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...

Warning: proceed with caution, spoilers ahead. I will mark the movie spoilers with a red font if you want to skip them. Number 1: “Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far On Foot” This movie is on Amazon prime video and is an extremely well put together biopic following the life and trials of Portland cartoonist & quadriplegic John Callahan. John had a hard upbringing and never came to terms with it and self treated his anxiety with alcohol. This film follows him dealing with quadriplegia among many other obstacles after a drunk driving accident that left him paralyzed. The main focus on the film is the way that John fights his addiction to alcohol by joining AA. Sober & with a clear mind, John finds love in an old nurse he had and he begins to draw crude and satirical comics. It gets very mixed reviews but John ignores the critics and becomes a comic staple item in Portland, OR. A few different things really stick out for me from this movie. The first thing that I had to ask ...

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 expe...

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...

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 i...

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 di...

 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 ...

Driving Resources:  https://liferollson365.blogspot.com/p/sci-resources.html There’s nothing that quite compares to having one hand on the steering wheel and one hand out the window with the music blaring and a cool cross breeze flowing through a vehicle. Or weaving around backroads on your motorcycle taking in all of the sights and smells while twisting the throttle and hearing the roar of your exhaust pipes echo around. The road was really where I found myself. I spent countless hours cruising without a destination on my Harley or in my truck. I also prided myself in maintaining them both even though one was usually broken down at any given time. I considered myself a wanderer and an explorer. So you can imagine that the prospect of never operating a vehicle on my own again was a pretty hard blow.  I still remember my first time being in a vehicle after my injury. I was still in patient at the hospital and I was having some inflammation around one of my molars. That meant a ...

It’s not really a secret that winter and I have never really been best friends. Probably a bit of a shock since I grew up in NH where you’re pretty much guaranteed to get a few annual snow storms and a freezing winter season. I was too clumsy for skiing and snowboarding so I stuck to basketball and swimming for winter sports. Mostly to keep indoors, but regardless I’ve generally disliked being cold.   My disdain for the cold has definitely amplified since becoming paralyzed. I’ve hit on temperature regulation in past blog posts but in case you’re new to my blog, a fairly common secondary condition to having a spinal cord injury is difficulty in temperature regulation. My body can no longer sweat or shiver and my blood pressure runs much lower now so I naturally feel cold, especially in my extremities. On top of that, nerve pain and AD can often be mistaken for a cold feeling. If something is aggravating a part of my body that I can’t feel, then my body has a natural response of go...

  Giving Tuesday - a global generosity movement. If you are ever looking to donate our volunteer, please continue in this post to read about some of the non profits that went above and beyond to improve my life.  As a veteran or an active-duty service member it can be very hard to accept help or admit that you may need some assistance with something. It’s also a very present human attribute. Accepting help is hard. This was a huge hurdle for me because of my stubborn attitude and fierce independence. It is very important to remember that people want to help. There are so many nonprofits that were started to help others and it’s as simple as reaching out when you need it. Sometimes you just have to swallow your pride. I am a living testament to this. The Fisher House was a get-away for me while I was inpatient at the hospital but it was so much more than a tranquil place to go. It was a home for my family and a small light in a very dark time. The VA campus in West Roxbury was...

On February 11th, 2017 Kass got an open invite into the club that no one ever wants to join. She didn’t know it, but she became a WAG of SCI (Wives and Girlfriends of Spinal Cord Injury) the second that .45 hollow point met that bony son-of-a-bitch known as my spine.  I’ve already talked in length about my recovery in the hospital so I won’t hit on everything that Kass and I went through while I was in-patient. What I will talk about is how much we learned and grew during that time. It was extremely trying, especially on Kass who now faced the prospect of redefining her life to help me with mine. What Kass found while in the hospital was a community of extremely helpful, loving and quite frankly, bad-ass women to help her grieve, learn and grow. The importance of a community formed to educate & empower others who have been sucked into a situation as overwhelming as SCI is unrivaled. When Kass & I meet others facing the task of navigating an inter-abled relationship, the f...

Do you want to know what is incredibly boring? Sitting in a hospital room for a year and a half, that’s what. The first thing that I got back into to kill time in the hospital was gaming on my iPad. It all started years ago. Before I left for the Army, this little mobile game called Clash of Clans came out. I enjoyed it for the fact that I was broke and on my own so I could game on my phone. iPad / iPhone (mobile gaming): My Army buddies gave me hell, and rightfully so. I was too impatient with the app and would actually spend money on it. No F2P here… My Ranger Platoon had a “clan” together. At first it was a cool little way to build some camaraderie and it broke up some of the monotony of the slow days. We would mess around with it during down time but it quickly died off like most apps. But I still play to this day. Supercell created the game and my interests in mobile gaming really caught wind through them. My iPad was a godsend when I was bored in the hospital. It took a lot of...

SCI Awareness Month This month is represented by a green ribbon similar to the pink cancer ribbons and yellow “support our troops” ribbons. I remember making a similar post last year when it felt like I knew all that there was to know about spinal cord injuries. Making this one just goes to show how much there actually is to learn about this SCI life. I am certainly curious to see what my take on spinal cord injury will be next September. I am a naturally inquisitive person so I definitely cast no shade towards someone that may want to know more about my life and everything that being paralyzed comes with. Saying that there is a lot behind the scenes and past the lenses of what you see through me physically is certainly an understatement. This will be my attempt at educating on what spinal cord injuries can entail. First, I want to state that no two injuries are the same. The slightest differences in the injuries can change the outcomes and functions of the individual in crazy ways. Fo...