As Sure As Hell

Yesterday was discouraging as far as my shoulder getting better. Maybe I was already discouraged from Thursday when I went for a doctor's evaluation to determine if I’m eligible for disability. The doctor examining me said I’d hear in a few weeks. We need the income, but I’m not looking forward to being officially classified as disabled.

And then working out the other day I think I pulled a muscle in my back, trying with both arms to lift all of sixty pounds over my head on a biangular shoulder press. If the right shoulder is getting better, it is a very slow process. I’ve got an appointment with my occupational therapist to look at my shoulder to see if it's getting better.

I might have a rotator cuff tear. If I do, it means an operation, which they won’t do until July because they don’t want to take me off aspirin, which I’m taking as a blood thinner to prevent another stroke. They said an operation would take the shoulder out for six months. This would reduce me to typing with my left hand, at least for a while. A whole new level of hunt and peck.

I have my moments of discouragement. I don’t know how people with out faith get through things like this. I said discouragement and not depression. Depression is a state of hopelessness. I spent much of my life depressed, hoping to get through it without it sucking much more than it already did. It’s a bad place to live.

I’ve been rather amazed at my reaction to having a stroke. I've felt all the things you would imagine, especially during the first three days when I got progressively worse and the head neurologist started using words an phrases like major stroke, paralysis, and possible ongoing event. These are not heartening terms. On the forth day I stopped getting worse. After about a week I was very excited when I moved my big toe. What amazed me through it all, I was never without hope, even on that forth day when I told my wife, Jackie, maybe I might not get any better.

We both are people of strong faith. Life gives tests. Jackie has MS. She is familiar with life’s tests. Strange as it may seem, all through the events surrounding my stroke, along with the fear and discouragement, tears and anger, there has also been an excitement about what is to come. My wife and I believe in a God of restoration. I have been profoundly broken and with all the shitty stuff that goes along with that, I am looking forward to who I will be when my God puts me back together. I don’t know what that will look like and the fear of moving into that unknown is not insignificant.

In the old days, before my God called and took hold of me, along with the depression, I lived with a soul deadening boredom of the monotony of self-loathing. Now I definitely still need improvement, but I sure as hell aint bored anymore.