I open my eyes just enough to see a brilliant, blinding light. It feels like I am staring at the sun, or is it Heaven? I hear people speaking with muffled, familiar voices. I try to piece together who is around me and where I am. Purgatory? It is too straining. I am exhausted. Then, silence and darkness again. Back into this vivid reoccurring dream that I am handcuffed to a bed at the bottom of a damp, rusty cargo ship. Repeat... again and again, until.... Mom? Dad? Kass? Why do I hear their voices? They are in New Hampshire... I am just sleeping really hard in Washington State right now. I find the strength to open my eyes into a squint again. This time I see the beautiful, inviting face of my girlfriend Kass. It had been months since I was able to touch her and kiss her. Let me just sit up and kiss her. Just... kiss....her... Well, that didn’t work... why can’t I lift my head? My eyes look down, why are my arms strapped to my bed? I am exhausted. Back to my bed at the bottom of the c...

I’ll start this one out by talking about small injury I had in my sophomore year in high school. I had just made the junior varsity baseball team and we were getting ready for a stadium game that we played once a year. About a month prior I had sprained my ankle and tore two of the three ligaments that hold that sucker together. It was a pretty serious sprain but I downplayed it a lot in order to stay on the team as their starting first baseman. Because I had downplayed it so much, I had done some actual permanent damage and would have to deal with ankle pain and random joint clicks for the rest of my adult life. This injury and my actions in dealing with it would really put into perspective my next serious injury. At the time the only thing that seemed important was high school baseball. 16-year-old Josh didn’t really think much about the future. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake the next time I had an injury. I had always been fortunate enough to avoid any serious injuries. I c...

It’s no big lie that most of us are naive to people with disabilities. I know that I certainly was no exception. There are a lot of misconceptions regarding paralysis. Granted I can only attest for my own personal experiences and from the experiences of a few others that I have met. Here is my crash course in what I have noticed and experienced.  https://liferollson365.blogspot.com/p/life-keeps-rolling-comics.html If I saw someone in a wheelchair prior to my injury, I would always tell myself not to stare and I would take some uncomfortable side glances instead. Believe me, we notice and you would probably be better off staring that way I won’t feel bad for calling you out on it 🤷‍♂️. Early on in my injury it used to infuriate me when I would catch someone looking at me. I would always say that ‘everyone sees the wheelchair first and me second’. If I caught someone staring, I would yell and try to pick a fight. It must have been quite the sight because I had no voice and could onl...

“Every cloud has its silver lining”.  If that is true then my cloud is a hurricane. A lot of people have asked me how life is going as if they’re expecting me to give them an answer about how difficult it is or how horrible my new struggles are. My answer is always the same, “life is great”. Truthfully, my life is great. All trials of my new handicap aside, I am doing great. I have a beautiful home with the woman of my dreams and I have found peace. I often find random silver linings regarding wheelchair life throughout my days, so I began to make a list. I have fun finding the good in my situation and I hope that you enjoy my silver linings. The most obvious silver lining is the parking. Everyone sees the handicap car with the handicap plate parked crooked over two spots and no one cares (unless you are also handicap (reference my last post)). It is an obvious convenience to be able to pull right up to a building and roll right in. Growing up I usually had one or two pairs of shoe...

How do you live your life? You learn how to live your life a certain way from the moment that you are born. I don’t mean that you learn to be nice or to respect others, but that you learn to breathe, walk and move. You learn how to associate certain muscles with other muscles to make a movement. There are over 650 muscles in the human body and they all work together and are controlled by nerves. So you can imagine that my muscles are pretty messed up.  During my time in the hospital, I met an older Vietnam War veteran named Eric and I was blown away by his optimism. He was in the same boat (or wheelchair) as I was but his injury wasn’t as severe. One day we were sitting in the day room and he said something that I really took to heart. He asked me “how many people get the chance to relearn everything? To truly rediscover their own bodies?”. He said it as if we were the lucky ones and I was pretty taken aback.  At the time, I could pretty much do next to nothing for myself. I e...

It is 2016. I am flying through a Walmart parking lot in rainy Tacoma, Washington. I am riding my Harley Davidson with my buddy Jason and the rain is pissing on us. We were running in and out to buy some chuck steaks and a 30 rack of Coors light for our weekend camping trip. Without thinking, we pull up as close as we can to the entrance. We don’t want to be the assholes that steal a handicap spot so instead we throw down our kickstands in that fancy looking area next to the handicap spot and head in without batting an eye. As we wander through Walmart we hear on the intercom “can the owners of two Harley motorcycles move their bikes please?”. We put down our things and head back out into that Washington rain, annoyed at our minor inconvenience. We grudgingly move our bikes and go back in to buy our cheap steak and cheap beer. On our way out we see the wheelchair van that caused us to move our bikes and I notice the little boy being pushed by his mother in his chair and I feel slightly...

This is easily the hardest topic for me to talk about. This also makes it the easiest because it is so necessary.  What exactly is forgiveness? Is it simply saying “I forgive you” after someone says “sorry” and moving on? Is it making the mental decision to drop something that is negatively effecting you? Is it deciding that holding a grudge isn’t worth jeopardizing a relationship? There are so many different kinds of forgiveness. You can forgive someone else but how can you truly forgive if you can’t forgive yourself?  Growing up I would always turn toward my faith and the Act of Confession. God is and has been the ultimate figure regarding forgiveness to me. But how do you forgive someone that crippled you and hurt you beyond belief? A quote comes to mind and it isn’t always the easiest option... “Let Go, Let God”. Growing up I remember my back turned to my twin brother in separate time-out chairs in daycare, refusing to forgive him for not sharing a toy. I remember getting ...

I’m sure that at some point in your life you have either been told “you’ve got some nerve” or said it to someone else. I have definitely been told the latter. Resiliency, stuborness, grit, nerve, call it what you want. But having nerve definitely saved my life. I was always a stubborn little shit growing up. I will definitely admit to that. I hated being told no and especially being told that I couldn’t do something. I was always the one getting the last word in an argument with my brothers. I had a case of middle child syndrome despite being 3 minutes younger than my twin. Most of all, I sucked at taking constructive criticism. Dubbing me the prestigious title of “stubborn little shit”. Being stubborn in the military served me well because I was always trying to help and rarely took no for an answer (unless it was an order from a higher rank). It helped me perform competitively, especially at my second unit because it was my final push before coming home from the Army. The jokes on me...

This is from my original Facebook post and it summarizes my injury pretty well  Today I am reminded of how much this last year has changed me and so many others. On February 11th I was getting ready to go to a shooting range in WA, where I had been stationed for the last 4 years. I woke up two weeks later in the ICU of St. Joe's hospital in a complete panic, only no matter how much I panicked, the only thing that I could move was my head. I had no idea that two weeks prior I had a .45 caliber hollow point bullet rip through my throat, destroying my carotid artery, left vertebral artery, which only stoped because it had hit my spinal cord. I had become a C4 level quadriplegic. I could no longer move my arms or move/feel anything below my upper chest. I was transferred to the Army hospital on post where they slowly weened me off of the opiates I was on which was when I started  to remember. I was hooked up to a machine that did all of my breathing for me. I had a trach tube put...

Hands ... Think about all of the things that you do from the moment you wake up all the way up to when your head hits your pillow to retire and start again in the morning. Hands come in all different shapes and forms. The rough hands of a construction worker, the calloused hands of a power lifter, the soft nimble hands of a beautician. I was  taught by my father that a firm handshake goes a long way and can leave a lasting impression. Now what do you do if suddenly your hands don’t work? Spinal cord injuries and spinal diseases can vary immensely. I’m not here to teach a anatomy lesson on spinal cords and nerve damage but most injuries in the C-Spine cause loss of function in the wrists and hands. The C-Spine being the cervical portion from the brain to around the shoulders. My injury was no exception.  I haven’t opened or closed my hands in a year and a half... I haven’t moved a individual finger in a year and a half... Side note: I get immensely jealous when I hear someone c...

Finding a Higher Purpose For me, joining the military was a very easy decision. Senior year of high school was full of all of this pressure to apply to colleges and I was in no way certain about what my future plans were. I certainly was not ready for college debt. The prospect of leaving all of my childhood friends seemed sad but I knew that I had an obligation to my country and to myself to challenge the norm. I grew up in a military family so a lot of my initial questions and apprehensions were answered by my dad, a Marine of 17 years. So I started my search with the Marine Corps. I was drawn to the respect that the leaders demanded and how they commanded the room. The recruiters didn’t try to sell me on any bull, it was just do you want to be a Marine or not. It was actually my dad, Gunnery Sergeant Keller that convinced me to look at the other branches of the military. My next stop was the Army. The recruiters were approachable and helped me navigate what I wanted out of the...