Phillip Sherwood

This weekend is the final playoff weekend where the best two teams of the NFL will head off to the super bowl; the event that finalizes their entire season’s efforts to do their best to be their best. Every day is like the super bowl for me. I wake up in the morning with extreme fatigue and pain but know I have to find the inner strength to get up and start my day. It’s been real difficult lately in reaching down deep into my intestinal fortitude and harnessing that burst of energy to get up and going. It’s almost like those big booster rockets of the space shuttle that gets it up and headed through the thick resistance of earth’s atmosphere where its momentum will carry it through its mission. I have a new baby mackerel tabby I named Jack that is 7½ weeks old and I’ve been enjoying watching his antics as he discovers his new world. I rescued him from the local animal shelter to give Bob my other cat some company.

As of yesterday I have now been in my new house exactly one month and it’s taken a lot of work to get things where they are now in both functionality and organized. There’s still a lot left to do but I’m at the point where I am far better off than when I was living in the cramped apartment. I’ve had a lot of help from close friends and co-workers and getting things the way I want them in the house. I haven’t been able to start on the home automation part yet but I have configured several items through remote control to make things easier. I’m almost at the point now where I’ll need a carpenter and electrician soon to begin some larger projects the builder would not do to accommodate either my condition or need. Shortly I’ll be having the final modification done to my truck and get the chair lift installed into the truck bed. This lift mounts in the bed and has an arm (boom) that swings over the side to hook up my chair and lift it up and into the bed. Once that is done, I will be able to utilize my truck more often.

My shoulder pain and spasms have been much better lately. The extreme swelling in my right leg is finally going down but the Lovenox blood thinning injections have left my belly with very few places not yet bruised however I did prepare for this and increased the surface area to allow me more injection site options. I am very well supplied with medicine and medical sustainment materials from the VA. I will be heading back to the gym tomorrow finally after having been told by my doctor to cool it for awhile while waiting for the pain pump to “anchor in” and become stable enough to handle the extra stresses I’ll induce to my body and abdominal and lumbar area. I’m back on my bi-weekly massage schedule now too and that this past Friday’s session was a real workout. It’s late and I need to prep for bed. Now that the storm from moving and all the annual medical exams and acute medical needs have been met for the moment, I can finally relax some and set a more rhythmic pace I can maintain until summer vacation.