Archives for January 2007

So there I was, driving along quite happily on the freeway into work. Since I have car pool stickers for my Prius I was in the carpool lane and just going with the generally flow of traffic…when I happened to look in my rear view mirror to see a bike speeding up behind me…with flashing blue lights.

Oh great, I thought, as I pulled into the next lane only to be followed by the police bike. Me, in my little Prius being pulled over for speeding…the embarrassment of it all. Being pulled over in my wife’s M3 (which I have been), fine. Being pulled over on my Suzuki GSXR-750 motorbike (which I have been), I can accept…but in a Prius, please!

I pulled off the freeway and stopped. Officer Garcia gets of his bike, walks up and introduces himself, boy am I glad I got everything squared away with the DMV now!. Tells me he’s pulled me over for speeding and does the usual. Anyway, after he’s handed over the ticket he inquires how long ago I lost my hand.

So I told him and he then asks how I lost it, so I explained a little of the story. And he then tells me that he’s a skydiver and starts talking about how he was skydiving at night one time and came close to landing in power lines…imagine that. Not that it did me any good, he didn’t let me off the ticket.

So caught, not red-handed but one handed…nice to know some things don’t change, eh.

I haven’t been taking my long term pain mediation for several months now!!! It was prescribed to help with my phantom pain and whilst I still get phantom sensations, aches and pain, it’s at a level that it’s manageable without medication…which is great since I really didn’t want to be popping pills for the rest of my life.

I’d started to reduce my medication from 40mg and got it down to 30mg, but when I tried to drop it to 20mg or less the pain just became too uncomfortable (this was 4+ months back). I’d been undergoing QiGong treatment (read about it here) by Dr. David Smith during this time and I alternated between feeling that it was really helping to that it didn’t seem to make much difference at all. However, after about 6 sessions Dr. Smith told me I’d progressed to the stage where I didn’t need further treatment…all credit to the guy, he could easily have continued to take my money ad infinitum.

Anyhow, it was about a month later that I started to try and reduce my dosage again and was able to reduce it to first 20mg, then 10mg and finally nothing at all (I did this over 1-2 week intervals). I can only credit this to elapsed time, QiGong and taking Goji juice (read about it here) every day. Although, one thing I did notice was that wearing the silicon sleeve I use with my prosthetic also helped dull the pain and sensations.

It’s funny, but one of the unanswered questions I had whilst talking the medication was how I’d feel once I stopped. The medication I was taking was also used to treat depression and I wondered if the reason I felt so upbeat was due to the mediation (happy pills). I’m glad to say that that wasn’t the case and I still have the same upbeat demeanor that I’ve always had.

My brother came to visit from the UK for the week on his way to his company’s annual sales meeting. I hadn’t seen him since he visited me in hospital in Miami back in March/April last year.

It was great to see him again, although Kaboodle kept me pretty busy during the week I managed to at least take a day off during the week and went down to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Both of us have been keen divers so it was fun to go see the fishes without getting wet and cold.

At the weekend we did a day trip to Kirkwood for some snowboarding with my boarding buddy Robert. It was bitterly cold in the morning, probably the coldest I’ve ever experienced down there and the snow is still not great…but the sky was blue! We haven’t boarded together for probably 8+ years, so it was fun to chase each other around the slopes.

The only challenge was that, by the end of the day, my stump was aching from the cold…my prosthetic just “conducts” the cold and the circulation isn’t that great in my stump at the best of times. When I took my socket and silicon sleeve off the end of my stump felt like an ice-cube! I’m going to have to experiment with something to keep it warm.