The Long, White WAIT

It is the day after Christmas 2015 and I so want to be able to write regularly again. It seems that with the trauma of the last 3 years went my ability to concentrate my thoughts enough to write coherent sentences, to coordinate and process my thoughts. It bothers me because there was a time that it was an important part of my life...sharing my self, my thoughts and feelings with others. I know it was healthy and frankly it just felt good to vent that stuff in a positive and creative way.

So much of my life these days seems to be merely surviving...just hanging on from day to day with little to nothing to look forward to except the continuous adversity and accompanying suffering. Pain has become much to familiar a companion and I swear through the corner of my minds eye....my second sight senses HIM stalking me....threatening me in the menacing manner that only DEATH has perfected. It is a continual Mind Fuck and I cannot out-run it any more. 

Strange that in real life I no longer have the ability to run...it is representative of all the limitations I bear these days. I cannot fly...no longer do I feel the strength to fight so naturally I just....WAIT...WAIT...WAIT. And I am no more patient a man today then I ever was....

Painting: Caspar David Friedrich - Cairn In Snow (1807)

Oh YEA Alice....He is ALIVE!

I am truly alive my friends. I often wonder how I've survived these last 30 months or so. Really I do...Why is that you may wonder? Because there were quite a few moments where my continued existence seemed more and more unlikely.

I was a very sick fellow...the infection had literally taken over my body and would not relent no matter how many doses of Anti-Biotic I consumed or took through IV. I survived nearly 30 surgeries...60 some days in the hospital...nearly 2 years of being unable to walk properly or not at all.

No I do have that ability but only with the help of a "below the knee" prosthetic.

I fell in a fluke accident in February of 2013 and severely broke my right ankle resulting in emergency surgery the following day. Shortly there-after it became infected and the next nearly three years have been a total and complete nightmare from HELL. The leg was amputated in November 2014 followed by more infection and over 15 surgeries and a months worth of hospital stays in 7-9 day increments.

Today I have had my prosthetic for almost 2 months and it is great...a great, painful, intense, terribly difficult pain-in-the-ASS but I am happily grateful for the mobility none-the-less.

I will do my best to re-connect with the world and continue to post. I really would like to share this story in all the detail....but it will be hard. This my friends was and continues to be BRUTAL. 

I would be lying if I did not admit that the experience has changed me...hardened me, molded me and I will never be the same. I literally have altered my beliefs about the universe and the CREATOR because of it.

Frankly my perception and opinion of my fellow human beings has changed as well...and for the most part I was humiliated, hurt and disappointed by what I experienced.

One or two close friends rose to the occasion and helped to pull me through...I never would have survived without K-Sue. She was and is my angel...my everything and she never left my side no matter how vicious life became...She is a hard-core Human Being and a real life saver.

I learned many a hard lesson about what caring for another human being truly meant.I was unprepared and found that my beliefs were inadequate to deal with the intense, terrible reality that confronted me.I hope I have changed and am a better person for it today.

I discovered the hard truth that I was using "I'm praying for you" to get out of actually being there for people who were hurting. It was an excuse to avoid showing up for real and as a result I came to totally mistrust people who were always quick to say they'd pray for me but then I never heard from them.

I will try and elaborate more thoroughly in regular posts but I suspect I no longer believe what I thought I believed. Hellish experiences

and endless, never-relenting horror will do that to a person.

So Hello friends, the few who are still around....I am looking forward to joining the world again!

"Leg THANG"

Well hello there my dear friends. I am so sorry that these posts are so infrequent these days. I wish I had a better reason for this but with the "Leg THING" and subsequent infections and hospitalizations I simply do not have the strength or desire to write.

Two weeks ago I had surgeries number 14 and 15 for this damn leg, all since I broke my right ankle in February of 2013. I spent another 8 days in the hospital. I basically had the leg re-amputated to remove the infected bone and clean up the end of the stump.

We are tentatively looking at 6-8 weeks and then I could be walking in a prosthesis but frankly I am not that optimistic at the moment. All I can say about that is I know this body now and what feels like what...things do not feel right.

It hurts to much, is too swollen and isn't responding well to the latest anti-biotic (which I been on a half-dozen times before.) But I don't see the doc until this coming Tuesday so we will see.

Thats as far as I am going to go this time around.I am really hurting...SOUL PAIN I call it. I am tired, weary, physically I am in agony more often then not and I cannot walk without crutches or a walker going on 6 months now with little noticeable change or HOPE in sight.

I want to feel good about this latest procedure and stay positive but honestly I am not really capable. I've hung tough for a long F-ing time but I am coming to the end of my endurance...I have limits too I suppose.

I will try to continue to post as usual on this Blog but I am reluctant to do so right now because Shell Shock is supposed to be  about my life and frankly....My life is brutal right now and most people do not care about it or want to hear it. 

I'm not trying to be dramatic just honest. It's just a fact that folks don't want to read negative stuff online. They have troubles of their own. 

Thank all of you for your support...I'll continue to hold on and hang in there.

The PIPER Has Come To JOIN US

Spinning violently around emotionally should be old hat for me by now but it is not. No matter how one prepares themselves for a tough time, for pain, for the unexpected, for death...etc, it really does not lesson the impact of such trauma. 

I no longer fully feel human. I'm elastic flesh and bone...I am a scientific experiment gone terribly wrong...I am no longer living in the world of others. My life view has compressed and my focus has narrowed toward just surviving each day. That is  all I see, all I feel...ALL I AM. I am an ANIMAL....and I am beginning to feel dangerous.

I don't know "normal"...I have no clue what IT or "pain free" even means and I suspect that it is a colossal lie. Everyone hurts in this world all the time in some particular way: physical, emotional, psychological or spiritually. And No one is truly "Normal". To deny this simple fact is disingenuous....OK, it is LYING a Majestic Lie perpetuated by the CLOWNS who run the show. And frankly lying to oneself IS DANGEROUS because the odds are the PIPER will come to collect...one way or another. And the cost is extraordinarily HIGH.One's dignity, Trampled Under-Foot.

I am not saying that this life is wretched...NO, far from it. Beauty soars unchecked but it isn't FREE. Because the storms WILL set in and CHAOS will RULE DIVINE, with all of it's pain, fear and uncertainty running amok. A Dark Calvary that  compels one to fight...or NOT. Play or Quit. Live or DIE.

I choose to LIVE...

Painting: Pablo Picasso "BLUE NUDE"

Staring Into The SHADOWS...Looking For Light

Home again after another week-long stint in the hospital and I admit that I am not really sure how I feel about all of this. The feelings change like sand shifting in the wind. In a way...this latest hospitalization was different then the other recent trips to the land of Hand Sanitizer and Disinfectant. 

I actually went in not because I was sick or something had gone awry, like all the other trips...no I chose to go have a skin graft to the end of my stump. This visit was a major step in the quest to get into a prosthetic and walk again.

I have learned through hard life experience not to get too up or too down about stuff....especially when recovering from a major injury/illness like mine. Of course that is much easier said then done. But things can change so drastically and so quickly that one must hold back to a degree to protect oneself. That is not to say that I am not excited about finally making some progress here because I am. This is certainly a step in the right direction and I am beginning to feel more hopeful about the future.

It has been a fight at times to see the brighter side of an amputation and multiple infections but to survive one must search for what is often only a sliver of light and hold on tight when you discover it. 

It's all Quite Hilarious...Except When you're Crying.

Fighter....I am a Fighter, I FIGHT! Isn't that so? I should hang on, I should continue the fight...RIGHT!?

Quite frankly that is what this life is all about...fighting. Fighting for what you believe in, fighting to be one's best, fighting to divide and conquer, fighting one's way to the top, fighting for your rights....hell, some even fight for their right to die.

After my suicide attempt in 2006 and subsequent ongoing recovery from alcohol and drug addiction. And the daily battle in my head and my heart against the demonic nightmare of sexual assault as a young boy...that I realized that the word FIGHT had taken on an entirely new meaning for me.I learned that staying in the fight, as it were was no cliche, it wasn't a joke.

I figured out then and there that one must persevere, push on, hang together and fight whatever enemy we face at that moment: Be it illness, oppression or even those once forbidden memories that haunt us until the day we die..

Now I am fighting a completely different kind of fight...I am now fighting an unforgiving illness that to date has already cost me two years of my life, every dollar and asset I ever owned and lastly...my right leg, below the knee.

It seems from my perspective that this nightmare shall never end. It was then I realized that I am no longer Thom, no longer the person I always thought I was...nope now I am simply a BKA (Below the Knee Amputation). I'll own that title from now on...with pride and determination.

And considering all I have been through and witnessed with the suicide attempt, subsequent coma and drug/alcohol addiction...it is this latest fight, believe it or not that frightens me the most...It frightens me to my very core of my being.

I truly know the meaning of powerlessness...of having NO control over the things that are killing me from the inside out. It would be easy, I could see now for a person who suffers so to give in...to surrender to it...to quit. I would be less then honest if I said those thoughts had not entered my mind from time to time.

But I cannot, will not EVER give in. Why, you ask, why not just float downstream into a drug-laced oblivion and let the madness of disease eat me alive? Isn't that the natural way of things: We are BORN/Then we DIE.

Because their were two people in my life, both woman who set the bar so high when it came to fighting their illness (in both cases cancer) with such ferocity, dignity and fervor that I cold never soil my memories of them and our friendships but not fighting back against my own medical monsters.

Christy was just 24 when she died back in the mid 1990's, after several lengthy battles with Cancer. She was my friend and I will never forget those days...the who notion of her dying was so incredibly impossible at the time. Yet die she did. We just could not accept that she was gone from our world.

 The other woman is A*****. Odlly enough I have never seen nor met her in person and probably never will. She is still very much alive and fighting her war against this evil and unforgiving pestilence called Cancer. We met through a mutual FaceBook Friend. I was drawn by her passion, her dignity and absolute positive determination in the face of such terrible odds as her disease progresses. I witness this only through Facebook posts, her own and when she is physically unable,those of her friends. Even as a detached witness...her response to her long, difficult fight humbles me to the very depths of my soul.

It is her determination that has led me to this place where I reside today and continues to educate and inspire me to fight on with humor, dignity and good grace. Certainly if she can maintain her love of life...her joy and sense of humor, then I certainly can as well?

Photos:Kathy Tomson

Fighting the FIGHT...of My Lifetime.

Yea, Yea...sorry to disappoint all of you who were just beginning to think that you wouldn't have to read any more crap from me on Shell Shock Serenade, well I'm still alive....Not necessarily kicking but kind of hopping around a bit like a human Pogo-stick!

I'll be honest, these last 2 months since my amputation have been very rough. Infection has reared it's ugly head again and I have spent nearly 20 additional days in the hospital fighting to save what I have left of my right leg below the knee. The pic below shows the intital affect of the infection.

So far we have been successful but it has not been easy. It is hard for me to spend time on my computer so these posts will be brief. I'll try to fill in more detail in future entries. 

But I am home now after spending 8 days in the hospital this last time and we are hopeful that things are getting better. K works on taking care of me around the clock basically and our life is pretty hard at the moment since she was laid off. Finding money for medication co-pays is hard so healing is made more complex when you don't have your Anti-Biotic on time. The intense pain doesn't help the situation either.

Injuries/illness I have found, isolate a person in a way that they feel alienated from their friends, family and society as a whole. And I am not talking about people not calling or visiting. Remember the old saying: "alone in a crowd?" That is the kind of feeling I am talking about. It is the disability itself that isolates a person and one can get resentful of folks who are perceived to be "normal". 

It's easy to say you're praying for someone, I say or write it all the time and really mean it. But at times, when everyone is always repeating it, well it can lose some of its meaning. Then I realize it is really up to me to change all that. I alone have the ability to not feel sorry for myself and understand that those folks can't really do anything else. They are helpless to change what is happening to me no matter how much they would like to. Only then can a person appreciate that it is just their way of showing that they care. And I am extremely grateful for them and their thoughts/prayers!

This is a delicate emotional dance we do as people recovering from illness/injuries. Especially when we are constantly running into road-blocks to that recovery and it begins to look like we shall never get better. People often lose hope at times like these and kill themselves just because they cannot see beyond their own pain & suffering. That is why it is critical to stay connected to God and those people who love & care about you.....that is what often works for me.

Don't get me wrong....I still hurt, I am still lonely and confused at times but deep down I know that I MUST LIVE and keep pushing forward...no matter what. 
I would not survive this fight without K-Sue...she is my EVERYTHING. Words cannot express the depth of my feeling and gratitude honey for all you do and all that you are...I Love you Babe!

Often...one has to force themselves to look at the positives: We are home, we have each other and our life together, no matter how difficult we shall move on...and the world, believe it or not....WILL TURN! 

I've got these 3 beautiful grandsons who pull me out of my funk every time I hear their voices or see their pics. They live in SC and I don't often get to see them...certainly not everyday like I would desire. But their existence in the world carries me through days when I cannot fathom living another second of such pain & heartache.

I will try and update Shell Shock when I can. Thanks to ALL of you who have contacted me, prayed and pulled for me...I cannot do this alone. I need my fellow soldiers in this battle and I am so grateful that you are all there for me....T