In the beginning

This blog is born out of a question I've heard over and over the last 2 years. "How are you feeling now?" Any time I've seen someone for the first time since my accident, that's the first question that I hear.

I don't mind the question, people genuinely what to know how things are going for me and as my wife says, I don't mind talking about myself. But, in order to understand why getting this question regularly is the birth of this blog, I need to go back two years to it's inception.

Two years ago my wife, Allison, and I were traveling through the California dessert to spend the weekend with friends and family camping and boating on Lake Mohave. While traveling we were having one of those conversations that help to build your relationship. I don't remember the specifics now, but we spoke of our children, grandchildren, ourselves etc.

The one thing I do remember very clearly is my saying "I feel very fortunate having lived a life with no real adversities". Now, mind you, we've had our share of stuff. Everything from loosing my job in the dot com bust to family trials, but nothing I considered true adversity. Little did I know, in a mere 24 hrs those words would prove to have been a little premature.

The next day, after an evening of enjoying my oldest granddaughter and a morning of playing in the water with her, I proceeded to hit, head on, a boat while riding a rented wave runner.

Much of what I say next comes from a collection of witnesses, park ranger reports and my best guess since I really don't remember up to 10 minutes before the accident. The last thing I do remember is telling Allison that I was going to take the wave runner back to the dock to get somethings from the car. That was just 10 minutes before I collided with the boat at a combined speed of about 60 mph.

The report says that I was jumping a wake and was several feet in the air and lost control. Witnesses say I was passing friends in a boat in the opposite direction. Knowing me, I was probably trying to show off to my friends and jumped their wake behind them. What I can only assume is that I didn't even see the boat just coming up to speed and beginning to plane in the wake behind my friends boat.

In a weak attempt to accuse myself: I know that the boat was traveling from the dock where several large house boats were moored off shore. I suppose that with the boats in the background, I couldn't perceive the looming danger in the foreground. At any rate, we hit and hit hard.

They tell me, at the last minute, I tried to make a hard turn to the left in order to avoid impact. Unfortunately, this exposed my right side to the front port side of the bow. In the collision almost all of my ribs on my right side were broken in at least one spot and some shattered and punctured my right lung in both the upper and lower lobs. With the hard turn to the left, my right arm was raised in the attempt. This allowed my right shoulder to be jammed into the right side of my head breaking my neck at the occipital bone. My left leg was trapped by the handle bars of the wave runner, causing my left hip to be dislocated. Both lungs aspirated and filled with water while I drowned.

There's a whole other story related to my rescue and saving to be covered in another blog but sufficient to say, I'm still here.

However, people like to hear how I've improved over the last 2 years. My answer has always been the same, about 80-90% of normal. But then, another month would pass and I'd be answering the question again and I'd realize that I felt better than the last time I was asked. Therefore, my previous response must have been incorrect. So, I'd answer the inquire the same, about 80-90% of normal.

Obviously, I'm a bad judge of my own status. That started me think though, how would I know when I was 100% back to normal. Could I even get back to where I was before. Not that I was such a specimen before but I was playing basketball 3 times a week and surfing as much as I could before the accident. I began wondering how I'd know when I had made a full recovery.

There are a few things I know are never going to get any better like, my lung capacity, the feeling that something is clamped to my chest and the range of motion of my shoulder. There's also never being able to fully clear my throat due to the scare on the inside of my throat from my tracheotomy.

Then I decided being a 50 lb over weight 47 year old wasn't necessarily the best thing to ascribe to. So I decided to get more than 100% of normal but how much more. Therefore, I have a new goal in life, improve enough to run a marathon, or maybe better, participate in an Ironman competition.

That's a big goal from where I was 2 years ago (or where I am now) and I'm not even sure if its achievable but I'm going to give it a try. So, I lost 45 lb, bought some running shoes and started training. My next step is to listen to my wife and get my doctors sign0ff before I going too much further.

Today I met with my cardiologist and performed a stress-Eco. I hope to get the results back this weekend and get the green light to proceed. In the meantime, I'm on coarse to run in the Los Vegas 2010 Marathon. I'm currently running 3 miles a day, four days a week. Soon I'll be pushing up to 3 moderate runs and one long run a week.

Before I get there, I need to get signed off by my Orthopedic surgeon. When I saw him a year ago he recommended that I not play basketball in fear that I'd eventually need a hip replacement. Since I haven't listen to him thus far I'm not sure if I will next week when we meet again but I promised Allison I'd see him so...

Well, this has been a long first post and I promise to not make them so long in the future but I though a good foundation was the best start.