Be Ready or Be Sorry

Plenty of room between me and oncoming cars make it look like there's plenty of time for to turn. I quickly turn the wheel and step on the gas. My car moves into the oncoming lane, but the power dies and the steering feels suddenly stiff. It stalled! Hmm, it's never done that before.

Quickly I grab the key and turn it. The engine turns over willingly showing the battery is strong. But turning over or not, it just won't start. What's wrong? Come on, let's go.

My 1999 Toyota, Camry has been running perfectly since I bought it in '02. I instantly loved it's deep red paint and shaded skylight. It's been a great ride right up until today.

"You need a push?" a couple men asked as they came running up to where my dead car blocked the intersection.

I shrugged. "Apparently, thanks. I don't know what's wrong with it."

They pushed my car out of the intersection and to the edge of this slight incline where my car began coasting on it's own. Well away from the intersection, I stopped, took out my cell phone, called triple A and waited for a tow truck.

Pretty boring story, huh? That's the way I like it. No drama. No terribly unpleasant surprises. Planning for the unplanned helps keep life simple.

Since we folks with disabilities have fewer physical and sometimes financial resources than folks without disabilites, planning for the unplanned is especially helpful.

I try to keep my car stocked with cell phone, phone charger, Motor Club insurance, Clif bars, flashlight and drinking water. Why? Because, being bored is always better than being sorry.

Is This Blog About Disabilities?

Some people may ask, What's this blog's got to do with disabilities?
To which I'll say, "Everything!"
What's every normal or adnormal person in the world need?
Success at setting/reaching goals and healthy relationships.
What do we normal or adnormal people with disabilities need?
The same thing. Success at setting/reaching goals and healthy relationships.
What sort of stuff is in this blog?

The content of this blog can be divided into three loosely defined catagories.

1. Stuff I've heard from credible AA people as well as rehabilitation professionals.

2. Things I've learned from experience as a person with disabilities.

3. I frequently share my experience, strength and hope about how this person with disabilities uses goal setting and fellowship with AA people and folks in church and other aspects of my life to strengthen my self image and build and maintain healthy relationships.

There you go. This blog is about finding an easier, softer way to live with or without disabilities. life is about setting goals and maintaining relationships, whether you have a disability or not.

If you have specific questions about living with disabilities, ask. If I don't know, I'll help you find the answer. Why would I do that? Because, as I probably said in an earlier post: Helping you Helps me.

Old Is As Old Does

A couple days ago, as is unual, I gave 81 year old Don a ride to the AA meeting. Don may only be 81 but he hears like he’s at least 99. We’re going along having a conversation about two totally different things.
Sometimes I ask him if he can hear me.
“Yeah, I can hear ya,” he says, “I just can’t understand ya.”
I just shake my head. What can ya do?

I've been asked to chair the Lakeside Milam Treatment Center AA meeting tonight. I love the atmosphere at treatment centers. Even though some of the folks are still going through withdrawels, everybody's so optimistic about their chances to live a better life once they get back home.

Well then why do so few treatment center alumni stay sober once they get out of treatment? Because very few are willing to do the work to stay sober. Treatment centers give patients the tools to stay sober, but very few patients use the tools their given with the honesty and integrity that's required. And as everybody knows....... If nothing changes, nothing changes.

Another "What I Learned Today."

Doing less than we promise is despised the first time and expected the second.
Doing what we promise is appreciated and respected all the time.
Doing more than we promise is like finding a hidden treasure, to both us and them.

As I Understand Listening to others...6a

I can sound fairly articulate, which makes people sometimes form ideas about me that aren't entirely true. For example, focusing on more than one thing at a time can be real difficult for me. This limitation can make me seem self absorbed, which isn't ALWAYS the case.

For instance, I don't purposely ignore what other people say. However, if I'm totally wrapped up in and enthusiastic about what's going on with me at the moment and the person I'm talking with says something, it won't even register that they said anything.

I don't hear them and choose to ignore them. It's like I'm watching Appollo 11 taking off heading for the first lunar landing and out of the corner of my eye, I see a crow fly by. It's not like I don't see the crow. I see it. It's right there, but the launching rocket ship is so captivating that the crow is just a momentary blip on my radar.

Case in point: This morning I realized I haven't told my brain damaged friend Cathy about my blog. All excited, I call to tell her about it. Thoughts of what a cool contributor she will make fill my whole mind. There's no room for anything else.

I happen to call right when she's in the middle of doing something. She says she's busy right now, but I'm so excited about getting her on my blog that I just say "OK" and keep right on talking. After a few minutes, Cathy says,

"Hold on. I got another call."

She was gone several minutes, during which time I begin thinking. When she gets back on the phone, I ask, "Did you really have another call?"

"No, I just had to finish getting dressed."

We both laugh. It's good to have brain damaged friends who know how it is.

As I Understand "Doing What I Can"...5

Out the window, at the foot of my bed, gray dismal clouds fill the sky. I hear a splash as a car runs over a puddle in the complex parking lot. At least it's not freezing. I turn up the thermostat and appreciate the sound of warm air rushing into my chilled living space.

A faint dusting of snow covers the complex lawn. This seems like a good morning to stay inside where it's warm and dry, I'm thinking as I drop into a chair in my entry way and begin pulling my shoes on. The brace in my left shoe goes almost up to my knee, supporting my ankle and giving me a familiar, secure feeling.


I don't want to walk, but I have to! Having the left side of my body paralyzed is a nuisance as long as I keep myself in fairly good shape. Having one side paralyzed if I let myself get fat and weak would be more than a nuisance. It would be a travesty! I may not be as strong and nimble as I used to be, or even as I want to be, but I'm not as helpless, or as depressed, as I would be if I didn't do what I can to stay in shape.

I'm fairly comfortable with my left arm & leg attrophying smaller and smaller, but I'm still not thrilled with it. What saves the day for me is exercising so I'm in almost as good of shape as I can be.

The other night Jay Leno said something about one in every three Americans is obese. That means one in every three Americans is three Americans.

With Leno's joke in mind, I head out the door and start limping around the block.

As I Understand Acceptance...4b

In my previous post or two, I established that I think helping others is one of many steps we can take along the path leading from feeling discontent to feeling content. A huge step in the journey toward contentment, possibly the biggest, is acceptance.

Acceptance is the key to solving all my problems. When I'm discontent, it's because I find some person, place, thing or situation unacceptable. The only way for me to change from being discontent to being content is to change the only thing I have control of, my thinking. If I change my thinking and realize the following four things, I have peace like it's Sunday morning and I'm smelling coffee and pancakes.

1. Everybody doesn't believe in God. That's fine. Why should I let their lack of faith deprive me of my faith? To me, there is a God who cares about my life.
2. My life is easier if I turn it over to God.
3. Absolutely nothing happens that surprises God or leaves him flabbergasted.
4. God is on my side.

As I Understand Acceptance...4a

Since I established in the Understand...3 post that I think helping others is one of many steps that get you along the pathway leading from discontent to content, we're almost ready to explore how acceptance is another step along the same pathway.

But first, let's acknowledge that helping others is almost always a physical activity, requiring a definite action of some sort. Because of this physical element, we can usually make ourselves do it. Accepting a person, place or thing, however, is more of a cerebral activity, and hence a potential problem. Most of the problems discontent people have stem from the way they understand things. Therefore, when discontent people start looking for a solution that requires understanding, the solution can understandably be a long time in coming.

It took me a long time to get this acceptance thing figured out, and it's still not totally clear, however much thinking has simplified it to a point where I feel capable of offering a somewhat understandable explanation.

Here goes: Even though everything else in my life may be running with reasonable smoothness, if one aspect of my life is out of balance, or in a way I would rather it not be, I tend to focus on it instead of being grateful for the 99% of my life that is running smoothly.

As long as I'm focusing on the problem, it's almost impossible to be content. In other words, living with a problem is easier if I quit giving it all my attention and start expressing gratitude for the things in my life that are more to my liking.

Someone asks, "How can I be thankful I have a good job if my car's broken down and I can't get to work?"

What I'm talking about is being content with our ongoing circumstances. Problems that arise need to be focused on until we figure out how to solve them, if they can be. In other words: If you're not content with what you have, then coming from a place of honesty and integrity, do what you can to get more. If that proves impossible then learn to be thankful for what you have.

Everybody has stuff to be thankful for. If you don't think so, close your eyes until your grateful you can see.

I haven't fully explained my thoughts on acceptance. I will do that in another post on acceptance, it may not be my next post, but it will be numbered 4b.




(An example of what I'm NOT talking about is a shepherd who doesn't bother to look for a lost sheep because he tells himself to be happy having the sheep that didn't wander off.)

No Limits

Have you ever felt like society tries to control you by telling you to live within a set of parameters made of the expectations of people you don't know and probably wouldn't like even if you did know?

The whole idea of living within limits defined by other people's expectations is as distasteful as trying to chug sour milk. Expecting people to live within the law is good and reasonable, but expecting people to walk and talk, dress and conduct themselves a certain way is an attempt to fit them with a harness so they can pull around your expectations like they're an ox pulling a plow.

My experience with living large despite being told I would have a very limited life, even if I came out of my coma, started when I first became conscious of my surroundings. I remember days going by before the the hospital's chief neuron surgeon responded to my request for him to come to my room.

The surgeon was one of the few people who could understand me even if I didn't point of letters on my alphabet board.

"How soon will I be able to get out of this bed and this hospital," I asked.


"Al," he replied softly. "You'll never be able to walk or talk understandably or drive again."


What! I'm a 19 year old roofer. I have to walk, I have to talk, I have to drive!
Frantically I threw my bedclothes off me, pushed my paralyzed leg off the bed with my other weakened leg and tried to stand up. I fell on my face. Two nurses and a doctor helped me back in bed, but as soon as they turned around I climbed back out and fell again. This time, they put me back in bed and strapped me in.


As I lay strapped to the bed, staring at the ceiling and contemplating my grim future, I was momentarily too stunned and horrified to have anything remotely resembling a coherant thought, but looking back I can see how this was when I began developing the willingness to live outside the box. Actually, living outside the box of people's expectations wasn't as much a choice as it was a survival skill. Living outside the box is living outside the expectations of narrow minded people who think they know the end from the beginning. Living outside expectations is living without limits. Hence my book, No Limits.

What I Learned Today

What I learned today is that it's important to say what you mean,
it's even more important to mean what you say,
and it's most imortant to not say it mean.

What I'm trying to say is that "Sometimes how we say what we say is more important than what we say."

As I Understand Judging & Helping Others...3a

Do you remember how exciting it feels to be going somewhere that you want to go, especially when you know how to get there and you know it's where you belong? That's all fine and good, but the real excitement comes when you don't know what your destination is going to look like. Sometimes I'm like a hunter who isn't sure what his prey will look like, this time. I'm hunting for the feeling of contentment I have when I'm living a helpful, useful life.

What confuses me is that all around me are people who seem happy and content despite not seeming to have the same concern for living a useful life. But who says they're not helpful, useful people? Maybe they are very useful. Maybe I'm being too quick to judge. Maybe that's one reason we're told not to judge lest we be judged.

Somewhere we're told to love our neighbors. Is loving another word for helping? Helping does seem like a manifestation of love. Is one part of helping people realizing that they're sick people trying to get well and not bad people trying to be good? If we focus on really helping others, we won't be thinking about problems we may happen to have, and judging them will be less likely.

Someone asks, "Why would I want to help others? What's in it for me?"

Plenty is in it for me. Helping others gets me out of my own head. Sometimes my head is a dangerous, depressing place. Sometimes I'm not someone I want to be alone with. At times like this, helping others is a safe alternative.

Like most people, I know how it feels to be discontent. Sometimes I'm discontent, but not for long. Why not? Because I found a solution. This may not be the only solution, but helping others is part of the solution that works for me. The important thing to remember is a principle I may have touched on in an earlier post about different colored crayons, which is "Just because one solution or color is right doesn't mean another is wrong."

Helping others is one of ways I've discovered to help myself shift from feeling discontent to feeling content. I haven't yet shared all the ways I've found, but I'll reveal more of the steps this brain damaged person takes to feel content in upcoming posts that have a number in the title.

Bad Memory Blues

Hopelessly I look at the six story parking garage at Bellevue Square shopping mall.

“I have no idea what floor I parked on. I don’t even know if I parked in the six level garage or in the 4 level garage.” Feeling totally lost and confused, I look at the kind looking security officer.

He laughs. “Don’t worry. You’re the second person this week that needed help finding their car.

I sigh. “I guess that makes me feel better.”

The middle aged guard smiles. “Helping you is no problem. If it weren't for folks like you, I might not have a job."

I grin as I climb into the guard’s cart. This guy has no idea how many situations like this a bad memory’s gotten me into. If there were more people like me, he'd have guaranteed overtime every week. I feel like I’m practicing for when I get old enough to have Alzheimer’s.

Although a bad memory can be a sign that a person has brain damage, it can also be a sign of a lot of other things: fatigue, boredom, pot smoking, pain pills, any number of distractions, excessive drinking.

If you have developed any successful strategies for dealing with a bad memory, I, and probably most memory impaired readers, would like to hear what you’ve come up with. I’ve come up with a few myself that I’d be happy to discuss with anyone who asks.

As I Understand Control--2

For years, I was so steeped in the negative emotions I mentioned in my last post that I didn’t realize, until I peeled away most of that negativity, that below that layer was another, even more change resistant, layer. The primary ingredient of this next layer was a strongly felt need to control as much of my surroundings as possible.

At the time, the need to control was either unrecognizable to me, or it was impossible to admit the possession of, even to myself. But in hindsight, now that time and emotional distance shields me from the embarrassment of having had a need to control, it’s easy for me to recognize how this need fueled the anger and the isolation that stalled the social aspect of my rehabilitation and, perhaps, also fueled my alcoholism.

Another realization that has become clear is that at the base of whatever force made me think and behave as I did was a fear that I would either lose something I already had or that I wouldn’t get something I wanted. In other words, at the base of every fear I could possibly have is an unwillingness to accept life on life’s terms.

Given that I was a brain damaged, paralyzed mess of a human being, this lack of willingness to give up control may have been understandable, but being understandable didn’t make it any less of a block to progress. Much earlier in my recovery, I was infected with a condition known as terminal uniqueness. I no longer think I'm unique, so I believe there are others who’ve either had or maybe still have fear as their primary motivator.

This being the case, the, at least temporary, direction and purpose of my following posts will be to explain my journey and perhaps discover new ways for us all be rid of the aforementioned fear.

(To be continued.)

As I Understand Blocks to Progress...1

When I first began looking back over my years of rehab, in preparation to write this Post, I remembered what I used to think of as my most shocking discovery. The discovery was that, all along, negative thinking had been my biggest disability. Indeed, the resentment, self pity, fear and the constant feeling of unfairness I felt as I watched other people doing things I too had once taken for granted made my negative thinking a significant block to progressing in my recovery.

However, the shocking fact, at least to me then, was that an even bigger hinderance to my recovery was an unconscious mind set that had possessed me since I'd been old enough to recognize desires or other feelings of discomfort. Although subtle, this mindset had such an insidious impact on my recovery that it not only kept me from progressing, at times it actually pulled me further from my goal of being recovered.

All the doctors agree that my physical injuries are permanent, so why would I speak of being recovered as if recovery were actually possible? To me, being recovered defines a point at which my life has so aligned itself with the universal order of things that the circumstances created by my head injury and paralysis are not seen as limiting factors.

With this in mind, let us explore what I discovered to be an even bigger block to my recovery than even the life sucking power of negative thinking.

(To be continued in my next Post…)

When Is Something Over?

Standing in front of my mailbox, I’m flipping through the usual junk mail looking for something of value or least interest.

Huh? what’s this? I pull out an official looking envelope. I wonder what this is. Holding one end in my teeth, I slide my finger along the glued down flap to tear it open. A second later, I'm pulling out the contents. A ticket? In the mail? What's up with that? I haven't had a ticket in 9 years.

Worry replaces my typical optimism. I was just reaching the point where I actually felt proud of my driving record. It took years for me to shift my self consumed, devil may care attitude from the type of thinking that had me believing traffic laws were meant for others to honestly trying to obey the rules of the road and be a driver who's considerate of his fellow motorists.

I stand in front of my mailbox looking down at the ticket in disbelief. I hadn’t gotten a ticket in eight or nine years. I lost track of the number of tickets I had once they got into the double digits, but I never got one by mail before. When did they start mailing people tickets?

Approximately 25 years ago, a few years after my crash, a major insurance company whose name could mean the entire state told me that it would cost me $5,000 for six months of insurance. Obviously I couldn't afford their rates. I couldn't afford full coverage on anybody's rate, not even on the old car I drove.

But now, with no tickets or accidents for 9 years, I'm actually a preffered insurance risk. I can afford a nicer car and full coverage insurance. Until seeing this ticket in the mail, I was happy with and proud of my driving record. Now what's gonna happen?

Going in and talking to the magistrate won't take it off my record, but I can't just pay it. There's gotta be something I can do. My heart is heavy as I check the box to speak to the magistrate and drop the ticket in the mailbox.

Walking back to my condo, I'm arguing with myself. Why didn't I just pay it? I'm guilty. They even have a photograph. Yeah, but something might happen. It's not over till it's over.

I'm Not Saying A Word.

My boss at my first voc rehab assignment was Brian, an impatient man who acted like he was in the army. He always wore an official university of Washington staff shirt, the kind with his department and his name embroidered over the pocket. He walked around with these short quick steps and spoke in short choppy sentences.

I don’t know why he worked with people rehabilitating from traumatic injuries. He had an impatient attitude, and he never said anything encouraging.

The first, actually the only, assignment he ever gave me was doing data entry on a computer terminal. I’ll never forget my last day working for him. Doing data entry with one hand is super slow and inefficient.

Brian must not have noticed that I only have one hand. When he finally did notice, he was quick to point out to me and anybody within a hundred feet that if I had “half a brain” I would have told him I can only use one hand.

“Don’t tell me I have half a brain,” I said. “You’re the blind genius who told me to do this.”

A few people laughed and Brian turned an angry red. “Finish the day doing what your doing,” he said before storming off to inflict his company on someone else.

I hated him—I wanted to do more than he thought I could. I wanted to prove him wrong.

I remember skipping my afternoon break and working as hard and fast as i could right up until Brian walked by my terminal and told me to shut down my computer and bring my disk into his office.

I didn’t even look up. “OK,” I said frantically doing the one finger typing routine. “Let’s go,” he called again before stepping into his office. I typed the final entry.

There, done! He said I’d never finish it and I did finish it. Happily I turned off my computer, grabbed my disk and carried it into his office.

“I finished it,” I said proudly, dropping the disk on his desk.

“This I’ve got to see,” Brian said pushing the disk into his computer. A few minutes of silence went by.

“What kind of game are you playing,” he said angrily. “There’s nothing on here! You brain damaged folks are all the same. I told you to save your work. Why am I working here, anyway? You brain deads never listen to me anyway.”

Angry indignation welled up. My head felt ready to explode like a squeezed pimple. Him talking to me that way after I’d done the best I could made me furious. If I hadn’t been a half paralyzed kid, I would have killed him. As it was, I let loose with a string of cuss words that surprised him so much, he sat just sat there silently looking at me. He probably thought I would attack him with my cane, but I didn’t. Leaning on my cane, I limped out of his office and never went back.

The next day I got assigned to another voc rehab position, working somewhere else for a woman named Gail. She turned out to be supportive and encouraging.

I don’t think she was that way because she happened to be a woman any more than Brian was the way he was because he was a man. Brian chose to be the way he was because he thought of no one but himself. Gail was kind and helpful because that’s how she chose to be. Since she made me feel like I was part of the team, I worked hard and I was happy enough not to forget details like saving my work before I turned my computer off.

Anger had motivated me to work hard for Brian, too. But anger didn’t motivate me to do my best work. In fact, I bet it was anger that made me forget to save my work.

Gail helped me do my best work because she lived what I've heard since first grade, "If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything."

Get Results--Get Bio Feedback

The residential street on the hill above the city of Kirkland has no traffic in the early afternoon, so I take my foot off the gas and slowly coast as i look over large lawns at the back sides of spacious houses, trying to find Dr. Jean Ann Craig’s home.

“Wow!” The stunned expression escapes my lips as I look over a rock wall and see the house number she gave me on a custom built home across a wide lawn and blooming flower garden. A gently curving cement walk way approaches the house from the side before curving sharply and heading straight toward a double set of glass doors.

Leaving my car on the empty street, I swing open an iron gate and limp toward the house. The doctor wanting to do the bio feedback on me for no charge was the chance of a life time. God I hope this works, I silently pray. If it works God, I’ll be the nicest, kindest person ever. Please let it work, God.

Dr. Jean Ann greets me at the door. “Come on in, Al.” She smiles in her gracious way. She’s from Indiana. My speaking trips have brought me to middle and southern America many times. As the speaker brought in from out of town, I’m treated nice wherever I go, so I could never tell if southern folks are nicer than folks in other parts of the country, but if Indiana is considered a southern state than judging from Dr. Jean Ann’s mannerisms, we northerners could learn hospitality from our southern neighbors.

“Ok, sit in this recliner beside these computers,” Dr. Jean Ann says after we finish visiting in the sitting room. I follow her into a room just off the room we just vacated. I sit in the recliner while she dips electrodes coming from one of the computers into this gel substance and attaches them to my head.

We did the treatment 3 times for the first few weeks, then two times a week for a couple weeks and then once a week. pretty soon, I was only needing to get a treatment about once a month and then 6 weeks or more would pass with me only coming in when I noticed my emotions getting more erratic.

It has been somewhere around 5 years since I received the treatments. The effect of the bio feedback on my disposition and on my ability to handle stressful situations without erupting in a volcano of expletives is profound. I still get confused and frustrated, but my ability to handle the situation without telling everybody in the vicinity how I feel makes life a lot easier to live.

“God doesn’t want you getting mad and yelling and cussing," some people say. Why didn’t you ask him to help you behave more like a Christian?”

To anybody uninformed enough to ask such an ignorant question let me, with the same aggrivated patience that a puppy owner teaches his pet to not poop on the carpet, say that rupturing my hypo thalamus gland meant that physical damage prevented my responding with calm control just like a person with a broken leg is not able to walk as well as someone without a broken leg.

If anyone is still having problems understanding, or maybe they’re wondering why I didn’t just pray the problem away, how about if you break your leg and then ask God to help you walk without limping? Sure God could have helped me always be calm before I got the bio feedback. He can also help people with broken legs walk without limping, but how often does he?

Since I’ve been freed from my box, whether or not I sound believable matters less to me than how much a bowl of mush sells for in the jungles of Africa. But, if a reader suffers from anger issues his or herself or cares at all for a brain damaged friend or relative with anger issues, this post is meant to tell you that bio feedback may be worth checking into.

Good luck. I’m praying for you.

Bio Feedback?

Fear rips a screech from Dr. Jean Ann Craig as the sharply turning front tires of my bright red Toyota skid across the gravel shoulder, spreading marble sized stones across a neatly trimmed lawn. I straighten out the wheels and let the car coast down the road. The doctor, a retired school psychologist, and I met at a National Speakers’ Association meeting. She’s a retired school psychologist who did behavior modification bio feedback therapy with kids who acted out their anger in everything from angry outbursts to more subtle forms of anger expression.
My coasting car slows almost to a stop on the deserted residential street. I look at the pale doctor.

“Where did that clown come from?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” she said. “But he shouldn’t be driving!”

“Now what were you saying,” I ask eager to hear what she started to say, “about never hearing
of bio feedback being used on a person with brain damage?”

“That’s it. I wonder if bio feedback would work on a person with brain damage.

I smile. “Why do you ask?”

“I’ve noticed you seem to get mad fairly easy. Have you always been that way or have things been worse since your accident?”

“Things have been way worse since my crash. What I remember being told is that my brain damage ruptured my hypo thalamus gland, which controls your emotional responses to things happening around you. I was never real mellow, but I used to be way easier going than I am now. Why do you ask?”

“Have you ever had any bio-feedback?”

“No.”

“Would you be interested in trying it?”

“Yeah sure, if you think it’ll help.”

“I honestly don’t know, so I won't charge you. But there’s a chance that it will.”

“Could it make me worse?”

“It won’t make you worse.”

“Why hasn’t anybody told me about this before?”

“Modern medicine likes to stick with traditional approaches.”

“Stupid people! You mean I’ve been locked in this box of negative thinking and loud, angry responses to stuff and there’s possibly a way out?" It seemed unbelievable. "You mean my insurance pays for me to go to traditional counselors that obviously don’t work instead of suggesting we try something that might work?”

Dr. Jean Ann Craig shrugs.”

“The school district paid you to do bio feedback for years, so they obviously know it works on some folk. Why didn’t any of my doctors suggest it to me?”

She shrugs again.

I let an exasperated sigh escape. “Stupid people! I wish I could lock them in the box I'm in.”

It Began One Day in May

Do you remember when you were 19 years old? When I was 19, I loved cars and motorcycles and one special gal. My job as a hot-tar roofer earned me enough money to customize my Camaro and buy a brand new Yamaha 650 Special. To make life even sweeter, I had a gorgeous girlfriend named Cheryl who wore my diamond engagement ring. She loved to ride on the back of my bike, her arms wrapped around my waist, and her golden hair flying behind us.

On May 7, 1980, a friend and I planned to meet after work and go to a Van Halen concert. I stopped by Cheryl’s house on the way. Time flew by whenever we were together, and before I realized it, I was late for the concert. I jumped on my bike, gunned out of the driveway and raced down the street. Wind screamed past my helmet and tore at my leather jacket. I should have slowed down, but I sped up. The orange speedometer needle climbed toward vertical.
I loved the wind in my face. I kept giving my bike more gas. The wind made me free, happy, powerful!

Wham!

I never saw the pick-up that ran a stop sign right in front of me. Judging from the distance that my bike knocked the truck, police say I was going over twice the speed limit. My bike hit the truck and stopped dead, I shot over the handlebars like I’d been fired from a circus cannon. My head slammed into the truck cracking my helmet and breaking bones in my face. My limp body crumpled to the pavement. Someone called an ambulance.

My heart never quit beating, but because of massive internal hemorrhaging, my blood pressure was too low to read. Paramedics fit me with pressure pants to help squeeze blood from my legs toward my heart and head. Smooth and efficient as a Swiss watch, they laid me on a stretcher, loaded me in the van and raced to Harborview Hospital in Seattle. I was rushed into surgery where doctors removed my spleen and transfused seven and a half pints of blood into me.

No one knew if I would live or die. The pastor and his wife from my parents’ church came to the hospital to be with my parents. A 24-hour prayer vigil began among church members. After two weeks in critical care, I was still comatose, but my vitals had stabilized so they moved me into a private room. Because of the type of brain injury I’d sustained, a doctor told my parents to start looking for a convalescent home. The hospital would have to move me if I didn’t wake up within two weeks. I’m told that when my primary-care physician heard what they told my parents, he erupted in anger.

I’m not sure if he got mad because he was the one responsible for making decisions about discharge, or because the other doctor’s insensitivity made my parents suffer more than they had to. Either way, I wholeheartedly agree with his reported agitation. Why cause more suffering than there already was?

Tears flooded my mom’s eyes and ran down her cheeks as I lay in ICU. The doctor told her, “Even if he lives, he’ll never be the same.” Physically and mentally, she was warned, I would be a different person. And there would be behavior changes, maybe drastic changes.

Several years ago, I discovered that my Mom had kept a poetic journal of her thoughts during this period. years after writing them, she sent me a copy of the lines she wrote. Those lines, which appear in my book No Limits, plus the fact that she walks her talk, convinced me that having a praying mom is a son or daughter's most valuable resource, and being a praying mom or dad is the best choice anyone can make, for everyone involved.

Two Years After Onset of Differences

The wind coming through my open car window seemed to clear my head. I tried to keep my driver’s side tires on those little white bumps separating the lanes. I couldn’t quite do it, but I think I kept within a yard or so.

Anger, fear, resentment and self pity constantly filled my mind and influenced what I said and did. Going from an athletic roofer with a customized Camaro, a beautiful street bike, a good job and a gorgeous fiancé to a paralyzed cripple with a severe speech impairment and no prospects left me with one alternative. In high school, occasional bouts of excessive drinking had been fun. There had been no other purpose. The drinking I did after my crash, although still periodic, was much more focused. In my post crash drinking, I had a specific purpose.

The wind coming in the window felt good. I felt good. Driving put me on the same playing field as everyone else. The prisms in my glasses helped correct my post crash double vision. I don’t know if my drinking actually worsened my crash caused double vision, but I do know it made it easier for me to accept the fact that things, including my vision, weren’t what they had been.

Closing one eye and concentrating on the freeway ahead of me, I marvel at how good I feel. Five or six shots of straight vodka is magic. I didn’t even have to buy it. All I needed to do is buy some for my under aged roommate and his friends and they happily paid for whatever I wanted. It was a win-win situation.

The sound of a siren suddenly breaks into my thoughts. I look in the rearview mirror. A patrol car with it’s lights on is behind me. Fear bordering on annoyance grips me. I look for a place to pull over, but I’m in the left lane of the freeway with a cement wall on my left. I can’t stop here!

I slow down, wondering what to do. Another siren blast cuts the air. Fine! I slam on the breaks, almost skidding to a stop. I look in the rearview mirror. The cop car is almost touching my bumper. It’s lights are flashing. He stopped with his car a bit into the lane on my right. Cars are whizzing past. The cop gets out of his car and walks up to my driver’s window.

I look at him. “What?”

“Have you been drinking?”

“No!”

“Get out of the car. You’ll need to walk a line.”

“Sure.” I grab my quad cane and start to get out.

“What’s that?”

“It’s my cane. I can’t walk without it.”

He snorted. “Forget it! Just be careful.” With that, he went back to his car. I wait until he swings around me and drives off. Cops, back in the early 80s, before they all had breathalyzers and such, were easier for drinking drivers to deal with.

I didn’t mean to be a menace to society, but for years, I was too immature and self absorbed to handle the pain I felt when my life erupted like a volcano. Mount St Helens blew up at the same time I crashed. Was it a coincidence?

More on Differences

“How comfortable we are with someone else’s differences has more to do with how comfortable we are with ourserves than it does with who they are.”

“Huh? How can being comfortable with who we are help us to accept the differences between ourselves and someone else?”

Ok, here are some common situations where being comfortable with your own differences can minimize the problems other people’s differences may create:

1. Parents & their children, teachers & students, a boss & employees, or coworkers. Any of these people will be most effective If they are comfortable enough with themselves to not take negative behavior personally, to accept their children, students, employees or coworkers as they are and to not have unrealistic expectations of them.

2. Between people with visible disabilities and people without visible disabilities.
The more comfortable I am as a person with disabilities and with the fact that there are some things people with disabilities can’t do, the fewer expectations I will put on someone without disabilities. The fewer expectations I put on someone else, the fewer opportunities there are for me to be disappointed and resentful.

For example, say I haven’t accepted living as a person with disabilities and I go camping or to the beach with friends who don’t have disabilities. Unless I get comfortable living within the limits Imposed by my disabilities, I will either want them to limit their activities to ones I can do with them or I will feel sorry for myself while they do things I can’t participate In.

3. Between cultures, political parties & religions.
Anybody who has tried to change someone else’s opinion concerning their views on politics or religion knows It Is almost always best to avoid these subjects when you want to maintain an amiable level of conversation.
The animosity and anger these topics generate is perhaps a clue that sometimes the best way to maintain cordial relations is accept each other’s differences by agreeing to disagree.

The bottom line Is that the world Is like a box of crayons, which I talked about in my last post.

Differences

People are like crayons. The world is a huge box of crayons. There's lot's of different colors and shapes. Some are brighter or prettier or sharper or duller than average. Some have visible disabilities and some don't. The differences between crayons is why we have so many different cultures and groups, which are like smaller boxes within the big box.

I think the key to being happy in whatever box you're in is to accept the differences of your fellow crayons, no matter what box they're in. Like Martin Luther King Jr said "I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word."

To me, accepting that different is not a value judgement, accepting that different just means different, is the key to getting along with other crayons regardless not only of their color, but regardless also of the box their physical or mental condition relegates them to live in.

The Chase Begins

I still limp pretty noticeably, but I don’t need a wheelchair or even a cane if the ground is fairly even and I’m not in the woods needing to step over logs or in a ghetto needing to step over dead bodies and other debris. I still remember sitting in a wheelchair just inside the door to the physical therapy room at Harborview Hospital. I sat in that chair seething with every negative emotion I knew. Negativity was all I knew. If only I knew then what I know now.

Because of the anti seizure medication I was on, I didn’t drink at all during the initial year following my crash. I had to feel every negative emotion I had, but after a year, when I quit taking the medication, all that changed. Coincidently, the girl I’d admired since junior high and who I’d been engaged to since shortly before my crash left me. So there I sat, crippled up and alone with no hopes of ever being able to walk or work again.

I paid a lot of taxes as a hot tar roofer, so the disability check I started receiving was enough to cover my expenses if I was careful. Shortly after getting off the anti seizure medication I moved out on my own and started drinking. When I drank, I drank with a goal and a purpose, oblivion! I didn’t want to think or feel or live. I didn’t really want to die, but I for sure didn’t want to live.

I drank so I could quit feeling the resentment, self pity, fear and constant anger that never left me. Fear was my biggest plague. How could I live with a disability? How could I do it? Then came the darkest day in my recollection. I was feeling especially bleak. On days like that, I’d drink, usually until I passed out. The beer would get me so drunk I’d forget about my miserable life, but this time, the drunker I got, the more clearly I saw how pathetic my life was. The beer acted like a microscope. The more I drank, the more clearly I saw how pathetic my life had become. Why should I continue making myself go through this misery? I’m not doing myself or anyone else any good, I might as well be dead. If I was dead, at least I wouldn’t hurt.

It was like I finally made a decision I'd been contemplating since I came out of my coma. Gripping my cane, I staggered out onto the front porch. Gripping both the hand rail on one side of the stairs and my cane in one hand, I carefully staggered down the two stairs to the ground. At the bottom, I kept holding onto the handrail until I felt as stable as I would get.

Once stable, I aim myself at my car parked by the curb and step away from the porch. The cement walk way leading from the porch to the sidewalk going past my house is coming at me like a conveyor belt. I’m gripping my cane and hobbling along like a crippled gerbil on his little wheel. I want to stop and get my balance, but I have to keep walking or I’ll fall for sure. I’m getting closer to my car when I lose my balance and start falling. Lunging the last 10 feet or so with uneven, awkward steps, I drop my cane and fall against my car. Clutching my car with outstretched arm, it takes a minute to get my breath and my balance.

When I can stand without leaning on my car, I pick up my cane then open the door and collapse back into the seat. The car is like an oven so I roll the window down before pulling the door shut and starting the engine.

A neighbor lady hurries over. “hi,” she says, coming up to my car.
I nod.

How are you feeling?”
I shrug.

Suddenly she dives the top half of her body through the open window, grabs my keys out of the ignition then runs behind my car.

Huh? I look in my rearview mirror and see a cop car she must have called before coming out.

What nobody realizes is that I lost my keys that morning and got my spare key then found my keys and put my spare key in my pocket, which I take out and start my car.

The police siren starts wailing as I pull away from the curb.

(In my live shows, and in my book No Limits, I tell the rest of the story.)

First Things First

Driving down the dark hill, I slow as I draw near the unlighted driveway. The AA meetings in the old psych hospital are some of my favorite. Most of the patients are new to the program, and I've already heard the stories the regulars have, so hearing a pearl is rare, but seeing the light finally come on in someone who’s been trying to get sober for years is a fun experience, and being part of it is the best kind of service work.
.
I park my Toyota in the one remaining handicapped parking place and limp in to the meeting. I look forward to meetings. The sense of purpose and camaraderie among people who have been coming for years is always the same. Somewhere the AA Big book says we share a bond like passengers rescued from a sinking ship. I think it’s something you have to feel to understand.

The meeting turns out to be on Step 2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. It seems only a little ironic that a meeting held in a psych ward would be about being restored to sanity, but the fact is that this step applies to all of us. After all, our best thinking put us in places that eventually got us to that meeting.
.
I look around the table at the 15 or so people, 12 of whom are patients, and remember that God frequently shows up in the form of a person who needs help. Helping others is the best way I’ve found to get my mind off my problems. As important as that was my discovery that spiritual principles will solve all my problems.
.
Like is frequently true at that meeting, one of the patients helplessly bemoans the fact that no matter what she does she can’t stay sober. “The problem is Step 2,” she almost wails.
“Other people I know are working the steps and getting sober, but I keep getting hung up on step 2. How am I supposed to believe that a power I can’t see or smell or touch is going to help me stay sober. He’s never done anything else for me. Why would he do this?”
.
I happen to be sitting almost directly across the table from the woman. I remember reading on page 27 of 12 Steps and 12 Traditions Bill W’s experience with Step 2. One reason I like this psych ward meeting is that cross talk is permitted, even encouraged.
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“My name’s Al,” I say. “I’m an alcoholic.”
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“Hi Al,”
.
I pause looking at the wall over her head, trying to remember what Bill W. said. "The steps build on each other,” I say, "so it's important to do them in order, but that involves our being willing. In relation to Step 2, Bill said that he couldn’t say when he finally came to believe in a power greater than himself, but he certainly has that belief now. To acquire it,” he said, “I only had to practice the rest of AA’s program as enthusiastically as possible.”
.
With her hopeful gaze moving between me and the guy chairing the meeting, the woman says,
.
“You mean all I have to do to is do the rest of the Steps and I’ll believe in a higher power?”
.
The guy chairing the meeting smiles and says, “It’s that simple, but it's not easy.”
.
The meeting lets out soon after that. The other regulars and I head out to the parking lot where we stand in the dim light talking about all kinds of stuff before getting in our cars and heading home. Thank you for that woman God, help her to get it, I'm praying as I head back up the dark hill.

Apparently Coffee Drives Seattle

This morning, on my drive to a local coffee stand, where they expect me and have my Mocha waiting, I saw one of the poorest excuses for a driver that I’ve ever seen. I got my drivers license back many years ago, but I will never forget how hopeless I felt when the doctors and psychologist at Harborview Hospital told me my brain damage was so severe that I would never drive again.

Huh?

That might be true in other cities, but watching the driver I saw this morning was proof positive that when it comes do driving in Seattle, brain damage is a requirement!

A car suddenly stalled right in front of me. This was aggravating, but these kinds of things happen, no big deal. What shocked me was the impatient fool who passed the stalled car, on the right hand side. This guy drove his car up the curb, onto the sidewalk!

It wouldn’t have been so bad if about ten kids on their way to school hadn’t had to jump out of the way. One of the kids jumped off his bike then onto the hood of a car parked by the curb. The bike crashed to the ground right in front of the crazy driver who, apparently being nice enough not to want to cause any damage, swerved to avoid the bike. Now the problem was that swerving put him in a position so a long line of cars parked bumper to bumper were between him and the road.

It looked like he would have to stop and back up to get back on the road, but he started driving down the sidewalk! More panic stricken kids on their way to school started yelling and either climbing a fence on one side of the sidewalk or jumping on cars on the other side.

You’d think he would have slowed down, but he sped up! At the end of the block is a coffee stand. The crazy driver screeched to a stop in the handicapped parking stall and went in to get his waiting Mocha.