the Crip Guy

Welcome to the conclusion of a pain in the ass! Kidney stones will be talked about in great detail. I did manage to get an illustration that fits this week’s theme (good job!). Do you like surgery stories, snake metaphors, and attempts at motivation? Then you are in for a treat!   I wanted to use a train metaphor for this surgery but one of my friends said it was inappropriate. So, have you ever seen a snake swallow an antelope? It looks like it should be impossible but then the snake unhinges its jaw and does it anyway (that is a worse metaphor, Justin!). Sorry, it’s like that but also in reverse.   Before I tell you this story I should give you some background information. I got my first kidney stone about halfway through 5 th grade. At 10 I thought I was dying. it was a good run, right? Do you know who is not supposed to get kidney stones? 10-year-olds. My body tried its hardest to beat me up during my childhood (sure just your childhood). It eventually passed and I began m

Do you like hospital gowns, multi-part episodes, and censor bars? This week I continued the epic surgery story saga and I did an illustration. Hopefully, it will not get me in too much trouble (think of the children!). Enjoy! Last week I talked about an ER visit that led to two surgeries in a month which was a new record for me (overachiever). It was a month of anxiety, dark humor, pain, healing, loss, and a better outcome than I could’ve imagined. The whole month was an emotional overload for more reasons than just surgeries, reasons that I will talk about at some point in the distant future. Anyway, let’s get to the first surgery and title of this article. The thing about Duchenne and maybe just degenerative diseases, in general, is you get used to losing abilities. You get used to things only getting worse. That doesn’t mean giving up or that life can’t be meaningful, fun, and beautiful. It’s just that life goes in one direction and seldom deviates from that, at least in my case.  O

I had a rough month for many reasons but for this post, I'm only going to talk about my month-ish of surgeries. I’m going to try really hard this week not to make anyone cry. However, some of the descriptions of the surgeries might be graphic this is your warning. Also, I’m splitting this post into two parts. All right let’s get to the main part of this post. If someone looked like they had dozens of surgeries, it would be me. To put it another way, if you lined up all my friends, I would win most likely to get cut open (too graphic? Just wait). I've had one life-threatening surgery the rest have been minor. Tangent, when I was younger, I would have to explain that no surgery could fix my disease. Anyway, I could do a couple of posts about that first life-changing back surgery, and I will at some point. When I look at my life that surgery was one of the largest inflection points (wow…MATH!!). My month of surgery began at the end of December with an eight-hour ER visit.   My but