Ugh… the eagle-eyed among visitors (should I get any, and Google Analytics suggests I do, so thank you for coming) may have noticed that all post-2020 content has vanished. This happened when an effort was being made to tighten up security on the site – and even the help of an expert friend has failed to restore the lost posts. Re-stocking the site, which I will try to do, would be tedious enough. But when everything you do has to be fitted around the tyranny of long-term injury, it’s a most off-putting prospect. I broke my back in late 2012 (and various other bones at the same time). I’m very, very lucky that I ended up with a ‘walking’ spinal injury because most people don’t come out of a 30 to 40-foot fall with movement below their waist. Some lose all movement below the neck. Many die. But while I’m in that lucky category, I’m less lucky than some spinal injury patients. My spine was reconstructed using a titanium cage and, though that’s what enables me to do what I’m able to do, the area of my body where it’s housed has never stopped hurting. I also have something called cauda equina syndrome (also related to spinal injury). I’m fortunate if I get two hours in any given day where the pain is sufficiently diminished that I can think straight. So every day is structured around what I might be able to accomplish in that time. And if I did everything I’m meant to do to maintain my health and prevent atrophy/deterioration, I would do nothing else. So I just try to do most of it. Until it happened to me, I’d never really have thought about the complications of spinal injury but the fact is that everything below the break point is affected. And because I landed on my feet, they’re not the feet they once were. I don’t have a functioning left ankle, the right one is severely compromised, and there’s a mix of too much feeling and not enough feeling, like an invisible patchwork on the soles of my feet.
Other problems relating to spinal injury include dreary things like catheters, which we don’t need to go into today. So… bit by bit I will try to re-post the stories and fragments, starting very soon. But not today.
