About
This single, simple statement about "a story" reminds me of an incident on a long train ride down the east coast quite a few years ago which is worth mentioning here.
We had some significant delays on this train ride so there was a lot of idle time for some light chit-chat with other passengers. My Air Force polo shirt sparked one such conversation with the woman seated next to me.
This soft spoken woman seated next to me in this cross country Amtrak coach noticed my short hair and Air Force polo shirt and inquired about my career. In a scene very similar to the famous bus stop scene in Forrest Gump, I spent the next couple of hours telling a story... my story.
One part of this story led to another, prompting more inquiring questions by this soft spoken woman, delving deeper into my personal story... a story which begins with an honorable, demanding and exciting career in a field few know exists to a personal life filled with physically demanding hobbies and activities. The story suddenly turns toward a story of a debilitating injury, recovery, a second more debilitating injury, lost health, lost career, lost love, lost home, lost mobility... I continued babbling for at least two hours until I noticed this woman wiping tears from her eyes as they streamed down her face. I immediately asked myself, "Ugggg... how did I never notice that my life had become a tragedy?"
This visibly saddened woman never did get to hear how my story ends... of course, neither have I as another page is written each day. The subsequent chapters in this story have definitely improved over time so my life really is not much of a tragedy when we look at my life as a whole. But the point is everyone has a story, including me.
One purpose of this blog is to tell some of this story in bits and pieces. Although, truth be told, I really don't write much about my own life story from a point of view which brought that poor woman who managed to get stuck sitting beside me on the train to tears. My writings here tend to be more about my health, the struggles my health causes and the little things I do accomplish through these struggles. It is about sharing thoughts and stories of our family activities and interests. It is about sharing thoughts about my hobbies which have become much-needed therapy in my life of chronic illness. It is about recording my efforts to accomplish something... anything... each and every day.
My health often causes some cognitive difficulties so my thoughts can lean to the scattered side quite often. When I am feeling well, I can write quite eloquently, descriptively and even a bit poetically. When I am feeling lousy and especially when my health is affecting my cognitive abilities, my writing can be a bit mundane, matter-of-factly, and quite scattered with seemingly no point. Hence the name of the blog... Scattered Thoughts.
To stay on topic on this "About" page, I should probably write a little bit about myself.
I'm a disabled Air Force veteran and retired as disabled from a Department of Defense position. The specifics about the Air Force and DoD relationship and my chosen career path are irrelevant here so I'll skip over explaining all of that here in this blog.
After my second line-of-duty spinal injury, I was forced into a mandatory, albeit unwanted, retirement. The road through this long retirement process was rocky and very turbulent at times. Between extensive physical therapy, trying to continue being useful in what was left of my career and the effects of these injuries wiping my personal life clean like a raging flood wipes out decades of memories and belongings, this sequence of events thrust me out of a career I truly loved and into a new job managing chronic illness as well as part-time jobs for as long as my health would allow. Through this process, my new path of disability upended my life and swiftly swept everything downstream and out of reach.
Until my health failed significantly a few years after my rather early retirement, I kept busy (other than my daily physical therapy) teaching aerospace, piano and music. I kept busy with private students, helping out at our local primary school, teaching cadets in the Civil Air Patrol, remaining an active officer in the Air Force Auxiliary and volunteering in some NASA research programs.
At the same time as I was awaiting my medical retirement, I started developing a very debilitating illness. I went through more than a dozen doctors and about five years of sometimes very grueling medical tests and evaluations before finally being diagnosed with a rare form of disease affecting my mast cells which falls under the classification of a myeloproliferative disorder.
This illness has different forms and, as luck would have it, I am now personally experienced in two forms of this illness... one systemic version affecting all areas of my body internally, and the other a cutaneous version affecting my skin.
The five or so years of diagnosis involved frequent testing... some invasive, some not so much. In this testing we found some things we didn't expect such as a tumor on my pituitary gland in the center of my brain. Fortunately, this tumor issue has been resolved for now so it is a relatively distant memory but certainly not completely forgotten.
We found a cancerous lump in my face which has now left me with a long, thin scar down one side of my face. I've had skin cancer removed more times than I care to remember, I struggle with vision issues... and I could probably go on and on with secondary illnesses but I will keep this a condensed version of "About Me".
Although my original disability due to my extensive spinal injuries is significant enough that continues to affect me every single day, this new rare illness would prove to make my spinal injuries seem more like an afternoon stroll through the park.
I have always stayed as active as my health allows and I am happy to say that this way of life has never changed even through my disabilities. This definitely helps to keep me moving in a positive direction in a 'one foot in front of the other' sort of way. In fact, it is because of my lifelong love of physical conditioning and being in the best physical shape I can be that I am still able to function today... standing, walking, short hikes, short bike rides... my healthy body was in such peak condition when I became disabled that it will take longer for my body to reach the lowest of low. Expanding upon this theory, continuing my physical therapy and physical conditioning through this illness and these debilitating injuries could add even more time by delaying the inevitable. This same philosophy applies to those who are still healthy in their lives as well but it is more important for those who are disabled already.
So, here I am writing some of my occasionally scattered thoughts on this blog. I write about our family outings, family events, sightseeing, travel, tackling problems in our home renovations and repairs as well as accomplishments in these sometimes daunting home renovations. I write of some interests as they move to the forefront of my life while others need to move to the background and become a part of my life history because my health has made it too difficult to continue these interests.
Naturally, I sometimes will write about struggles with my health. I'm not really writing to complain, although, when I write about these times I am often justifiably frustrated. I include these times in my writing because I know that when friends and family don't hear about the rough times they assume "no news is good news". I can tell you with absolute certainty that "no news" in this case does not mean "good news". It quite often means periods of exceptionally poor health... it means times of struggle... it means lapses of nothingness. In the end, I suppose writing about this is a form of therapy and a bit of venting for me.
Long ago, I found that many people in my life had a difficult time understanding my illness and resulting disabilities. Before long, I felt that the best way to help create some understanding among those in my life was to start writing, conveying descriptive explanations of my difficulties, expressing my emotions through these difficulties and hoping to shed some light on chronic illness, in general, which oftentimes can be a very dark place and completely misunderstood by healthy people. My hope is that some people will learn something from all of what is written here in this blog and they'll be able to grow and understand more about chronic illness.
Another very important purpose of this blog is to provide myself with a log of my own life so that when I am struggling with longer bouts of poor health and feeling like I am accomplishing nothing and just 'surviving', I can come to this blog to read about my own life and some of my little accomplishments I have achieved yet have forgotten about because I was so preoccupied with getting through the bad days. Whenever I revisit my blog, I am quickly reminded of the fact that I do indeed keep as busy as my health will allow and that I do indeed lead a very productive life even while struggling with debilitating, incurable health problems. It is not the physically demanding, exciting life I once lived but this blog clearly shows that I continue to put one foot in front of the other and remain productive. This blog, at times, is like my journal... documenting my journeys through life clouded with chronic illness, pain, and struggles but it chronicles the good and well times also.
One thing is certain, however... Everyone has a story and this blog is just a tiny window to my own story.
We had some significant delays on this train ride so there was a lot of idle time for some light chit-chat with other passengers. My Air Force polo shirt sparked one such conversation with the woman seated next to me.
This soft spoken woman seated next to me in this cross country Amtrak coach noticed my short hair and Air Force polo shirt and inquired about my career. In a scene very similar to the famous bus stop scene in Forrest Gump, I spent the next couple of hours telling a story... my story.
One part of this story led to another, prompting more inquiring questions by this soft spoken woman, delving deeper into my personal story... a story which begins with an honorable, demanding and exciting career in a field few know exists to a personal life filled with physically demanding hobbies and activities. The story suddenly turns toward a story of a debilitating injury, recovery, a second more debilitating injury, lost health, lost career, lost love, lost home, lost mobility... I continued babbling for at least two hours until I noticed this woman wiping tears from her eyes as they streamed down her face. I immediately asked myself, "Ugggg... how did I never notice that my life had become a tragedy?"
This visibly saddened woman never did get to hear how my story ends... of course, neither have I as another page is written each day. The subsequent chapters in this story have definitely improved over time so my life really is not much of a tragedy when we look at my life as a whole. But the point is everyone has a story, including me.
One purpose of this blog is to tell some of this story in bits and pieces. Although, truth be told, I really don't write much about my own life story from a point of view which brought that poor woman who managed to get stuck sitting beside me on the train to tears. My writings here tend to be more about my health, the struggles my health causes and the little things I do accomplish through these struggles. It is about sharing thoughts and stories of our family activities and interests. It is about sharing thoughts about my hobbies which have become much-needed therapy in my life of chronic illness. It is about recording my efforts to accomplish something... anything... each and every day.My health often causes some cognitive difficulties so my thoughts can lean to the scattered side quite often. When I am feeling well, I can write quite eloquently, descriptively and even a bit poetically. When I am feeling lousy and especially when my health is affecting my cognitive abilities, my writing can be a bit mundane, matter-of-factly, and quite scattered with seemingly no point. Hence the name of the blog... Scattered Thoughts.
To stay on topic on this "About" page, I should probably write a little bit about myself. I'm a disabled Air Force veteran and retired as disabled from a Department of Defense position. The specifics about the Air Force and DoD relationship and my chosen career path are irrelevant here so I'll skip over explaining all of that here in this blog.
After my second line-of-duty spinal injury, I was forced into a mandatory, albeit unwanted, retirement. The road through this long retirement process was rocky and very turbulent at times. Between extensive physical therapy, trying to continue being useful in what was left of my career and the effects of these injuries wiping my personal life clean like a raging flood wipes out decades of memories and belongings, this sequence of events thrust me out of a career I truly loved and into a new job managing chronic illness as well as part-time jobs for as long as my health would allow. Through this process, my new path of disability upended my life and swiftly swept everything downstream and out of reach.
Until my health failed significantly a few years after my rather early retirement, I kept busy (other than my daily physical therapy) teaching aerospace, piano and music. I kept busy with private students, helping out at our local primary school, teaching cadets in the Civil Air Patrol, remaining an active officer in the Air Force Auxiliary and volunteering in some NASA research programs.
This illness has different forms and, as luck would have it, I am now personally experienced in two forms of this illness... one systemic version affecting all areas of my body internally, and the other a cutaneous version affecting my skin.
The five or so years of diagnosis involved frequent testing... some invasive, some not so much. In this testing we found some things we didn't expect such as a tumor on my pituitary gland in the center of my brain. Fortunately, this tumor issue has been resolved for now so it is a relatively distant memory but certainly not completely forgotten.
 |
| A few days after surgery to remove a cancerous lump from my cheek. |
Although my original disability due to my extensive spinal injuries is significant enough that continues to affect me every single day, this new rare illness would prove to make my spinal injuries seem more like an afternoon stroll through the park.
I have always stayed as active as my health allows and I am happy to say that this way of life has never changed even through my disabilities. This definitely helps to keep me moving in a positive direction in a 'one foot in front of the other' sort of way. In fact, it is because of my lifelong love of physical conditioning and being in the best physical shape I can be that I am still able to function today... standing, walking, short hikes, short bike rides... my healthy body was in such peak condition when I became disabled that it will take longer for my body to reach the lowest of low. Expanding upon this theory, continuing my physical therapy and physical conditioning through this illness and these debilitating injuries could add even more time by delaying the inevitable. This same philosophy applies to those who are still healthy in their lives as well but it is more important for those who are disabled already.
So, here I am writing some of my occasionally scattered thoughts on this blog. I write about our family outings, family events, sightseeing, travel, tackling problems in our home renovations and repairs as well as accomplishments in these sometimes daunting home renovations. I write of some interests as they move to the forefront of my life while others need to move to the background and become a part of my life history because my health has made it too difficult to continue these interests.
Naturally, I sometimes will write about struggles with my health. I'm not really writing to complain, although, when I write about these times I am often justifiably frustrated. I include these times in my writing because I know that when friends and family don't hear about the rough times they assume "no news is good news". I can tell you with absolute certainty that "no news" in this case does not mean "good news". It quite often means periods of exceptionally poor health... it means times of struggle... it means lapses of nothingness. In the end, I suppose writing about this is a form of therapy and a bit of venting for me.
Long ago, I found that many people in my life had a difficult time understanding my illness and resulting disabilities. Before long, I felt that the best way to help create some understanding among those in my life was to start writing, conveying descriptive explanations of my difficulties, expressing my emotions through these difficulties and hoping to shed some light on chronic illness, in general, which oftentimes can be a very dark place and completely misunderstood by healthy people. My hope is that some people will learn something from all of what is written here in this blog and they'll be able to grow and understand more about chronic illness.
Another very important purpose of this blog is to provide myself with a log of my own life so that when I am struggling with longer bouts of poor health and feeling like I am accomplishing nothing and just 'surviving', I can come to this blog to read about my own life and some of my little accomplishments I have achieved yet have forgotten about because I was so preoccupied with getting through the bad days. Whenever I revisit my blog, I am quickly reminded of the fact that I do indeed keep as busy as my health will allow and that I do indeed lead a very productive life even while struggling with debilitating, incurable health problems. It is not the physically demanding, exciting life I once lived but this blog clearly shows that I continue to put one foot in front of the other and remain productive. This blog, at times, is like my journal... documenting my journeys through life clouded with chronic illness, pain, and struggles but it chronicles the good and well times also.
One thing is certain, however... Everyone has a story and this blog is just a tiny window to my own story.
This blog is a way for me to document some of my accomplishments through disability no matter how seemingly small. It is a way for me to document some of the good times and rather lousy times that seem to sway back and forth like a pendulum... or maybe up and down like a rollercoaster might be a better analogy. It is a way for me to document the times spent with our grandchildren, family and friends regardless of my health issues. It is a way for me to vent some frustration at times. And, I often come back to read some of my blog entries whenever I'm feeling like I'm not "living life" due to poor health. The blog reminds me that I am still living life that is definitely worth living.
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