On July 8, 2008, I had an accident. After tripping on the carpet and doing a 360 degree spin, I fell down our stairs. I fell from the landing 9 stairs above the floor, to the wood floor below without touching anything in between. Yeah, ouch. I broke lots of bones. All of the ribs on my left side, my left shoulder in 3 places, the left collarbone in 3 places, and my right wrist. I also hit my head extremely hard, causing the retina of one eye to bleed and requiring surgery. Slamming my head violently into the floor didn’t help matters. I had several MRI’s to rule out any damage to my brain. (ok I heard that)
When something like this happens, you pretty much have two choices. Give in and stagnate, or get to work. I was very fortunate to have wonderful people around to help me, and so after many months of basic healing and therapy, I began working pretty hard to get healthy and strong again.
The process started by getting a 'vacuum seal cover' for the right-arm cast so I could get in the pool and move around with the buoyancy of the water to help me. A few months later I got on an insulin pump, and began to try my best to eat really well and work out on a regular basis. I still have a long way to go, but I feel like I am finally at a place that I feel fairly comfortable. I'm a little over 6'1". My starting weight was around 247. Weight as of today was 201. My current goal is somewhere between 190 and 195. We'll see...
You have to keep a sense of humor about the things that sometimes happen to you, or at least I try to. In some of the pictures below, you will see me attempting to be funny. My daughters keep reminding me that even though I thought I was being pretty funny, in reality I was just on massive amounts of pain killers, and EVERYTHING seemed funny to me, but, uh, of course, not to them. They were 15 and 17 at the time. Side note: nothing has changed about that situation, minus the pain killers lol.
Here are some pictures from that period showing my progress. The pics start with me in our swimming pool a few days before the fall, a few pictures showing an "extremely stoned on painkillers" me, as I was still in pain up to and including the workout pics you will see here. Look at my eyes, they're a dead give away ha ha (I don't remember taking ANY of these), and ending with two final non-stoned and 'almost back to normal' pics of me lol.
