2017 The Year Everything Went Wrong
My wife came home from work, realized that it was now an emergency, and she helped me get to the car. By the time we got to the Hospital, I had lost all feeling in my toes and legs, and was no longer able to support myself. Some orderly helped get me into a wheel chair and I was admitted pretty much immediately. No Wait when you're paralyzed.
Not sure what caused all this, but we think it was my ma
On Feb. 28th of 2017, I was admitted to the Hospital. A MRI showed that my lower spine had basically imploded, several remote fractures had caused my S1 and L5 to Ossify together crooked, and three of my disks had ruptured impinging on my spinal cord. By the time they performed the discectomy and bilateral laminectomy, I was 2mm away from total paralysis.
In the words of Dr. Healy, "In the 600 tim
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For a month, I was hospitalized and sent to a Rehabilitation Facility where I basically had to learn to walk again. Once I got home, I learned that Pain Management had been co-opted by the DEA, and because I had THC in my system, nobody would give me any medication for pain, at all.
Two Months of Hospitalization is Expensive...
Immediately upon standing up, because they had to remove so much bone, my spine literally collapsed. Every step I took would cause my Sacroiliac to grind itself together, and I began battling the system to get them to refer me for another surgery. Six months later, I was finally admitted to Chapel Hill where they performed an Anterior and Posterior Instrumented Fusion with Bone Grafts. I spent alm
Several Months after I got home, still using a walker to get around, a box arrived Chapel Hill University. I thought I had left a pair of shoes at the hospital and they were returning them to me... It was the Bill. Between the first surgery at Mission, the Rehabilitation, the second surgery at Chapel Hill, and the second stint at Care Partners Rehab, I was looking at 3/4 of a Million Dollars. Than
Apparently I'm going to be in Moderate to Severe Pain for the rest of my life. If you haven't had the experience of Pain Managment Clinics, let me tell you, there are some really shitty pain doctors out there. It took me years to finally get settled in with a good Pain Management Doctor, and finally get the care I needed to manage my pain. Chronic Pain, when untreated, is living hell, it really is
Living With A Disability
If you are planning on filing for Disability, take some advice from me, and GET A LAWYER. Make sure you are truly disabled, because it's going to take three years to go through the process. If you can still work, trust me, you're better off. We damned nearly lost our home, our power was cut off several times, and our marriage was really strained. Three years of living on a single income is no litt
For nearly seven years, my Glass Studio gathered dust. Ebay, Etsy, Miniaturemarbles.com, all of my old regular customers, my life was in suspended animation and I was no longer able to sit at my torch for hours and mass produce my famous miniature marbles. My garden became a weeded nightmare, my collection of rare tropical plants was sold off to raise money. It was a low point in my life, and lear
I was disabled, and my business was shutting down. Other glass artists were making Miniature Marbles now, and rumors began to spread that J. R. Hooper had passed away. We were just about to clean out and pack up the glass studio for good, when I happened to check the old email address I used for my Etsy and Ebay accounts, and was shocked to find Hundreds of Emails asking when I was going to make m