5/3/26 – Rethinking Strategies
Being a child again. With so many fears. Trying so many new and novel movements and ideas. Is sometimes terrifying. And overwhelming. Especially if you don’t have a lot of money.
I’m glad I took that nap. To say that I was tired, I think is an understatement. I was demoralized. I felt awful. I felt like the world was going to end. I guess that does it for me and the alcohol. I don’t think it does anything good for me. I think this just goes to show how little it helps you, the pain and suffering it can do, and how little you need it. Here we go, let’s work on cutting it out again. This time more intentional.
Maybe, for now on, when I’m extremely sad and deplorable, maybe think about getting some rest, doing some yoga, meditation, or something to help recharge your batteries?
I think that’s what I need to focus on this week. Getting enough rest.
5/4/26 – Icy Hot Tingle Bath
The fullness creeping in on my posterior chain is extremely significant! My low back is filling out, my glutes are filling out, I can feel my quads churning, hamstrings bubbling, knees almost hurt!? Lower legs are encapsulating, ankles are online, and feet are submerged in an icy hot tingle bath that I’m really trying to wriggle and move! Partial right side supine lay, extending my hips, working on letting my hip flexors melt into the bed. When I yawned, my posterior chain engaged this time instead of my anterior! Which was huge!
Never fully understanding how much rest I need. I might need to close my eyes for a few minutes more.
I’m really trying to get my glutes to engage independently of hip flexors. The prone time has been helping with this!
Stretching, stretching stretching…… how come I haven’t really talked all that much about this!? It’s interesting because I always am thinking and wondering how much it affects the muscles, the nerves, and the joints differently? Also there seems to be so many schools of thought with stretching as well?!
5/4/26 – Hard Thoughts
I’m….. torn. Between lives. Between so much, and it’s hard to decipher. I feel my legs coming back with such vigor and vengeance, it’s just extremely nerve-wracking to try to exist in a world these days where I’m operating so much in this chair.
It’s really hard to have to be in this situation. To yearn and feel something real happening in your body, but feeling this call from society to engage. It’s really hard. It’s a double-edged sword. Without it, how would I fuel and fund my recovery? With it, I only have so much time in the day?
The dreams I have about the past or the future, of different places, really is hard to wrangle when you wake up in the morning. It makes you wonder about life, where our culture and society is, and where it’s all going.
I didn’t get to relax on the floor last night, it seems to show. I’ll have to get in the standing frame this morning.
I just want my body. To not wake up being tight. Violently shaking me awake. Helping get me out of bed. As opposed to me having to drag myself out. I want to be useful again. Each day challenges arise where I have to sit by, and not really be useful. It pains me. I’m not sure what this all means our what to do about it. I have to get up and go to work. That seems to be what we have to do.
Our wants and needs are so difficult to manage because how do you separate and differentiate them? Besides food, water, and a roof, isn’t the rest a want? Having to grapple with these thoughts each morning is a lot to bear. I guess that’s why I keep working on my legs, to continue to improve, and one day have my freedom.
Waking up is hard. Falling asleep is hard. Being awake doesn’t seem to get much easier.
Standing frame was super important mid-day today. It was definitely interesting how tight my low abdomen is!
It makes me think, about how that area has been waking up like crazy as of recently! It makes me think – is this how the muscles wake up at first? They only know how to turn “on”? Because, it took a really long time today to get that area of my muscles to relax, and I think this is a big step up, in terms of development!
I’m finally laying down for the end of the night, and I realized, that my body needs to be trained on how to relax. Just like teaching him how to activate, he needs both. Which, seems so counterintuitive, but we have to send both excitation and inhibitory signals in our baby! It’s not like a light switch, where you can switch it on and off. It needs either one, the other, or both in varying degrees. Our joints wouldn’t work very well if they didn’t have muscle tissue surrounding it on opposing sides.
Prone time. Very important. Butterfly stretch, also huge. Made it back in chair on own. Busy day.
5/6/26 – Jump-Off Year / Take Off Year
This morning had to have been one of the most significant jumps and increases in sensation in the past couple weeks! The feet are feeling so much! The sensation of warmth, fullness, and me trying to wiggle my toes is all there! This is insane I swear if I look down and see my toes a-wiggling one of these days I’m gonna freak out!
Back sometime around the time of my accident, I think I did the math on what it would take to heal / regrow a nerve from my T6 spinal cord down to my feet, and I think it was on the order of 3 yrs, based on the growth rate that I can’t quite remember? I wonder if that’s what is happening!? Since I’ve been continuously working my body since the accident, I’ve created an environment that has allow that to take place? As opposed to just stopping, sitting in the chair, and accepting my fate?
The adductors on my left side I really can feel how much they have been needing to stretch out! They really have been so tight, and it’s been affecting left leg stance, left hip extension, right leg swing, you name it! Because I’m now feeling so much more down there, I have been able to focus on stretching that area out, which is really exciting! I’m glad to know my left side tightness is slowly “working its way down” instead of just remaining as is!
I’m kinda shook, these past couple weeks have been a lot of ups and downs. It’s alot to take in. It’s been quite the rollercoaster ride of emotions, activities, and we’ve taken a lot to do. Dad put it a good way yesterday, “have you taken off more than you can chew?” And sometimes it definitely feels that way, but I just keep moving.
Talked with Ryan from work yesterday, and man is that a solid dude! He’s great! He’s been working on his house for the past year and a half everyday, and that type of work ethic you really only find in certain types of people! Kinda reminds me of my brother John, and my own dad! Which was great to see. It’s crazy too, I could tell he’s been following the blog, which is crazy to me that all the people that are still out there following my story. It means so much to me to know how many good folk truly are out there. It helps when it’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel, or if there even is any light.
Trying to keep it up! So I’m getting in a better and better groove stretching for a half hour before bed, and it’s helping tremendously! I wonder how I can expand these evening sessions? Prone, reciprocal inhibition of glute activation, butterfly stretch, maybe do some magic circle? What else? Always trying to add just a thing or two to my routine!
Better get up, this is gonna be a good day, I can feel it.
So what if this is a “jump-off” year? Where things really ramp up for me? Because my original recovery was delayed because of all the ancillary injuries? And I’m actually able to really work on my legs?!
From Claude
“Joe. Looking at this full picture now — the “jump-off” year theory isn’t just hope talking. It’s actually really logical.
Think about the sequence your body had to work through before you could even get to your legs:
Just surviving: Bilateral lung injuries, lobectomies, bilateral rib fractures on nearly every rib, liver and spleen lacerations, brain bleeds including diffuse axonal injury. Your body’s first years weren’t rehab years — they were survival and reconstruction years.
Then the hardware: T3 to L5 fusion. That’s a massive structural rebuild. Your spine, your breathing mechanics, your core — all of that had to settle and heal before you could load your legs in any meaningful way.
Then the actual window opened. And that’s when you started doing what you’re doing now — KAFO sessions, standing frame, real progressive load on your nervous system.
So if the nerve regrowth clock started at the accident, your body was simultaneously trying to regrow those signals while managing catastrophic trauma everywhere else. The environment for leg recovery wasn’t fully available until the ancillary stuff cleared. Now it is.”
The sensation jump this morning, the adductors talking back, the toes sending signals — those could absolutely be the payoff of a regrowth process that’s been running quietly in the background while everything else got sorted.
Why do I always feel this way? Why is this always so hard? Why is my body so hard to deal with? I’m really getting tired of all this.
The Contrast
Of the neck and chest
The yin and yang
Of the colors on their back
It’s never that far
from the open water
Or the darkness that starts
As they waddle to the rocks
The life that they live
Out of sight and out of mind
Is the object of fixation
On young children’s curious minds
The two worlds they live
Always hunting till the end
Are more different than we can fathom
With our laptops and our pens
The open sea
The barren rock
Always split by the waters edge
Creates a life
A world
For which they move
So soundly till the next
They have a waddle on land
A raft in the sea
A rookery in the nest
But all three of them mean
They have others to gleam
A shred of hope To endure
The bitter cold nights to rest
We’ve learned so much
About their lives
And their ways
But do we know if they want
Or if they behave?
What certain emotions
That arise
When feeling cool
And such surprise
Is such a feeling
To have to endure
We may never know
And never keep
Such records that may leap
To a place for us to stand
On dry land as they have
Or water to fend
For themselves
And the raft
At hand
5/7/26 – Short Note
Pilates felt great today! Just a short note on this!
Turns out, it seems like each book I read, I get a bit more and more sad / let down, because each book, I see an accident and outcome that is so much different than mine. Not gonna lie, it’s kinda depressing and interesting all at the same time. To hear how all these books and people I’m reading about get back on their feet or walking in some form in ~1-4months, makes me more jealous than I can believe, sometimes. My body was rough. He had, I had, such a hard time.
5/8/26 – Spaceship Launch
I really didn’t get prone for enough of the session last night, and my legs feel it today. It bums me out, makes me sad, when this happens. I guess it is good they are moving? Just not the way I want.
I’m struggling. There is so much going on, I’m just seeming to have a hard time wrangling it all. Let’s see how today goes.
HAD A GOOD WALK!
RODE THE HANDCYCLE!!!
5/9/26 – Bike Things!
So my lungs and and low abdomen are really getting some work on this Handcycle I think! Turns out I need to get a lot of things to get this sucker going! I’m really excited to get riding! Turns out there’s a lot of new learnings I gotta figure out on this thing vs a regular bike! How do I turn around to see who’s coming behind me? What do all these fancy do-dads do? How do I charge it all? How do I get to the trails?
These have been some of the questions running thru my mind as I’m trying to figure this all out!
Had to change a flat on the Handcycle! I’m glad I still have it in me to do! Plus I’m glad I learned how to do that so when I’m on the side of the road with a flat, hopefully I can change it myself! I still gotta work on getting off the bike myself, but that’s a work in progress!
Dang! I got to do some laps on the Handcycle! This was sweet! Problem is I need to adjust the bike so I fit it properly!
My legs were feeling crazy during the ride too!….
I was noticing how underactive my left side was, how out of whack my left shoulder, glute, and leg was? This really worked the asymmetries out?!
Okay all signed up for Tour of America’s Dairyland! This is gonna be nuts! I really got my work cut out to not look like a total newbie on the bike and hopefully hold my own, just a bit! I’m gonna get my butt kicked!
Got up in the standing frame to wrap up the day, and after I got out, my legs felt more charged than they were before!
The Astronaut on Earth 
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