Life Keeps Rolling

It takes seven years for the human body to replace every cell that it has (with some exceptions). Aside from the tattoo ink that was punched underneath my skin and the memories that were planted in my brain, I am an entirely new human. Every single cell that makes up this paralyzed body of mine has known just that… paralysis. Gone are the cells that made up healthy 23 year old Josh, and good riddance. It takes a resilience to maintain a paralyzed body and those cells were not ready for what was to come; so the body did its thing… it adapted. Whether I wanted it to or not, my body adapted.  Year 6 was tough, I’m not going to lie to you. I navigated secondary conditions from this spinal cord injury for as long as I could but the pain started to dull my quality of life and I was tired. Tired of pain and insecurity. Tired of brave faces when all I wanted to do was cry. It was time for a change. I met with an incredible surgeon and we discussed options to treat my neurogenic bowel. Ugh… su

 “Oh damn, that’s the Battalion Commander… come on, give him a salute… wait, why can’t I lift my arm?…”  When I first started finding consciousness in the hospital, I was overwhelmed and confused. I had to be told what had happened to me multiple times, and I still wasn’t good at comprehending it. One of the first times I realized how paralyzed I had become was when my Battalion Commander, then Lieutenant Colonel Meissel visited me in the hospital while our battalion was at a training event in Yakima, WA. I vividly remember trying to salute him as he pinned the Army Commendation Medal to my medical Jonny (that open-backed hospital garment). It was so difficult being celebrated and retired from this unit. I felt like I did not deserve the award, all I did was survive. I tried to lift my paralyzed arm and it felt like I had a truck parked on it. All I could do was twitch my deltoids. All I wanted was that one last salute to my commander.  That’s when it hit me. My days of being able to s

 6 years… 2,190 days since I walked past the wrong end of a .45 hollow point.  Six years of some of my highest highs and certainly some of my lowest lows. Days, weeks, months and years slowly starting to blur together. My wheelchair starting to become just another decision that I make each morning. Starting to become an extension of my body.  I can’t help but think back to the team meetings we’d have each Wednesday while I was in the hospital. My therapists going over my care plan with my doctor while I reclined my power chair because my blood pressure was crashing. Hearing them say the word “years” stung a part of my soul. “How is this my reality?” I thought while feeling the blood circulate back to my head. I look over to my mom who attended most of these meetings with me. She sat there so thankful that her son was alive. Me… not so much. Here I sit in 2023. The culmination of 6 years of struggles and suffering. Enough “daily grind” to break most people. Yet, somehow we rise. Every s

  Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone can do a little reflecting on 2022 as we move into 2023. I feel like the last three years were a sort of fever dream. Things got really weird when Covid hit the world stage and the years have blurred since then. I made a lot of changes and growth since then. I cut out the news from my life (mostly). I locked down with my little family. It took two years for me to actually get the viral infection and believe me it kicked my ass when I did. 2022 was my favorite year yet. There were tons of incredible milestones including marrying the woman of my dreams . I watched as businesses reopened and masks started to vanish. Gatherings finally started to feel normal. There were also hardships, like the loss of family members. Reminders about how fickle life is. Reminders of how important it is to make the most out of each day. 2022 was a year of philanthropy for me. A year of chasing goals and pursuing passions. A year of refining myself as a man and iron

  Ranger Battalion (2/75) I reached second battalion out in Washington state in September 2013. This was after basic training, infantry AIT, airborne school & RASP (Ranger Selection) I was a proud little Ranger. In battalion I got to deploy to Afghanistan and spend some time in Oman. I got to see Kuwait & Germany. I got to travel all over the United States for various training events. This was when I was running and gunning and having a great time in the army. I got to jump out of all sorts of military aircraft, fast rope out of rotor aircraft & train on more weapon systems than you can imagine. I loved all of the intense training (physical & mental) while in special operations. It was an incredible experience and I would not be the man that I am today without everything I learned. Unfortunately, I was involved in a car accident and I fractured a vertebrae in my neck causing nerve damage in my arm. Because of this I was removed from airborne status indefinitely and plac

  To start this one off, we’re going to have to take it all the way back to 2015. I had just started talking to this girl from back home. She was beautiful and we had incredible conversation. I remember her birthday was approaching and I wanted to get her something but I wanted to keep it modest because we weren’t officially dating yet. I ordered her some flowers to be delivered. I had no idea that her favorite flower was a Gerber Daisy. Luck of the draw I guess.  The next 2 1/2 years would be full of trips to Washington for her and trips back home to New Hampshire for me. Our weekends consisted of trying to fit in a Sunday night FaceTime date while we went through the trials of a long-distance relationship. I knew this girl was the one. On one of her trips to Washington state we thought we would make a fun game of it and go look at engagement rings. In reality I was using this to get her ring size but she had no idea. We both talked about the future and what it would hold. We would ge

Well I just had the best week of my life! A week full of love, faith and commitment. I got to marry the love of my life and what an experience it was! However, I will do a separate, more in depth post about the burning love that I have for my WIFE! This post will be about something different. A huge insecurity that I had going up to the wedding was based around something stupid. You probably notice that I rarely wear a suit or dress clothes. More than often you will find me in sweatpants and a hoodie or a baggy comfortable shirt. Adaptive jeans have been a great find & truthfully, even jeans are dressy for me now. Body dysmorphia is huge. Leading up to the wedding I was getting very anxious about how I was going to look in my suit. Sitting is a hard look to rock. I had a few different meetings set up at Men’s Wearhouse to get the perfect look to match my beautiful bride, but it was a gut punch realizing how difficult it was to get dressed up now. Nostalgia came and went once the su

  Time is such a strange concept. Just a unit of measurement while we spin around a giant flaming ball of gas. Sometimes I wish more than anything it would speed up and sometimes I wish more than anything that it would slow down. But somehow it keeps on flying. I will preface this post by saying how blessed & fortunate I have been with my family. I haven't been witness to much of it within the last few years but my grandpa is currently battling dementia. I haven't been able to expose myself to it to see him because I don't want to overwhelm him but it really makes me reminisce and think about life. I've been trying to dig up pictures of my grandpa and I together and I realized something... I only have one. I realized the same thing when I got out of the Army and it is sad as hell. If you document a bunch in the military, or take selfies and "cool guy pics" you almost get labeled, so like a lot of other guys, I never did it. I wish more than anything that I

2017 - Sad, angry, bitter & exhausted... I rolled out of my hospital room & into the office of behavioral health at the VA. I had finally capitalized on the open invitation from my care team. I needed help.  I kept apologizing to her. “I wasn’t worth all of this investment”. “You’re a fucking Ranger, man up”. This was replaying in my mind while I reclined my wheelchair during my first session. We agreed on guided meditation... baby steps. I fell asleep in 30 seconds... my hour long session was over and she gently woke me up. I started sobbing. This was the best sleep I’d had in months. We continued to meet weekly in various areas of the hospital. My favorite was the Fisher House Foundation’s garden. I felt like a semi truck had been lifted off of my chest. I didn’t realize the weight I was carrying.  I never looked back... and with my mental strength came my physical strength. I started crushing physical therapy & kicked all of my pain meds.  I started to experience somethi

Why does finding accessible lodging need to be such a challenge? Hotel stays for me have been really hit or miss since my injury. Either the rooms are perfect or are an absolute nightmare. Most stays are somewhere in the middle. Thick carpet feels like quick sand for my front wheels. It’s exhausting to maneuver even a few feet when it feels like the floor is trying to pull me down. Transferring to & from the bed is a completely separate issue. Most hotels, cabins, motels etc. have beds with frames that go all the way to floor. These bed frames prevent my lift from getting me safely over the bed to drop me in. And if I wasn’t going to use my portable lift and transfer instead with a slide board, most hotel beds are taller than my wheelchair, meaning a sketchy uphill transfer.   The “tried and true” 2-man transfer works most times with friends and family but obviously not when it’s just Kass & I. Plus who wants to rely on other people to get you in and out? Don’t get me wrong, we

Madigan Army Hospital, one of the oldest and largest hospital systems in the military sits proudly inside the gates of JBLM (Joint Base Lewis-McChord). This place evokes a lot of different emotions for me. I spent 4 and a half years on Fort Lewis in Washington, probably driving by Madigan ten thousand times. There were only three occasions where I spent any time in there though. Each occasion completely different and completely profound.  1.  In the military you tend to make really strong friendships when you’re going through “the suck” together. That was definitely the case for someone that I would consider my first close Army friend. Both of us 19, and very naïve but full of potential. We had just gone through Ranger Selection together and were at the current highs of our lives. We dawned our tan berets, and left Georgia for 2/75 in Washington. Then we got separated… and he started making dumb decisions. I had to step away from the friendship one night after he got wasted and punched

I had some trouble sleeping last night so I got to thinking… no crazy artwork today, just some reflecting… Soon after I was shot, my hometown of Hudson NH started a fundraising campaign called “Joshua Strong”. I remember coming out of my coma to my mom showing me these pictures of the girls basketball team wearing the fundraising t-shirts and I broke down crying. Who was I to deserve this? Those shirts made their way all through out the country and my dad showed me every single picture. Humbled doesn’t even begin to describe it…  In my reflecting it hit me, these ladies are all now the same age that I was when I was shot. The current seniors at the school were in the 7th grade when I was injured with absolutely no idea who I even am. Time is a crazy thing but every time I look back on these pictures I am reminded about my small New England town rallying around me from across the country. 5 years later these pictures still hit me. What a beautiful reminder of kindness & support. I a

Sheesh, half a decade! Honestly the winter months become sort of a fog for me. I love the holidays and the family time but there’s always that lingering fog. Three of my Army friends were killed throughout these months; one on November, one in December, and another one in January. That brings us to February… the month that my life changed forever. My friends would be so disappointed if I let their deaths cloud any aspect of my life but sometimes it’s hard. Part of why I push myself so hard in my wheelchair is because I know that they would, given the chance.  As I add more and more time under my belt, it gets harder to remember the initial concerns and struggles that I had immediately after becoming paralyzed. Even more so with any “struggles” that I had before my spinal cord injury. I suppose that’s only natural with time but rereading old blog posts and reflecting on life usually snaps me back. I shouldn’t be here… my life in general is an anomaly. It is a miracle, sure; but it is wi

We’ve all been there. Joining the sweatsuit mafia… especially during Covid lockdown, where pants are always optional.  Being paralyzed and sitting constantly causes a lot of strain on my skin. Keeping my bum healthy has been a main priority since day one in the hospital. I don’t talk about it often but I actually developed a pressure sore on my tailbone when I was hospitalized in 2017 because doctors and nurses had to choose how much I could move side to side while I was hooked up to the ventilator. When they told me that I had a wound developing I didn’t think much of it at the time because it seemed so minimal compared to… ya know, fighting paralysis, pneumonia, and everything in between. This “wound” actually became the bane of my existence for well over a year. So much so that I actually had a surgery done and went on bed rest for months. Skin breakdown is one of the biggest threats to anyone with a spinal cord injury. And what is constantly touching your skin?… Clothing! Before my

The number 4 is such a lame number. Does this number have any meaning to you? As a teenager it represented the number of years I counted up to while in high school. As a soldier it represented my annual countdown on my Army contract. Now it represents my entire existence. I remember it like it was yesterday. The urology doctor leaning over my bed writing something on the patient whiteboard right behind my head. I couldn’t turn my head to see what he was writing. It wasn’t until I got up into my loaner wheelchair the next morning that I could read my updated information. “Bladder management: intermittent catheterization Q-4”. I asked my nurse what the Q4 meant. She told me that it means every 4 hours. Sweet, I have to pee on a schedule. Paralyzed organs suck! My bladder is resilient though and to be honest, I’m pretty proud of that stretchy little guy. Part of my care is maintaining my bladder. I’m at a point now where I can tell when Mother Nature is calling but that wasn’t always the

 There are two quotes that you hear constantly with Spinal Cord Injury… “It’s a marathon, not a sprint” & “no news is good news” Every September is my annual SCI check up at the VA Clinic. It’s just a day full of appointments to track any health changes. It starts with blood work & labs. A Uro-Dynamic Study of my bladder and kidney pressures. An ultrasound of the same organs. And re evaluation of the ASIA exam to check for sensation and functional changes. The end result of the day is usually, “congrats you’re still healthy and doing well! See ya next year!” Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy maintaining my health (which is no easy feat) but I’m trying to thrive! Kass and I just kind of expect to suffer through the day and head back to the house after the appointments. Well, something happened yesterday which was a pretty good confidence booster. After my reevaluation it was determined that I am functioning around the a C5 - C6 level which is almost an entire vertebrae below my diagno

 Raise your hand if you’ve ever overheated…  Okay, now drink some water you hot mess. My motto in the Army on the weekends was always “hydrate with beer”. Well, it’s time to hold myself accountable… last Sunday I was almost a heat casualty. I should know better. I was trained to recognize the signs of heat exhaustion. That judgment call was tough to make after a few beers in the Samuel Adams Deck at Fenway Park. Last Sunday, Kass and I met a few friends in Boston for a Red Sox game. It was a 1PM game and the handicap seating in the upper deck was an awesome view of the field. On the drive there I realized that I was ill prepared for a day of drinking but ignored the fact that I hadn’t had anything to eat or drink up until that point. I started feeling my blood pressure drop on the drive to Boston which is fairly common when you’re in a wheelchair. Lack of muscle tone makes it harder for blood to circulate. I worked through that fine but I quickly realized that heat exhaustion and low b