COLOSSAL Is Tremendous

I did something last night I do not usually do! That's right, I missed game seven of the World Series! Instead, I went to a play with my cousin, Victoria Patrick. The Mixed Blood Theatre started a play entitled COLOSSAL, and guess what it was about?

Football, imagine that? Victoria invited me to see the premier of the play about a young, college senior who breaks his neck playing football! You can start to see the similarities already.

COLOSSAL is the story of a senior defensive back with promise to be a professional football player the following year. As you are waiting in the lobby for the free performance, you hear the team warming up and the adrenaline is flowing like the beginning of every football game as the players are shouting through their drills on a football field complete with green floor, yard markers, working scoreboard and bleachers. They transformed the theater into a football field. That does not happen very often.

As patrons came in, the team dressed out in full football equipment less the jerseys were going through their pregame warm-ups. It was if you are at a college football game sitting next to the field. The stage and audience became one. It was very well done. The closest I had been to a football field was the night I got hurt more than forty-three years ago.

The play was divided into four quarters with the fully functioning scoreboard facing both sides of the field. In fact, as the players, who were all actors, went through their warm-ups one of the players came down right in front of me, looked me in the eye and winked. It was obvious to all the actors I was sitting on the end of the bleachers.

The play has two actors playing the lead role whose name was ironically Mike. One of the actors, Toby Forrest plays Mike after the accident. Torsten Johnson plays Mike before the accident and David Deblieck plays Mike's father. A host of other fine actors and dancers round out the cast.

As the first quarter begins, the team runs several plays and some dialogue starts to take place. Part way through the second quarter (just like in my accident) Mike gets hurt trying to make a tackle. Again, just like my accident!

As the play unfolds Mike interacts with the pre-accident and post-accident character. Several of the characters are portrayed as they go through their lives both before and after Mike's accident.

You watch Mike as he progresses through the grieving process and how it affects not only him but all of those around him. In my opinion, it really is done very well.

Without telling you any more, I suggest seeing it if you know anyone who has had any kind of football experience, be it as a player, coach, spectator or victim of a football accident of any kind.

As theater critics would say I give it a two thumbs up!

You certainly cannot beat the price.

I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

I Made It 43 Years ... And Counting!

"9-3-71" is my response when someone is filling out a form in a doctor's office or some other person wants to know my injury onset. It is hard to believe it has been forty-three years ago tonight since I had my accident.

If you were one of the people at the game, I am guessing you remember something about that night and the ensuing months when many lives were affected by an instant in time. That is a phrase I use often, "an instant in time" can change anyone's life forever. I am guessing everyone will agree with me they all have their own "instant in time." Some of you have more than one instant in time.

That is not a very difficult prediction to make. Our instants are not always negative like that one was for me. I have had many "instants in time" that have proven to be very positive experiences. I am sure you have too.

I remember that entire day as if it happened yesterday. I cannot tell you where the last forty-three years have gone. I would guess many of you feel the same way. Life goes on. It has always amazed me just how fast our lives fly by. It seems like when we are young, we cannot wait to grow up and time drags on.

Now, as adults, at least for me, time is measured in years and a year goes by incredibly quickly. I remember being a boy and anxious to get old enough so I could finally play varsity football and basketball.

As a freshman, I ran on the track team and missed getting my letter by one point. I lettered my sophomore year in track and proudly wore my letter jacket for just a few minutes one day because I did not get it until the summer before my accident.  Summer in Minnesota is not the time to be wearing a letter jacket! I still have it and it looks brand-new.

I cannot begin to tell you how many times someone will walk up to me and tell me they were at the game, or they remember my accident. They all tell me what kind of an impact it had on them and how it affected the way they looked at football, taking risks, how fortunate they were not to have gotten hurt playing football, or more often their lifelong struggle with an injury they received playing football.

People will tell me how their shoulder hurts or they have a bad knee because of a football injury. One of the things I always tell them when they say they compare their injury with mine is not to do that. I do not believe it is a matter of degree.

If you have an injury or trauma of any sort, that is your issue and you need to address it. I do not believe you should compare it to "What happened to Mike." Too many times people do that and I want them to know they have to address their own issues their own way.

September third is always a bittersweet day for me. I have always felt the bitterness of the day my first life ended and my second life began. I believe very strongly I have had two lives. The life before my accident lasted sixteen years and now I am forty-three in this second life.

It is hard to imagine I am only several months away from turning sixty! I still feel like a young boy much of the time. I just go to bed earlier now!

I feel the sweetness in knowing I have lived another year. I say that because when I was in Sioux Falls for the first ninety-nine days after my accident, the doctors came into my room and asked to talk to my family members. My parents did not remember this, but my sister remembers it vividly. The doctors told my family my life expectancy was nine years.

I guess I beat those expectations. The thing is, those were the statistics on life expectancy for spinal cord injuries in 1971. High-level neck injuries like mine did not live long because of complications due to the injury. Now, they are able to deal with many of those complications and I can expect to die of the same thing most of the rest of us will and that is heart disease.

Doctors keep telling me they do not know what to do with certain problems I come up with because they have not had to deal with those issues and people with spinal cord injuries who have lived that long because we are living longer all the time.

I know a couple men with spinal cord injuries who are alive and they are well over fifty years post injury. I often post about new developments in spinal cord injury and regenerating nerves. I know it will happen, I just do not know when it will!

I want to attach this photograph taken by Jim Brandenburg. He took nine photographs that night as he was beginning is incredible career as a photographer for the Worthington Daily Globe. You may see the rest of his photographs of that night on my website at: www.patcom.com.

I distinctly remember the applause I received as they carried me from one end zone to the other to wait for the ambulance. I never understood that applause because I had just suffered a traumatic injury and people were clapping. I felt like I was a Christian who had just been mauled by a lion in the Coliseum and people were clapping. That did not make any sense to me. I now know why they did it out of respect. The thing is no one knew what had just happened. I write about this in more detail in my book "I Still Believe In Tomorrow."

Click on the image to make it larger:

Now, I am off to acupuncture and I am sure I will feel a complete state of calmness after my treatment.

As always, I welcome your comments.

Later,

Mike

Just Think

Last Sunday the Minneapolis StarTribune published an article in their science+health section entitled "THE POWER OF THOUGHT" and addressed the issue of spinal cord injuries and implanting a computer chip in the skull of a young man enabling him to think and move his paralyzed arm.

I have always said, "I know they will find a way for people with spinal cord injuries to regain the function of their paralyzed limbs." Actually, I believe it was more like, they will find a way for us to walk again!

The article was originally published in the Washington Post and was written by Jim Tankersley. They talked about the first patient trying to use a computer chip implanted in his brain at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center. It was invented by scientists at Battelle, a nonprofit, research organization.

From what I gathered from the article, they needed to embed a chip into the brain that "reads" commands from the brain and transfers them to his arm, which is wrapped in a sleeve of electrodes around his arm and they stimulate the muscle fibers in his hand to move.

There are several pictures in the article and it is in the beginning stages, but doctors involved are very encouraged by their initial results. The idea of bypassing the spinal cord by using thought technology is still in its infancy. I am excited to see where it goes from here.

The subject of the article is four years post injury. From this article and other articles I have read, it is getting more and more to the point where the length of time between injury and actual retraining and reusing paralyze limbs is getting longer and longer.

This is just the latest article I have reviewed which discusses alternative ways doctors are attempting to get people with spinal cord injuries to be able to at least function at a somewhat higher level than they are today.

It would be wonderful to get to a point where I could use my hands on my own instead of having to use various assistive devices to help me function with my hands. That would just be the first step. I know processes like these take a long time. I also know there are several people studying various alternatives to getting spinal cord injured persons more function back. It is happening all over the world, and people are doing amazing things. This is just the latest, and who knows, possibly the greatest attempt at getting function to return.

There are always going to be very smart people working from different positions and different techniques trying to get people with spinal cord injuries to function at higher levels. That is the exciting part for me as I close in on forty-three years of living with my injury.

One of the things it frustrates me is when I am constantly told we just have not seen that Mike, because most spinal cord injuries do not live as long as you have! Right now, the record for longevity after a spinal cord injury I know of is fifty-one years. That is not long enough. I want to see more than that. I am sure there are a number of other people out there who feel the same way I do.

I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

Football And Sportsmanship

There has been a lot said and written lately about all of the negative aspects of playing football. Everyone from the Pop Warner Leagues to the NFL and its former players are mounting a growing concern over all of the injuries associated with the game. Rightly so on many levels.

When NFL Hall of Famer, Tony Dorsett has announced he is suffering from the beginning stages of Alzheimer's disease at an early age, Brett Favre has stated he does not remember one whole year of his daughter's soccer season, the Minnesota Vikings were not able to field a full roster for their last game because of injuries and current NFL teams injury lists look more like MASH reports, there is an epidemic of injuries amongst all levels of football.

60 Minutes did a report last Sunday on how the numbers of young boys playing football at an early age is steadily dwindling and ESPN is doing special reports on injuries amongst that age group, you know something is drastically wrong. The question is, what can be done about it? I have some suggestions as do many experts, but like any subject that debate cannot be solved in a simple blog post.

I am living proof football is, and always has been; a violent game and can result in serious injuries. I did a paper for my Prevention and Care of Athletic Injuries class in college on Neck Injuries In Football. In doing my research, I learned the neck musculature is the last muscle mass in the body to develop. And yet, we see young boys and girls wearing heavy helmets with giant facemasks trying to support their heads and faces with necks that are not fully developed.

That is why eighty percent of all spinal cord injuries occur to young males between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four. When one counts all the spinal cord injuries that occur in the United States every year, football related injuries only occur about twelve times annually. That is not very many when one considers the number of automobile, gunshot, motorcycle, diving and other active activities accidents. 

But that is not what this post is all about. Once again, I have strayed from my original intent. Of course, my longtime readers know that is how I write.

I titled this post "Football And Sportsmanship" because of a wonderful gesture on the part of the Olivet Middle School Eagles in Olivet, Michigan help one of their own score a touchdown.

Watch this video and see if you do not agree with me. To view the video, click here. If the video does not show up, click on this URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8_RpyfyNs4 

Keith Orr will never forget his touchdown thanks to his buddies who decided to do something for the young man. Steve Hartman gets to do some amazing stories, but not many have brought him to tears like this one did. I like his weekly story on the Friday Night CBS News. He has introduced us to many wonderful people and their incredible stories.

As always, I welcome your comments.

Later,

Mike

Forty-two Years And Counting ...

--> Forty-two years ago tonight my life changed in a heartbeat. An instant in time has affected many people in one way or another. Unaware of what was about to happen, my head football coach, Milt Osterberg, called me into the game to replace an injured teammate. It was about halfway through the second quarter and Owatonna was driving again.
Owatonna had two excellent running backs, and they were chewing up yardage all night long. We were undersized and inexperienced compared to the entire Owatonna team. When I was called into the game, little did I know as I ran out on the field those would be the last steps I would ever run. That is why they call them accidents!

Some of you have read my book entitled "I Still Believe In Tomorrow" and know all the details of what happened those last three minutes of my first life. I have always told people I felt I had two lives. I lived to be sixteen in my first life, and tonight I start the forty-third year of my second life.

It is incomprehensible for me to believe it has been forty-two years already. I cannot tell you where the time has gone. I am sure many of my older readers often feel the same way. Where have our lives gone?

I once heard an analogy about life being like a roll of toilet paper. I will paraphrase, but it went something like this, "Life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer you get to the end, the faster it goes." 

I do not know how you feel about it, but I believe that analogy is spot on. I remember in my first life how time could not move fast enough. When I was a first grader, I wanted to be in junior high. When I was in junior high, I could not wait to be in high school so I could play the varsity sports, football, basketball and track and field. Then, I played baseball all summer long. Those last two summers before I got hurt were idyllic for a young, athletic, wanna be growing up in a small town in southwestern Minnesota. Worthington had everything I wanted or needed.

Sure, the Vietnam War was raging in Southeast Asia, but that had nothing to do with me because I was not going to war when I graduated. I was going to go play basketball on a college scholarship. My mother had three brothers who did four tours of duty in Vietnam. She wrote letters to them and sent them religiously. When they wrote back and told her where they were, she would put a pin on our Vietnam map hanging on the kitchen wall to show us where one of them was at any given time.

We know better now more times than not they were lying to her about where they really were and the kind of danger they were in. But the kind of men they are, they did not want Mom to worry.

As per my regular writing style I have wandered off course again from the point of this post. I believe tonight it may be intentional.

I am writing this about the time I would have left home to go get my ankles taped in preparation of the game. I was so nervous; I left early and was the second person to arrive at our locker room. Ben Horak was one of our co-captains and he was already at the locker room when I got there. I do not know who was more nervous, Ben or me.

As everyone started to arrive, along with coaches, managers and other players tension in the locker room was starting to build, as was the noise. I remember lying down on that cool, concrete floor using my helmet as a pillow and trying to relax. I could not relax as this feeling that had been with me all day was getting more intense. I later learned it was my intuition. 

That is a whole other story! I go into greater detail in my book about intuition and how males are taught not to listen to it. We are taught to suck it up, it is just nerves and you will get over it.

Once we hit the field for warm-ups, the feeling went away a little bit; but it was still there and I was not going to listen to it. I remember everything from that night; and those feelings always come back every year on September third. My anniversary is always a melancholy day, and this year was no different. Writing about it always helps, and this has helped me immensely put up this post. Thanks for reading. 

For those of you that do not know, I am not actually writing this. I have a Mac Mini with voice recognition software called Dragon Dictate. I have actually been speaking this entire post. That explains why I have made it so long! I hope you enjoyed my rambling.

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

Spinal Cord Injury Study

As many of you know, I spent part of the 1974 and all of the 1974–'75 school year going to school at the University of California, Berkeley. That first year, I lived in a special residence program for students with disabilities at Cowell Memorial Hospital, which was the student health service on campus. The third floor had one wing with twelve students of which ten of us had spinal cord injuries, and four of us had broken our necks playing football.

It was an excellent program and way ahead of its time for students with severe disabilities attending classes, living on campus and a pioneer in helping to get educations for students with disabilities.


When we left for summer vacation, they closed the door and integrated us into the general population of the dormitories. At the time, that was unheard of. But, Berkeley had Ed Roberts! Ed was a pioneer for the disability community, which started with that residence program.


When I came back to Berkeley in the fall of 1974, my dad and uncle came with me. We dropped Terry off at McClellan Air Force Base near Sacramento, and dad spent a few days before he flew back to Worthington. 


I got settled in to Room 118 Putnam Hall in Unit 1 of the dormitories just off the campus. Sometime during that year, professor Nancy Crewe, PhD, from the University of Minnesota who was beginning a Longitudinal Spinal Cord Injury Study, contacted me and she wanted to know if I wanted to be a part of it.


I was more than anxious to be a part of it, and Nancy and one of her PhD students flew to Berkeley to interview me for the first part of the study. While Nancy was at the University of Minnesota, she interviewed me several times in person, or sent out forms for her study on our successes, failures, frustrations, education, employment, general health and a host of other concerns.


It was always interesting to know I was a part of a study of such importance she would fly halfway across the country to meet me for the first time. Once I moved back to Minneapolis, I worked with her and one of her PhD students, Jim Krause. Jim is also a C5-6 quad, and we have many similarities.


Nancy eventually moved to Michigan State University and left the study in Jim and his associates very capable hands. Once Jim received his PhD, he moved on to Shepherd Spinal Center in Atlanta where he worked for several years on the study. Eventually, Jim moved to the Medical University of South Carolina where the survey is being worked on today.


That is what brought me to this blog post and the meeting Richard Aust, Program Coordinator II, from the Medical University of South Carolina. Tuesday, we spent three hours with four participants in the study, of which I was the only one who has been with it since the beginning.


We had an interesting conversation, and he had an agenda with questions he wanted to get through. There were periods during our discussion where I made it rather difficult to keep on his agenda!


He did come up to me during our break and thanked me for my input. I believe he got a little more from me than what he was expecting! I told him, "I thought that is why you wanted me here was to give my opinion. Am I correct?" I gave him a polite smile and he agreed with me. The entire three hours was videotaped so Jim will be able to see just what took place.


It just so happened, I had several of my books with me and gave the other three participants and Richard a copy to share with Jim. Jim already has read it in ebook form, but I want them to have paperback versions and see if we can get one version or the other into the hands of the remaining participants.


At one point, I asked Richard how many of the original one hundred participants were still involved in the program. Care to take a guess? I was pleasantly surprised when he said, "Forty-two of the original one hundred are still participating!" After nearly forty years of living with spinal cord injury, 42% of us are still alive and able to fog a mirror!


One of the participants had his personal care attendant with him, and I noticed she was already reading the book before our session was through. I received an email from him the next day, and he said his attendant thought my book was "Wonderful!" He said he was going to read it now. I will take that endorsement any day!


On my way out of the building, I ran into another friend and his wife who were waiting to go into the next session. I am anxious to see what this round of information will tell the researchers about our study. 


I look forward to your comments.


Later,


Mike

I Took Another Little Vacation

It seems I can never go too long without my body giving me a reminder I am still a quad! It did so again the last ten days. About that long ago, I started feeling a low-grade fever, lethargic, shortness of breath and just not up to my usual self. I had no energy and knew what was coming on.

It was the beginning of another urinary tract infection, and I hoped I could stay ahead of it by getting a urine specimen into the lab on Monday. It did not quite work out that way. By Tuesday night, my fever had gone up over 100°, I was having a very hard time breathing, my hands and fingers were ice cold and I was just feeling poorly.

I called my doctor's office and he told me to go into the emergency room and have them check me out. After several hours in the emergency room at Abbott Northwestern Hospital, they checked me in and started administering IV antibiotics to help battle the E. coli bacteria in me.  They gave me two of the heavy hitters, Vancomycin and Zosyn which is one I had never heard of before.

After one dose of the IV antibiotics, I started feeling better, my temperature was coming down and my blood pressure was starting to come down.

I got out of the hospital yesterday, and still feel a little weak. However, my temperature is down, my hands and fingers are back to normal and the lethargy is gone. I had a decent night's sleep and feel fairly rested today. I could not say that after my first night in the hospital. I did not bring my Bi-Pap unit with me to the hospital, so that first night was very uneasy as I was in full sleep apneic mode going to sleep and waking up every thirty seconds!

I was first diagnosed with sleep apnea in 1996 and have been on Bi-Pap ever since. For those of you that do not know anything about sleep apnea, it is not something you want to deal with. There are various levels of restless sleep, but basically, it does not allow you to get good, REM sleep and you often feel more tired in the morning then when you went to bed the night before.

I remember watching a news report in my early twenties about how many American adults suffered from sleep disorders. At the time, I was getting good sleep and could not imagine how those poor people must suffer by not getting good sleep. Now I know what that report was all about.

I am happy to say the pharmaceutical companies do have their place in my life; I just cannot believe how expensive they are!

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

Kennedy Ng’ang’a Inspires People

Kennedy Ng’ang’a is a true treasure. I first learned of him through Facebook when he sent me a request to be his Facebook friend. Before I friended him, I looked at his page a bit and found an extraordinary individual.

He broke his neck in 1992 diving and has been a high level quadriplegic ever since. He has created quite a career for himself and many people around him through his painting and the foundation he started in honor of his dear mum who passed away two years ago. It is called the Mama Kennedy Fund and helps supply much-needed supplies to people in his community of Mombasa, Kenya.

He has an electric smile that tells me he is happy and enjoying life. Lesa Ann Weller wrote a very nice piece on her blog "SHE WRITES" dated May 30, 2012 you may read by clicking here.

Despite having hired an unscrupulous distributor who stole hundreds if not thousands of his prints and tens of thousands of dollars, Kennedy has forgiven this individual and moved on to create even more wonderful pieces of art.

He is very trusting by nature. You may order his prints or even have a piece commissioned by him by going to his Facebook page and perusing his albums. One thing I found particularly refreshing was the fact you do not pay a dime until you receive your painting. To reach his Facebook page, simply click here. He will ship anywhere in the world.

There is one more article I would like to share with you written by Deborah Davis at Pushliving.com. You may reach her excellent article by clicking here. She too, has some amazing stories and paintings to share.

I had fun researching and learning about this young man and his story. In one Facebook message he wrote to me, "I was an inspiration to him."

I would like to take this opportunity to reply to that statement and say, "Kennedy, you are an inspiration to me as well."

I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

The Book is here! The Book is here!

Okay, I know I told you I would only post about once a week, but I am busting at the seams to share my good news. 

I received my first paperback copies of I Still Believe in Tomorrow today and they are ready to ship! If you want your own book you can hold in your hand, you can order it from all the major booksellers, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc., but please order them from me because I get a bigger royalty.

For example: I only get about $3.00 if you order from Amazon! Let's just say, I get a little more if you order from me. Eventually, I'm going to set-up a unique website for the book complete with a page for comments, it's own blog and the ability to pay with PayPal and credit cards. Until that happens, please send your checks to:

Patrick Communications, Inc.

619 Lafayette Road North, #304

St. Paul, MN 55130-4444

The price is $14.95 per book plus $5.00 for shipping for up to ten books. I'll give you a quote on shipping if you want more. I'll send your books once your check clears.

I'm going to be moving in mid-August, and my new address will be:

Patrick Communications, Inc.

10100 Lyndale Avenue South, #104

Bloomington, MN 55420

Please contact me with any questions and/or concerns. By all means, please share this post and help me spread the word! FYI: I quote several of you and your comments to my previous blog posts.

A very heartfelt thank you in advance to everyone who buys "I Still Believe in Tomorrow."

Remember, it makes a great gift!

Later,

Mike

Doug Landis Is An Artist

Once again, my inspiration for my post came from a friend. I learned of an extraordinarily talented artist who found his passion by breaking his neck! This is a wonderful story of how a sibling challenge has helped a young man with a hidden talent, find it and make a career out of his new-found passion. Hmm, does that sound familiar?

Here is Doug Landis plying his trade:

It is the photo on his home page. You can see more of his art, purchase it and read his story by going to his website if you click here:

He broke his neck wrestling while in high school. My injury came in a football game. I know  many guys who broke their necks in that fifteen to twenty-four year age bracket. I tell all my audiences to measure their necks by putting their index fingers and thumbs around their necks. I ask them to touch their fingers, note where they touch, then, bring their hands around in front of them and look at how big their necks are. I tell the adults to look at a picture of their necks when they were teenagers, and I tell the younger students to look at pictures of their parents when they were teenagers. I get some interesting reactions from all age groups!

Eighty percent of all spinal cord injuries happen to young males between fifteen and twenty-four because the neck musculature is the last muscle mass of the body to develop.

When I got hurt, I had maybe a thirteen or fourteen inch neck. Now, it is about twenty inches all the way around. Part of that large neck comes from aging, but some of it comes from a disease I call secondhelpingitis!

You can see Doug has a large neck. I am guessing it is off the strength charts because as he states in the video on his site, he uses his neck to move the pencil. He only uses his teeth to hold the pencil.

His is a fascinating story. Of course, I believe everyone has a fascinating story. You ought to hear some of the stories I get after a speech, or at the end of a school day! I am often the last one to leave.

I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

I Could Not Say, "Good Bye."

Yesterday was an extremely difficult one for me! I went to see a longtime friend who is an old quad like me. I knew full well it may be the last time I got to see him as they were transferring him from the hospital to a hospice center sometime this week.

Jeff Farnam broke his neck in 1963 when he fell out of a cherry picker while trimming trees as a part-time, student worker at the age of fourteen. I met him in 1975 or '76 at a National Paraplegic Foundation meeting and have been friends ever since. He had an old Mamiya camera on a small tripod sitting on a lapboard taking pictures of people at the meeting.

That sparked my interest in photography. I learned much of what I know about taking pictures from Jeff. A few years later we both moved to Uptown and lived just a few blocks apart. For many years, we would meet at  Lucia's, The Uptown Bar or Bryant Lake Bowl for brunch on Saturday or Sunday. Once he retired from the City of Minneapolis, we would meet during the week, share a meal and watch the women. We ALWAYS watched the women!

We would run into each other on the sidewalk or in the lobby of Calhoun Square, sit next to each other, facing opposite directions, carry on a perfectly normal conversation, and not look at each other. You guessed it, we were watching the women.

Once he mastered photography, and he was very good! In fact, he took the studio shot I have on my homepage of my website and the profile of this blog. He moved on to remote-controlled airplanes. He belonged to a club out in the southern suburbs and flew his planes every chance he got. He has some big planes with wingspans of five to six feet! Several of them hang from the ceiling in his dining room, living room and office.

Then it was on to the real thing! Here is his plane he flew for several years:

Click on the image to make it larger:

He always wanted to get me up in it, but I had no desire to leave the ground in that thing! I went out there once and got up close to it, saw how small everything was, and politely declined!

Standing on Jeff's right is his other passion, his constant companion, Reggie. Reggie and he were inseparable. He got Reggie for socialization reasons. Yes, that means meeting women. If we would be sitting someplace and Reggie was in his working harness or vest, people were supposed to leave him alone.

However, if you were, female, young and attractive, you could pet him till your arm fell off! Jeff had his standards. I have always contended, Learn the rules, then break some of them. Jeff is a master at that.

We had often spoken about making a movie about the two of us and called it Grumpy Old Gimps. I guess that will not happen now. He and I share that same dark, acerbic sense of humor that has gotten us through these many decades of living with a spinal cord injury.

When it came time to leave, I could not, I would not say, Good Bye. I simply said, Later. Just like I end all my blog posts.

Jeff replied, See ya later.

As always, I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

I saw something yesterday ...

that has left a profound impact on me. I want to share a quick encounter I had with a man who broke his neck at C2, which is the second cervical vertebra; and is actually located in the skull. C1 and C2 are the vertebrae which your head swivels on, and the first bump out of your skull, is C3. You can feel C3 by touching the first bump, or spinous process on your spine, just outside your skull. C1, or the Atlas (the first cervical vertebra, which supports the head) and C2, or the Axis, are just above that.

That was my quick Anatomy lesson for this post.

Back to my story: Sunday afternoon, I went up my alley about 1:30 to pick-up a few prescriptions at my pharmacy. On the way home, I turned down the alley and dropped the bag carrying my precious cargo. So, I looked around to see if there was anyone who could help me get my bag of drugs.

That was when I saw a man going through my neighbor's trash dumpster looking for food. The thing was — he was wearing a halo, which for those of you who don't know, is the devise they use to stabilize the cervical spine when someone breaks his or her neck by drilling four screws into your skull to hold it in place. It looks like this:

As I approached him, I didn't think he was capable of bending down to the ground to pick up my prescriptions, so as I passed behind him, I said, "Hi," and came in the house to get Tim, my attendant, to come and help me.

When I called Tim, I told him he wasn't going to believe what was going on outside! After picking up my goodies, we came up the alley and got to where Jim was, when the shy, quiet, wallflower that I am, politely asked him, "What happened to you?"

Without breaking stride in his quest for food by looking up, he said, "I broke my neck!"

Guess what I said? Yup, "So did I!"

That got his attention and brought his head out of the dumpster. So, we shared our accident stories for a few minutes and I asked him, "How are you getting your medical care?"

That was when Jim chuckled a bit and said, "Right now, my General Assistance Medical Care (GAMC) is taking care of me, but at the end of the year, Pawlenty (Minnesota's Governor) is cutting my benefits and I don't know what I'll do."

Now, mind you, Jim wasn't very clean, the lamb's wool on his halo was filthy, he didn't look like he had bathed or gotten clean clothes for a significant amount of time, and he told me he was having a good day because he had found some food and a half bottle of wine in my neighbor's dumpster! He said, "I found a half bottle of wine, and I'm drinking that."

Then Tim asked him if he was sure it was wine. Jim assured him it was. He was quite confident about it, and was obviously looking forward to drinking it! I can only imagine where he was when he drank his half bottle of wine!

That was when Tim left. When I got inside, Tim asked, "What the hell is going on? Why is this guy in a halo going through dumpsters digging for food, when he should be adequately taken care of considering his medical condition? I wonder if he's a vet?" (Tim served in the Army for six years, so he's sensitive to the plight of veterans.) He told me later he couldn't watch Jim; he had a hard time being there.

I know this is a much longer post than I usually put up, but I just had to write about it. There is so much more I want to tell you about my encounter with Jim, the state of health care, budget cuts in the government, homelessness, the lucky ones who break their neck or back and walk away, how Jim broke his neck, and so on ... but, I think I may turn it into a chapter for the book. After all, that's the whole purpose of this blog! Remember, I'm not done yet!

I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike

I Lied!

I lied about making my last post for the first half of the year! I was interviewed for this article on spinal cord injuries and it's now online. I just received the article from She Knows.com magazine and they quoted me accurately, twice! I had to share it with you.

You've heard the phrase, "Any pub is good pub." Well, I'll take it. You can read the entire article in She Knows.com by clicking here. Don't worry, it's short.


I welcome your comments.

Later,

Mike

Stem Cell Research Is Finally Going To Begin

It's finally going to happen — the first human experimentation with stem cells and human beings! This is VERY exciting news for not only yours truly, but for hundreds of thousands of spinal cord injured people and the people who know and care about us!

According to this article on Disaboom.com, Dr. Glen House, co-founder of Disaboom.com and himself a paraplegic, “This is the news we’ve been waiting for, and the world will be watching with great anticipation and hope. We may someday look back on this study as the genesis of a cure for not just SCI, but also for other types of neurological impairments."

You can read the entire article by clicking here.

Needless to say, I am pumped! I have been waiting a long time to see the first trials and am very anxious to see what becomes of this initial experiment.

I'll keep you informed.

By the way, this is an incredibly informative website full of wonderful information. If you are interested in disability issues and have a little time, I encourage you to check out this site. It will be time well spent.

Please feel free to comment.

Later,

Mike

Project Walk

I just learned of an organization that exists to help spinal cord injured people who may have the ability to walk, to help them do just that. It's called Project Walk and it's main location is in Carlsbad, California.

They discuss how important the first first year, and especially, the first six months post injury are in getting SCI's up and walking again. They are seeing some amazing results. I am very encouraged for new injuries by reading their website. You can view their site by clicking here. Their site is full of interesting information.

According to their website, their Mission is: Project Walk® exists to provide an improved quality of life for people with spinal cord injuries through intense exercise-based recovery programs, education, support and encouragement.

If you are, or know someone who has just suffered a spinal cord injury, I encourage you to at least check out Project Walk and see if you might be a candidate for their program.

Please feel free to comment. I look forward to them.

Later,

Mike

Imagine

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know I'm a big fan of 60 Minutes. Tonight they ran an extraordinary piece on new, cutting-edge technology I would like to share. They showed how an individual can now sit in front of a computer, and think, and the computer can tell what the person is thinking!

The ramifications and possibilities, especially for people with disabilities are truly amazing! One of the reasons I'm so excited is the possibilities it creates for people with a spinal cord injury. I won't say anything else, just watch this piece:



Watch CBS Videos Online


As with all new discoveries, there are many levels of development until it gets to a workable project. Obviously, this idea is in the beginning stages of human experimentation. It will be exciting to watch as this technology develops.

I look forward to your comments.

Later,

Mike