State of the corpus

 So, this is not going to be easy.

Over 20 years ago, I was crushed by a truck.

I came out of it a paraplegic with a plate bolted to my neck C/4-C/5, rods bolted to my spine T/11-T12, a femur that was blown into over 25 pieces which got a full length titanium rod, I broke a ton of my ribs posterior (all of this is IIRC) one of which punctured my lung, I tore my liver almost in 1/2, wedge fractured my kidneys, bruised my spleen and adrenal glands, and tore my ureter, which would go on to fill my peritoneal cavity with 1.5 liters of septic urine damn near killing me a second time with a huge incision and following infections after I came out of a 10-day coma totally paralyzed head to toe never to walk unassisted again.

There was a whole laundry list of what would have been major injuries had they happened alone, like missing pieces of flesh and I believe they sewed on one of my eyelids or something, it's all pretty foggy and overwhelming.

Over the next 15 years I ran the total gamut of injuries mostly due to over use and wheelchair accidents among which I lost my gall bladder, my eyes had turned yellow, time to go, wrecked a truck along the way and jacked up my right shoulder, got that going again, rolled on until 2020 when one day I threw a 100% blockage heart attack aka CABG / which led to an immediate open heart surgery and triple bypass, and then in order for my sternum to heal from being cut in 1/2, I had to lie on my back, arms at my side, unmoving for 12 weeks, 1/4 of a calendar year, until just like the initial trauma I had wasted away to a skeleton, and it took me almost two years to get "better" from that, which of course you never do, it's considered palliative care, just kicking the ball down the road as it were.

Then, in 2023 I wrecked my wheelchair on a stone step and broke my sacrum, which led to spending the majority of my time laying on my side for damn near two years, and which I need semi-frequent steroid injections into my spine.

Fast forward to today.

I have been living in chronic pain for two decades.

I am a paraplegic.

I am on a timer as far as how long my heart will continue to beat and it's not that long really.

Bottom to top report:

I have agonizing neuropathic pain in my feet, the left is not that bad but the right can be terrible, like, stop you from doing anything at all terrible, it's like a cheese grader against your skin, bugs crawling, or, if you ever experienced it, like fresh road rash from my feet all up to my ass & belt line, it is always there to some extent and dictates my life.

My left leg works maybe 10% on a good day, my right is useless except for pain, pain is it's only proprioception as to where it's at at all, it's almost impossible for me to wear shoes most days and if I have a choice I never will again, it sets off the pain bad.

Not only does it hurt and not listen, but worse of all, the right does what it wants.

it kicks, twitches, flops like a flipper, and get hurt a lot as it just does what it want when it wants to and that just sets of the nerve pain.

I never sleep well.

Almost never - like, it's an event if I do.

I am always tired.

After they totally re-built my ureter with a stint and it got working again, I can pee (yay!) but when I got pee, I gotta pee.

Low on my problem scale, if you can imagine.

Now we get to my hips.

I have no idea what is actually wrong with my hips, but I have needed steroid injections in them as well, they feel like someone is trying to pry them apart with a screwdriver, it can be absolutely excruciating.

This plays into my psoas muscles, they are always tight as can be and hurt really bad, which mirrors the sciatica that I have on the back, which both blends into and sets off the neuropathic pain which then sets off spasms, it's an awful cycle.

My hips play into my sacrum which I broke and never addressed really, the next two vertebrae (L1&L2) need to be fused with rods (my doctors says) as the discs are totally blown, it's bone on bone, and it's been laying me out for years now, but I'll try to keep that going with injections into my spine for as long as I can as I have had so many surgeries and they all take a year to heal from, minimum.

Man, this one HURTS.

My upper spinal fusions (C4-C5 and T11-T12) are getting pretty damn old, and are growing on to their neighbors with bone and gristle and who knows what, which brings us to my femur, which is turning my quad muscle into bone, a process called heterotopic ossification which is not fun at all and is yes, painful.

My internal organs are.........as good as modern medicine and drugs can keep them at the moment, my digestion sucks and I don't eat much because of it, sitting is bad for you, I have adenomas on my adrenals but I'm ignoring that for now.

All my ribs have been jacked from one thing or another over all these years, they do all kinds of things, so aren't rally attached very well, and when they cracked my chest it wreaked havoc with my AC joint and my stereo-clavicular one as well.

I didn't even know I had those until they hurt.

The wires they wrapped around my sternum (Five? seven?) and the bolted-on Sterna-loc closure are really painful, grating against the backside of my skin whenever I ride my bike and growing bone over all it's neighbors.

Heart.......well, I'm five years into what's at best a 20 year sentence, I've got a stress test in April.

My lungs are not as efficient as they once were, I get winded, I need breaks, I like to rest in the shade.

My Arms.

My arms are shot.

I have a ton of arthritis in my shoulders, AC joint, elbows, wrists really bad, they are kind of fusing it feels like, my thumbs have three areas of pain each, the base with the wrist, the main joint, and the one by the nail, and the rest of my fingers are only marginally better.

I think (know) my rotator cuffs are bad, they get real sore, I baby them and don't use crutches much at all anymore, too painful.

Sitting.

You can only imagine what this has done by the sheer volume.

My neck barely rotates on my shoulder much at all, I always say if you want to hide anything from me, just put it behind me, and it's often very sore.

My damn teeth are worn out, and have been causing me much grief and I just plain wore them out, I did get to eat a lot of good things in life but I ate a lot of sand with it growing up in the SW.

My ears have been really problematic, I need them cleaned 2x a year or they get infections.

Eyeballs, old, sense of smell, fading I think........hair white or gone.

My immune system is certainly not what it used to be, I get sick readily.

There's more, too.

But this should get the gist of it across.