the cops.

so, that's the gist of the story of my accident, prognosis, subsequent hospitalization., and how i got home.  anymore will have to wait because i'm too tired to write more.  bye for now, my friends.