Blind-sided by Circumstances...after 5 Weeks, 12,000 Miles of Driving Adventure

FROM HIKING AT DESERT VIEW, GRAND CANYON TO 'PLANKING' INVOLUNTARILY AT ARROYO GRANDE, CALIFORNIA
ACUTE REHAB FACILITY in only a few weeks--

WOW, WHAT A TRANSITION! To go from basic daily living—often swimming before breakfast, driving, walking, getting up, morning routine including washing my face, combing my hair, etc. guiding and playing with our 3-year-old grandson, working on a number of writing projects,
TO INABILITY
in all actions!--
being only able to use my limited arm range to get things,
and having to push the red button for nearly everything else:-(

Becoming a patient with lots of impatience...

GIST: Last Friday, I woke early before 5 am so decided I might as well get to the pool for a good swim. BUT
when I got on my feet, I toddled! Not dizzy, I was confused. Then I realized it was because my left leg was wobbly (despite the fact that I don’t live in 1916 and am not a western Colorado mine worker—corny historical allusion)…

I was wobbly, toddling; I didn’t know why since I had walked a lot yesterday—stable and full of energy--and had driven home 500 miles with no problems.

SO, I decided to swim down at WV, and did. And it was good, except, my left leg refused to cooperate. When I frog-kicked, lefty, moved in slow motion, more of a laze than a kick.

Worried, I managed to climb out of the pool and get to my Ram camper van, but then it got worse. I became Long John Silver...I had to drag a wimpy peg-leg along behind me, as I posted forward on my right:-(

Somehow I managed to climb up in the Ram and get home. Worried...my condition worsened moment by moment...

Within 2 hours, we decided that I needed to be driven to Urgent Care, but when I tried to stand up, neither of my legs would listen to me.
'Planking' NOT by choice (that fairly recent shenanigan where humans lay flat without moving, like a wood plank)

(not actually me, of course, though I have planked in National Parks)


So, then a quick call was made to the ambulance guys. They hefted me into a body bag and carried me down our narrow stairs to Merriam Hospital.

The rest is my history—me turned into a bed potato, incapable of almost anything except continuing to study a long biography on Aaron Burr, Fallen Founding Father, and one on Paul Simon of Simon and Garfunkel, while I listen on You-Tube to Simon's songs.

Now I call my left leg, "Arizona," because in so many ways it is Petrified, as in that National Park.


Respond to bad circumstances with commitment to transcendent truths,

Dan Wilcox