MY ACCIDENT
JOURNALS
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These are my Journals, which I wrote for assignments, in a communication at the
N.S.C.C. in Truro.
My thought
afterwards was, that maybe I wrote these journal more for me, rather than the
teacher,,,
I have been
sooooooooo thankful that the teach gave us our choice on what to write about.
I hope that
you will gain insight on the turmoil that my God has brought me through,
as well as
enjoy reading these “life since the accident” journals, as much as enjoyed
writing them.
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(1)
Fight for Life
Joe Lynch
Communications II
Ray Bates
January 11, 2001
Ever since
my accident on June of 1996, I have been in a fight for life, the life I used
to have. I guess it is true when they say, that you don’t appreciate something
until it is gone. I did not appreciate all the things I took for granted, like
independence and self-sufficiency, until I lost them. I hope you will learn
this lesson I don’t bore you with the story I will tell you about my case.I was
driving home from Halifax on theTrans Canada Highway 102, at 3 am one morning
in June of 1996. I fell asleep at the wheel, and was in an automobile accident.
I lost all memory of the accident, including six months befor and after, so you
will have to excuse the lack of details. The truck flipped over end for end a
few times, and I had to be cut from the truck. I died once in the ambulance,
and then again at the hospital, thankfully they brought me back both times.
After this they thought I was brain dead., then only brain damaged and not
trainable, and finally trainable. I guess I had to prove most of their predictions
wrong by passing courses at college. It was not the first time I proved them
wrong though, and hopefully not the last. They said that my left hand, after
being clenched in a fist for 2 years, would not come back. It is an ongoing
process, but I have must of the use of it, and I plan on full use eventually.I
had to get the doctor to change my eating menu, from ground to solids, and from
gels to liquids. I even had to lean to learn to write my name. Pretty bad,
considering I was once a pretty good artist. Now I have a rough time writing
even a sentence. That is just another thing I will have to fight with, if I
ever want to even write again, let alone draw and pant. I’ve still had to prove
myself though, it seems like almost every day. I had to prove that I was
responsible enough to handle self-meds. I managed to get off of the medications
I did not absolutely need, like painkillers and anti-depressants. I had to get
my doctor to allow me to sign myself out. I guess that is something I will have
to live with the rest of my life on earth.
(2)
Mobility
Joe Lynch
Communications
II (A)
Ray Bates
January 29,
2001
Mobility
use to be no problem for me, I usually ran instead of walked. My modes of
mobility use to be many: walk, run, bicycle, motorbike, snowmobile, rx7 sports
car, 4x4 ¾ ton truck with plow, and 2 1952 Willies army jeeps. Now, I find
myself confined to driving something with a lot less horsepower, a wheelchair.
First off, I drove a one-arm drive, then an old electric wheelchair, and now an
almost new Quickie P200 electric wheelchair. Eventually, I would like to
improve my left hand and arm, and get use to a regular wheelchair, to improve
on my upper body strength and dexterity.I find I can’t always go where I want
to, mostly because of the weather: rain, snow, cold, and yes, even darkness.
I’ve also discovered that most of the sidewalks do not have ramps at
intersections, causing wheelchairs to go to the nearest driveway to get out on
the road, then cross the road, when there is a break in the traffic, and go up
another driveway on the other side. This is one thing I’ve thought about
writing to the town about, but I figure they have enough people complaining
about the streets, let alone the sidewalks. Besides, I heard that maybe they
are waiting for the natural gas lines to go in before repaving the roads and
fixing the sidewalks, but who knows how long that will take.Eventually, I hope
to be back driving, one of my 1952 army jeeps, but I will have to improve my
strength, to transfer myself from wheelchair to jeep and back. They now have
hand control devices for gas, brakes, and even clutch, for those like me, that
prefer a standard. Figuring out how to get myself into and out of the jeep was
not a problem, with the roll bars and a couple of straps; I should be able to
pull myself up into and out of the drivers seat. But I still have not figure
out how to load and unload the wheelchair when I’m in the jeep. Just another
challenge, I know of others that manage to do it, so I should be able to, with
practice. Motorcycles are out of the question, because I could not lean, with
my lack of back or stomach muscles, or should I say, control of the muscles. I
still want to try driving a snowmobile though. They have hand controls built in
already, and as for the back muscles, I do not have to lean, witch means I
could just have a back mounted onto the seat, and straps to hold me from
falling forward or sideways. The only other downfall is the cold, because I
cannot feel how cold my legs and feet get, I would have to only go out on mild
days. It would also be nice to have a way to check the temperature of my legs
and feet, a thermometer might work, as long as I could see the gauge. Please
excuse my tendency to write about subjects related to my accident four years ago.
I tend to dwell on the difficulties one has as a disabled person, and the
methods one has to use to overcome them. I tend to prefer to write about things
that I think about a lot, and being human, I think about what I have lost. I
could and will, write about something else, just tell me next class, or email
me.
(3)
Brain
Damaged
Joe Lynch
February
19, 2001
The
accident that caused a break in my spin, and left me paralyzed, also caused a
closed head injury, which is just a technical way of saying that I took a hard
hit on the head. The knock to the brain affected a lot more than my brain power
though. It had a serious affect on the control I had of my body.Tone is the
affect that occurs when you’re not using mussels for a long period of time, and
they tighten up on you. They said it has a lot to do with the brain, as you
loose the ability to use something, if you don’t keep practicing. But I think
it has more to do with the mussels and tendons shortening up. It happened to my
left hand and arm, because that I had the hand caught up in the frame of the
truck, and from the scares on it, I think it was in bad shape. I heard that it
hurt so much to use it, that I refused to let them do any physiotherapy on it,
which would have lessened the tone. Since then I have been on a steady struggle
to get the use of the left hand and arm back. They say I will never get full
use of it back, but I have already gone further than they thought I could, so I
guess they don’t know everything.. Clonis is close to the opposite from tone,
it is when you have involuntary movement of a mussel that, because of nerve
damage in my case, you cant control. It happens in such a way so that it causes
the limb to vibrate or jump continuously, until you apply pressure to it, in a
certain way. Every shake has it’s own special way to remedy, usually with
applying pressure in a certain way, which you have to learn, or go around with
a part of your body vibrating. One of the medicines I take, is to relieve the
shakes, I think it is called Hytrin. I also had a lot of problems with how my
mind works, or should I say, does not work. There was a lot, and still is a lot
of short-term memory loss problems, which is the remembering of the things you
just learned, which does not help much with school. Thankfully, most of my
long-term memory, of things that happened in my past, was not affected by the
damage. Unfortunately it was not untouched by the incident, for one thing, I
have no long-term memory of the accident, not of 6 months before or 6 months
after. They are a blank to me, I guess that is lucky in some ways, I do not
remember how much of a big pain I was to the people who were only trying to
help me.The memory of faces that I meet is still “up to snuff”, I never seem to
forget a face, but the memory of names has gotten worse. It use to be, that
even though I might not remember a guy’s name that I just met, I could always
remember a girls first and last name, as well as her phone number. Now I have a
hard time remembering even the first name of a girl, no matter how nice or good
looking she is, I definitely forget her likes, dislikes, and age. Comprehension
is not what it use to be either, instead of catching on to things right away, I
now have to read them two or three times. I realize that I don’t have the
brainpower I use to have, not that it was much then, but I notice the decrease
in my thought process. I realize I will probably never, not in this mortal
body, here on earth, get back my brain processing power, and I will just have
to deal with that. I still like math and science, because of the logic and
absolutes, and I still like to learn new things, I guess I will just have to
work at them harder now. So I guess, in a sick and sort of strange way, there
is one good thing about what happened in the accident, I now have a legitimate
excuse, for doing all the dumb things I tended to do, and still do, I seriously
am brain damaged. On a more serious tone, there are definite advantages to
being disabled, the government pays for your room and board, and they even pay
for you to go back to school. I hope to gain an education that can get me back
into the working class, so I can return to paying into taxes, instead of taking
out from them.
(4)
Hunger
Joe Lynch
Communications
II (CISN A)
Ray Bates
February
26, 2001
You would
think that everybody likes to eat, but that’s not true. There are people like
me, who don’t like to eat. It’s part of having a brain injury, it happens to a
lot of people that have a serious hit on the head, or at least that is what I
have been told. Seriously, I don’t feel hunger any more, don’t enjoy eating,
and even would much rather go without eating, but that is not possible. It sure
takes a lot out of life, when you don’t enjoy eating. I guess it’s true what
they say about people not appreciating what they have, till it’s gone. Missing
hunger is something that kind of sounds like a good thing, at first, with the
entire problem with weight gain these days. It kind of makes me feel foolish to
want to feel hunger, with all the people in this world that have to live with
the feeling of hunger every day, because of lack of food. But that still does
not diminish my wishing I could have that feeling of having your mouth water at
the site of something you really enjoy eating.It may sound like a lie, but I
never feel hunger, and have not been hungry for almost 5 years, since the
accident. Unfortunately it is not just the lack of hunger; I don’t like to eat
any more, not even the foods I use to enjoy a great deal. It even makes me feel
sick, every bite I take, I have to choke it down quickly or I fell like
throwing up. If I take small bites it is easier keep down, also if I drink a
food supplement, they don’t tend to bother me very much. The good news is I
don’t have a problem with weight gaining; I actually have a problem with weight
loss. It use to be my weight was 185 pounds when I was my heaviest, now I just
keep loosing more weight, the least weight I’ve been since the accident is 143
pounds. I now try to keep my weight up at about 155 pounds.The doctor has tried
me on different medications to help increase my appetite and stop the sick
feeling, but none have worked well. I still take multivitamins for appetite and
Zantac to help the sick feeling, without much success though. The only medication
I know of that can both increase your appetite and ease you nausea, is a common
street drug known as pot, or marijuana. But even if I could find a doctor to
prescribe it for me, I do not want to go around stoned all the time. It would
not help my social life, and I think would probably not add to my learning
abilities at school. So I guess I will just have to live with this
inconvenience until someone comes up with a solution, either that or they
design a marijuana plant that has the effects I want, without the “stoned”
feeling.
(5)
Faith
Joe Lynch
Communications II (CISN A)
Ray Bates
March 19, 2001
Most people, who are candid, ask me how I handle living with my disability,
especially with all the loss I’ve been through. Loss of movement of legs, loss
of feeling below the waist, and the loss of bladder and bowl control, things
that are part of being paralyzed. Loss of short-term memory, higher thought
process, and even the ability to put things into words so there understood,
things that are part of having a serious head injury. Well I can only think of
one thing that has helped me keep going with a healthy attitude through it all,
faith in God, Jesus Christ to be exact.
Coming to realize that becoming born again was the most important thing that
happened in my life. It happened about ten years ago, with everything going my
way, a nice wife, a great job, great friends with similar likes, and a great
family. I guess I felt that there was something missing, more to life than what
I had. I guess I was looking for the big picture. What ever it was, it had a
hold on me, so that I, or anybody else could not shake it off. Being the
scientist at heart, I was determined to discover something that tied everything
together, and gave a purpose to everything. I don’t think I ever really
believed in the big bag theory, and chance, or evolution.
I first came to know God, Jesus Christ, when I, like many others, was
interested in knowing the future, and wondered if people really could know the
future. I read quite a few books on the subject, with no luck. Then I found the
book called “Armageddon” by Grant Jeffrey, and it stated that only God could
tell the future, which made sense to me. But which god, there are so many out
there in the world. That is when he went into a ton of already fulfilled
prophecies, which had been proven right. Of course, being the skeptic I was, I
thought, “this could not be right”, and tried my hardest to find a flaw, a
chink in the armor. I think I fought it for weeks, before coming to the
realization that everything the author was saying was truthful. The bible could
tell the future, and if so, the only reasonable explanation, was it had to be
written by God.
It was the prophecy about when the Jewish savior was supposed to enter the city
or Jerusalem, which stuck in my mind. From hundreds of years before Jesus was
born, that a profit named Zechariah (Zech 9:9), wrote about how the savior
would enter the city, riding on a donkey. Daniel even predicted the exact day
this was going to happen (Dan.9:25). I had to do sum calculations, but the
prophecy work out, not just to the year or month, but to the exact day. Of
course I thought about how that someone could have wrote it, after the incident
happened, and just said that it was written before. But that was proven to not
be the case, since the scrolls were found, and dated as being BC, in Israel in
1948. These books were almost exactly the same as the ones found in the bible,
that almost every North American has, tucked away somewhere in their home.
I thought, that if there is really a God, and He wanted us to get to know him,
he would have left something, like road signs, that would point us in His
direction. Prophecy has got to be the best, most attention grabbing sign I know
of, to point us to the one that
He wrote, and He wants us to follow. How could God judge us, on doing something
that was wrong in his eyes, and was not written in the bible, or rulebook?
Prophecy has made me believe in the God of the bible is the true God. I now
believe that the Holy Bible is entirely the true word of God.
Coming to knowledge of God, makes things seem a lot different. When people seem
to cheat fate, and get away with things, it does not bother me as much now, I
know they will eventually have to pay. And likewise with nice people, that
never seem to get ahead, somebody is watching. I feel that I have a grasp of
the big picture now. I will get a new body, which is not paralyzed. I will get
to know everything about everything I want to, and I will live forever,
hopefully with Jesus. I now wait for the rapture, “come up hither” of
revelation 4:1. I only wish I could tell everyone else what I know, and have
them not look at me strangely. God does win in the end, it all makes a lot more
sense now, and I think I have grasp on “the big picture” now.
Here are
some of the things I have come to believe:
- The end of the world is a mistranslation; it is supposed to be end of age.
- The world will never end (I cannot remember the passages, but there are a
few)
- Bible code has history written down in advance
- Everybody lives for ever, GOD don’t make no crap
- Waiting for my new body
- The bible is the only truth
- Bible prophecy is always right, always the truth
- The Bible has everything everyone will ever do, written down in code
- We are made in His image: Father, Son, Holy Spirit = mind, body, soul
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(6)
Reflex
Joe Lynch
Communications II (A)
Ray Bates
February 26, 2001
I have to admit, these journals have been more useful than I thought they
would, but then I did not think of them as much more than assignments. I have
since come to realize that they are also a written copy of my thoughts, at this
point and time in my life, which is probably the most difficult and confusing
time I have gone through in all my life, so far. I have already found them
useful, in keeping a record of and reminding me of how far I’ve come so far,
where I now stand, and how far I have yet to go.
This course has proven to be more than just an English class, which I never
liked much anyway. I guess it was because I found it hard to learn, with some
of the spelling and the grammar irregularities. It did not seem very logical,
and tended to like logic. I always found it difficult to remember names and
figures, because they were just stray facts, with no ideas behind them. Ideas
are things you usually had to think about a few times to get them straight,
which is helpful in memorization, and I need all the help I can get.
The practice I have gotten with learning how to design and organize the
journals, has helped also. I luckily got a tutor for communications one an two,
he has been a great help with getting it put down on paper in the correct. The
two communications courses I have taken have, most importantly, helped my
learning how to put my words in writing, in ways that are more easily
understood. This is an important tool, when you are like me, and have a hard time
talking to people. At least when you are writing something down, you can get a
chance to look at your words, go back and edit them as many times as you need.
This is different than speech, where once it is out, it cannot be taken back. I
guess I like writing better than talking because I cannot always think of
things in ways that are easily expressed in words. I guess I do not have the
skill or training to convert the message into discernable language on the fly.
Then there is this presentation, in which I have to teach something to the rest
of the class. It makes me very nervous to think about having to get up in front
of the class and read my speech. I say read because, although I know the stuff,
I don’t think I can remember how to word it, and what order to put it together,
so I will have to read it. I guess I should just think of it as a training
exercise for communicating with others, which I know that I need help in. I
never thought much about teaching as a profession, although I can see how it
could be a definite asset with most of the jobs out there.
In conclusion, I think that the communications courses in general, and the
journals in specific, have been a definite asset to my CISN program, as well as
me. It has not only helped me improve my writing skills, which were, and
probably still are lacking. Going back to school was one of the smartest things
I have done in quite a while. It not only gets me away from the stagnant place
of my residence, a nursing home, but also gives me a chance to make new
friends. Getting back out in the community feels great, after being in the
hospital environment for 3 years. I will definitely look forward to next year,
with the new courses and classmates.