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An update
Hey guys, I wanted to provide an update on my condition after making the request for Footsteps at Hollywood, FL night one. I don't want to feel like I only talked about health care challenges to get a song request.
The thread preceding all this is here:
I did write the band a letter about a month after starting the thread.
I still cannot walk, but slow and steady progress continues with physical therapy. My biggest issues appear to have come more into focus: Muscle wasting and muscle contracture. There are lasting neurological deficiencies, but it appears that won't be show stopping. I intend to walk again, and crucially, my therapists agree that I will.
The hospital-acquired pressure ulcer has been an ongoing rollercoaster. After a new wound care doctor said it would need surgery, a plastic surgeon disagreed. That was a huge moment, because the expectation was that, yes, a surgeon would want to do surgery. Wound care has since put me through 32/40 sessions of hyperbaric oxygen therapy. The wound is now exceptionally small, measuring just 3x4x4mm. My hope is it will finish closing without surgical intervention, and I'll just have a horrible scar on my lower back.
Health insurance continues to be a barely navigable draconian exercise. Recently I received a letter stating my hospital bed--needed for my stage IV pressure ulcer--was, can you believe it, "not medically necessary." Come to find out, the bed was on a rent-to-own plan, and was now mine. The letter? Intended to stress vulnerable patients the hell out, I guess.
Chris, meanwhile, is doing quite well. He just wrapped up a cross-country road trip to over a dozen national parks with his wife, brother, brother's fiancé, and a friend. Initially, after the show, he was in a kind of stunned silence for a while. Now we can talk about it. Upon returning home, he secretly set about making a frame for the setlist I was handed after the show.
He knows I requested the song because it's his favorite. I think what I wrote was taken to heart, though, and him saving my life wasn't mentioned. It sounds crazy, but Chris really does not like having his actions on that day highlighted. He thinks anyone in that situation would have done the same as him. The thing is, no one else would have put themselves in that situation in the first place. Still, I have to respect his feelings on this.
This October, I'll be returning "home" for a week to upstate NY, when Chris's brother is getting married. It will be the first time seeing my friends since the coma, which by then will have been almost two years ago.
2008 Tampa - 2013 Buffalo - 2016 Tampa - 2016 Fenway II
Audioslave 2005 MSG
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It was great to sit next to you both at the show, and feel the emotion that came forth when they started playing 'Footsteps'.
Stay strong, keep fighting (physically & financially, cause F the system!), and here's to many more future days 🙌
Song Wishlist: Alone, Let Me Sleep, Brother, full W.M.A., Hold On, Bugs/all of Vitalogy, Mankind, Around The Bend (full band), The Long Road, Don't Gimme No Lip, Pilate, Push Me Pull Me, All Those Yesterdays, Rival, Parting Ways, Ghost, Bu$hleaguer, WWS, Parachutes, Army Reserve, low octave Driftin', Strangest Tribe, Other Side, Undone, Fatal, Hitchhiker, Education, Black Red Yellow, Of the Earth, Love Reign O'er Me, Gonna See My Friend, Santa Cruz, Infallible, Yellow Moon, Alright, Comes Then Goes, and the Mamasan Trilogy.
2008 Tampa - 2013 Buffalo - 2016 Tampa - 2016 Fenway II
Audioslave 2005 MSG