14 May

One year ago today...1:00am to be more or less, exact..
My wife and I had taken a little vacation to Niagara Falls and then stopped in Erie, PA to visit with my mom for a couple of days. We arrived in Erie on the afternoon of the 13th and had a great evening. Early morning of the 14th that all came to change.

I awoke at approx. 1:00am with what I felt were bad leg cramps....little did I know.
The EMT's were called and by 3:00am I was in the emergency room paralyzed from the waist down. The pain throughout this time was incredible. Hmmm..Did I say pain...more like fire. Fire from my waist to my toes. I still remember hollering out while the EMT's were there...I hollered.."My balls are burning"...and it literally felt like I had been doused with gasoline all over my crotch and legs...and a match thrown on me.

What the hell was happening to me..? I had no idea... I was scared..was I dying..? I'm sure my wife was scared as well as my mom too. This was like a dream gone bad. I remember thrashing around from the pain/fire...it wouldn't go away. I couldn't voluntarily move anything from my waist down. The thrashing was all involuntary...why was my body doing this..? Please make this stop.

.....The memories of that night/early morning have flashed through my mind countless times in the last year...more than I care to remember and unfortunately those memories will probably rear their head many more times...
But, I must say...even though those memories are probably never going to go away...the actual events of that morning are gone and should never come back.

One whole year has passed...and what a year it has been. I am glad this past year is over....all the physical problems...all the mental problems...have been an incredible challenge. I've just completed almost one full year of physical therapy...and have made progress by leaps and bounds. The mental challenges are pretty much under control...
I still have some limitations, but at least I know and understand what they are and how to deal with them. I can live with that, especially knowing that with each passing week, month and year things should slowly continue getting better. One thing I do know is that there will continue being some physical challenges brought about by the weather here in Ohio. I suppose I'll just have to be prepared for that when it happens.

I've had this day on my mind for quite some time....I suppose everyone thinks about certain "anniversaries" and this one for me was no different. I knew it was coming and it was quite a milestone...after all, when TM first hit me I had no idea where I would stand one year out. Well, now I know.

An "interesting" thing did happen to me this morning though..and I don't know if it was a result of me thinking about today being my anniversary or what..but, at 2:00am I woke up with an incredible leg cramp..in my left leg. The pain was incredible to the point where I got up out of bed...walked into the bathroom and was trying to walk the cramp out...just as I had done one year ago. The cramp continued to get worse and my mind started racing....This pain was familiar. I'd heard of reoccurring TM before but the chances are very small...but then again...so are the chances of getting TM...
Surely this wasn't another TM flareup...I started thinking about what if it was and I got paralyzed while I was in the bathroom...what was I going to do..? What if I fell while I was in there..What if I had to drag myself back into the bedroom to wake my wife..? The thoughts I was having were like a bad dream...

Anyway, the cramp started to subside...so I continued to stretch and walk it out...I was up for a half an hour working this cramp out and finally it did go away....
You want to talk about being relieved...

Well...I'm sure that I have gone on long enough now....I wanted to update today with it being my anniversary. I do have alot more that I want to say...but I'll hold that for future updates...
Having TM has really changed my thoughts and outlook on many things...has it made me wiser..I'm not sure, but it sure has made me more appreciative of some things...
With that being said...I want to thank all of you...friends and family that have been there...those of you that have popped in and read this blog...and all of my other TM friends out there for their words of support. All of you are a great bunch.

Music for today....and I know this isn't going to be everyone's taste...but I'm posting this song for one reason....
The band...Judas Priest...and the song...."PAINKILLER" and I think you can understand why I'm posting that...


Till Next Time......