Hell of a year

Posted by stumpysblog

Posted: September 6, 2009 - 7:24 am

Comments (0) |

It's all brought back around full circle. I was working on my bow last night in the garage, making some last minute adjustments for a bowhunt in two weeks. Letting down from full draw my string loop popped. It sounded like someone fired off a 22 in the room. It's a good thing that I had just installed a string stop because I think the limbs would have exploded in my face with out it.

About a year ago I was still stuck in the hospital, three months in the hospital for a two week operation, thanks to a wonderfull staff infection called MRSA.

I mentioned the hunt following the hospital stay and a bought with pneumonia after I got out of the hospital. You also know about the passing of my little brother and the time we spent in Minnesota.

Since my brothers passing my Moms health has slipped rapidly downhill. We spent about a month on emergency leave this last summer in Minnesota with her in the hospital. She is now confined to a wheelchair, and thanks to some good neighbors, she is able to leave the house. They had an old fashioned building party to make a wheelchair ramp at her home. Freinds from my brothers work, my moms work, and neighbors came together for the weekend to landscape, pour concrete, and build the ramp for her.

We found out recently that my youngest sister may have a type of thyroid cancer. Twenty-six years old! She also found out that she was being laid off the same day!

My body has been playing tricks on me as well. I am still undergoing a bunch of tests. We can't seem to figure what is going on. After a few months, we have ruled out the muscle ripping out of the attachments in my stump. That is good news, but we are looking into possible nerve issues, bone infection, and bone degeneration in the limb.

Some other unrelated tests have turned up that I have carpal tunnel in both wrists, which explains the sudden pain and ocasional dropping of things.

Over the last few weeks I have been going through several types of radioactive bone scans. The first turned up nothing so they opted to do an Indium bone scan. They draw a bunch of blood, seperate the white blood cells, mix them with a type of radioactive material and re-inject them again. After 24 hours we go back in for a bunch of pictures. They found something, but we don't know what it is yet. They did the regular pics, but because of the results, I had to go back in for a full body 3D shot that took several hours. I should find out something this Wednsday.

Trying to stay optomistic. I went in to get a bone density scan to see if my bone was able to take the beating of a running leg. I hade a density scan just over two years ago before we came back to Alaska. Aparently I have the hip of a 90 year old. I have osteoporosis and my hip is "extremely" prone to fracture. That may explain some of the recent pain. I had just written that off due to the fact that I've had some recent falls combined with the fact that I am trying to get off my meds by gradually cutting the doses down.

Who knows, at this point I feels like my body is just gradually falling apart.

I am currently going through the med board process. I am also re-evaluating the option of staying in the military. The first priority is that we all come back to Alaska to stay. I really can't stand the DC area!

We applied to have a foundation called Homes for Our Troops build a home for us. We'll see, I applied a few weeks ago and who knows how long that takes. It is an all volunteer group who gets folks to volunteer time and materials to build disabled vets homes to help with some of the transition and financial issues relating to being wounded and transitioning back into civilian life. Who knows, at this time they have never put together a build in Alaska. We're keeping our fingers crossed.

I've got to get going for now, I need to find a Mathews dealer to see if they have a replacement cam for my Switchback. I really miss Bob at Last Frontier!

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