Learning to Live With Real Pain

Up until 1986, I never knew any kind of physical pain and suffering. I was a physically active person, enjoying pick up basketball games; touch football; and softball. I was even an adult basketball league referee. That was all about to change during my week long training in LA. I had just started my first job with the State of California Department of Vocational Rehabilitation in August, and the first training class I was assigned to attend was in Los Angeles at a hotel a few blocks from LA International. The training included 5 days of intensive coursework regarding the physical anatomy and subsequent disabilities of humans. It was an interesting, but academically demanding course that would acquaint, train and equip new Rehab Counselors with a medical understanding about the human body, and how different chronic illnesses and injuries can permanently result in unexpected and unwanted traumatic changes in the life's of people. It just so happens that on the third day of the week long class, I was going to enter the world of disability in the first-person. To make this story short and to the point, I slipped and fell in the shower/bathtub that fateful morning, and that one accident resulted in a major injury to my lower back. This incident became the focal point in my life of pain and suffering. It changed my life on a forever basis. The injury, and its hold on my life would change everything about me not for just a short time, but forever. After five years of ever increasing pain and the eventual loss of feeling in my lower extremities, I had to undergo nearly 10 hours of back surgery and spinal fusion that would make things even worse than they were before I had this emergency surgery to keep me from being permanently incapacitated and paralysed. I can honestly say that maybe the paralyses would have been the easier route to travel, because the pain I've encountered since my slip-and-fall has only become more of an albatross than life itself. It resulted in my being forced to retire from state service in December 2000, and the pain and suffering; coupled with the financial losses made me a bitter and angry person for many years. Thus my days of living with Thorns had its birth in a LA hotel, at a training seminar that was supposed to train and equip me with the tools I'd need to help people through their emotional losses as a result of accidents and sickness. This is "Irony" at its best.