We're on Our Way…
From myself:
Is life not, in itself, an exercise in futility, and death merely that inevitable mercy which frees us from the suffering that is being and renders all of our lives’ works meaningless and without worth to the individuals responsible for them?
11 years ago, today, a Friday, I got a headache so I took a nap; I woke up six weeks later with a tracheostomy, and couldn’t understand why I couldn’t talk or move.
Turns out while I was sleeping, my mom heard odd snoring, so she checked on me and found me in a seizure.
I was having a spontaneous brain hemorrhage due to an undiagnosed brain malformation, I was rushed to the hospital, where doctors informed my mom what was happening and told her they could either keep me comfortable until I died, or she could OK an emergency craniotomy to remove part of my skull and install a shunt, to relieve pressure on my brain.
I left the operating room, with a third of my skull missing, removed in three pieces.(I figure after removing each piece, things were worse than expected, so more had to be removed)
I had no idea what kind of trauma I, or my friends and family, were going through. The surgery was successful, and I was life flighted to a bigger hospital the next morning, where no one was confident I would wake up. A month later, I did wake up and began, out of necessity, my recovery.
RIP 4/6/12
The Holocaust is a major issue that Germans are forced to face. Do you believe it is important to address the darkness of the past in order to move on? Or is it better for a nation to fully embrace the present and ignore the past wrongdoings? For example, discuss the Black Lives Matter campaign in the U.S. and America’s attitude towards its past practice of slavery.
In America, I believe Americans are expected to forever writhe in guilt over an institution, slavery, that wasn’t even founded in racism, but in geographic and economic convenience.
America is no longer a systemically racist country, as evidenced by the fact that some of the most economically successful groups in our country are African migrants.
As a Gambian American, I wish more people would see BLM for what it really is, as freed slave, Booker T Washington, put it in the 19th century, when he said, “There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public.”
Black Lives Matter is a perfect example of the class of people Booker T Washington was speaking of; As BLM raised billions of dollars off the backs of black suffering, excused and enabled, the burning of black neighborhoods, by thousands of, mostly suburban, white, liberals.
BLM spent two years fomenting racial hatred in black neighborhoods for the profit of a small, black, and now elite, minority, who used the organizations funds to buy mansions for themselves(i.e. Patrice Cullors).
Let’s celebrate what we are not told about slavery; America’s heroic efforts to abolish slavery around the world. To the point that, we even used American warships to intercept incoming slave ships, who were still importing African slaves to Brazil. In the post war period after, the unjust, Civil War of Aggression perpetuated by the North upon the South, in order to maintain economic hegemony over a seceding South, America and it’s European allies traversed the entire planet in an effort to abolish slavery globally, by intercepting Arab slave traders off the eastern coast of Africa, and likewise, Brazilian slave traders off the coast of South America. So, in regards to slavery, instead of dwelling in guilt for sins modern Americans bear no responsibility for, let’s teach and celebrate the heroism of Vermont and Pennsylvania, respectively, for being the first and second places is the world to abolish slavery. Let’s build museums to celebrate the heroism of the United States, and its European allies, for spending untold amounts of blood, treasure, and time, to abolish slavery across the entire world.
We move on by declaring victory over the moral scourge of slavery, as we should’ve a century ago. We move on with celebration. We won!
Hello world,
It’s Matt here, I’m writing just to write right now. How you like that sentence? My life has been slow this 2022. I finished the Duolingo Chinese course last week, so now, I can speak English, German, and Chinese! I just wish I took to programming languages as well as I do foreign ones. If I did I might be meaningfully employed and financially independent.
I’ve been attending college for some reason. I guess I’m searching for purpose in places it is not to be found, in this case, a textbook. I received my software specialist certificate, and I am continuing work on a computer science degree, which requires far too many pre requisites unrelated to the actual skill of programming, network engineering, or, really any employable skill.
The depth of my existential crisis can scarcely be conveyed to layman, but I’ll save that for another time. I just thought I’d let anyone generous enough to be reading this know that, I have published an 8-page essay I wrote on arteriovenous malformation(AVM), or as I call it, the, now detonated and defused, “ticking time bomb” in my brain. It is an essay that draws from scientific research, and my personal experience, having spent six weeks in a coma, and forfeiting my prior athleticism as payment for the continuation of my existence. The essay is well sourced, and everyone who has read it, has been impressed and informed by it. If your interested in what exactly led me here, how I experienced being in a coma, and waking up, please read my essay here.
I wrote this in reponse to a college journal prompt:
I am a positive, persistent, and consistent person.
The first quality I wrote in my positive affirmation, was that I am positive. I demonstrated positivity a lot when I first woke up from a coma, and I dedicated myself to physical recovery from my stroke. Over the past few years, my posiitivity has waned into a sense of defeatism, and the purpose of it’s inclusion in my affirmation is to help me regain the sense of positivity required for me to be successful in life despite my disability.
The second quality I added to my positive affirmation was persistence. I have demonstrated persistence a lot throughout my life, whether in skateboarding or in my stroke recovery. One specific case in which I demonstrated my inner persistence was in November 2012. In July that year I was told by an ear, nose, and throat doctor(ENT) that I would never be able to eat, drink, speak, or breathe on my own again. This flew in the face of my goal of regaining my ability to eat by Thanksgiving, so I couldn’t accept that as my fate. My persistence in this goal lead me to work with a new speech therapist who also didn’t expect to give up on my lofty goal of eating by Thanksgiving, I persisted in applying the exercises she gave me, eventually passed a barium swallow study to drink nectars, and I went ahead doing headlifts and drinking nectars until, finally, on the last Friday before Thanksgiving, I met with my speech therapist and informed her with the help of my mother, that I hadn’t aspirated when swallowing my saliva in at least a month, so we scheduled another swallow study the following Monday, just 3 days before Thanksgiving, with the hope that I would pass to drink liquids this time.
I went into the hospital and up to the x ray room with my therapist and mother that Monday. I was transferred into a cardiac chair, and wheeled in front of the x ray machine where I proceeded with the swallow study. First, drinking thickened water laced with barium to confirm my earlier passage of drinking nectars, and then to test my epiglottis’s handling of liquid water laced with barium. The barium glowed in imaging under the radiation of the x ray, It flowed down my esophageal tubing, revealing that my swallow had indeed progressed to the point where I wouldn’t aspirate on thin liquids. Then, as if on impulse and to my surprise, in one final attempt to reach my goal of eating food at Thanksgiving, my therapist offered me a solid cookie. My eyes widened, we hadn’t planned for this.
It was the first time I had been offered solid food in 7 months! I couldn’t refuse, and she obliged by dunking the shortbread cookie in chocolate pudding, and using the pudding as a paste on which the barium could cling to track the passage of the cookie as I swallowed in front of the x ray. I would be a liar to say chewing for the first time after so long didn’t feel strange, but chew I did, and I chewed fearlessly, all of my persistence in defying Doctor’s predictions had led me here, it was my last chance to prove I would be eeating at Thanksgiving as I had been working towards. To everyone present’s glee, I didn’t aspirate, I swallowed the cookie confidently and without choking, it was confirmed, I would be enjoying a turkey dinner that Thursday. When I left, my therapist cried tears of pride for my accomplishment. I went home, and ate my first meal in 7 months that night: bacon, eggs, and hash browns. During those 7 months on tube feedings, I had smelled bacon, but never ate anything at all, so that was my chosen first meal. And that Thursday in November, I enjoyed turkey, then I set about defying another of that same doctor’s predictions, to relearn how to breathe entirely on my own, and earn the removal of my tracheostomy…
The final quality I wrote of in my affirmation was consistency. I chose this quality because it is going to be necessary to my college success. I demonstrated consistency over 5 years, during which I rode my skateboard on average 4 hours a day, sometimes spending 12 hours at the skatepark in one day. This consistency earned me sponsorships and top 3 placements in competitions, and applying the same consistency will surely lead to college success.
Today doesn’t feel different from any other day, but on this night 10 years ago, I underwent the first of three brain surgeries that would remove about a third of my skull to save my life from a spontaneous brain hemorrhage.
I don’t know if I should be overcome with grief or anger, but I’m not, so maybe that means I’m too numb, or it’s just a healthy sign of acceptance.
To say the lofty ideals I began this journey with have left me underwhelmed is an understatement.
I will always feel a profound sense of loss.(It’s shocking to see how young I was in these photos), but I’ve accepted that recovery will be a lifelong challenge of adaptation and discovery, but that’s kind of what I committed myself to at the start of this. Although with very different expectations.
Today, I will be practicing gratitude for gaining ten extra years, rather than mourning the loss of ten years.
I just did 120 situps and my arm exercises.
On Saturday there will be a BBQ at Bear Creek Skatepark to celebrate these additional ten years of life and recovery, I hope to see you all there, come say hi, skate and bring your friends!
As 2020 draws to an end, I’ll take this opportunity to update those who follow me on here as to how my year has gone, and how I hope to move forward in 2020.
In January I moved into an apartment of my own, which was a huge way to kickoff the year! Unfortunately despite being located directly on the bus line to the gym, this has been my most inconsistent year in the gym/pool since 2016 due to restrictions.Despite that, I’ve worked out nearly everyday, including consistent use of my bike thanks to having my own space.Living on my own has been a huge step towards independence, as caregivers only stop by in the mornings and evenings, so I’ve been forced to pick up new skills in recovering my independence.I crossed the 8 year mark in my recovery, but I try not to pay much attention to arbitrary milestones.Besides kidney stone surgery, getting hit by a truck in a crosswalk, and being locked down, I’ve spent this year expanding my knowledge of philosophy through audiobooks while adding weight to my dumbbell.
I recently began mentally outlining my book, and have already written an opening poem to it.In my cultural curiosity, I’ve practiced learning Chinese for over 35 days now, and have been putting together the software knowledge to produce a video of my progress in learning it.My goals in 2021 are to write my book, start producing videos about my experiences and ways to cope with/overcome disability, acquire more digital marketing clients, and take myself more seriously as a music producer and content creator.I hope we can all step forward together and make next year better than this past one.Cheers, I’ll see you all in 2021.
Hello everyone. Long time, no blog, but I have some updates I meant to write about at the start of this year, 2019(it’s been a tough one). To start the year off, my mm and I were evicted in January. I left my house on the 31st and moved in as a roommate with a longtime friend.
I was extremely lucky to move in with my friends because I really had nowhere to go, it was also their first day moving in, and it was just so last minute. It’s been a hard year, as they tend to be. I’ve probably cried more this year than any other I can remember.
I cried the day after we got evicted, as soon as I got back from the gym after working out with my trainer Diahanne, as you may remember I have been doing over the past few years to further my stroke recovery. I cried that day out of humility and perhaps shame. I cried because I was receiving so much support from people with no biological relations to me, but also because I am even in a position to need so much help. Nevertheless, I’m grateful for the people in my life who have been so supportive recently and over the years, it feels like I have several maternal figures in my life who aren’t related to me. My support system is invaluable especially given that my mother moved back to our hometown on the other side of the continent, which was yet another source of angst for me this year.
So, this has been I guess my first year of homelessness, and now I’m looking for a new place to live with a housing voucher because our house is getting sold, and my roommates and I need to move. Leave a like and a comment if you’d like more updates to this blog, 2019 was a journey, and I may have stories I can share about my progress in stroke recovery and my extracurriculars over the past year.
Hello all, excuse my prolonged absence, but in case anyone is interested, I believe my last recovery update was about how my friend, Ann Ning, successfully found a trainer locally willing to help me recover from the disability caused by my stroke and even raised over $8K to help finance it!(fundraising is ongoing to cover the expenses of my recovery at The Magic Wand at shreddedgrace.com. The content of this blog has often been morbid, but training thrice weekly and making progress has done some to lift my spirits, so I’m trying to blog more.
In training, we’ve shifted focus from getting in the pool to working out in the gym, which has allowed us to focus on more functional goals, like bed mobility and strength. This shift has been necessary and beneficial to my recovery. I’ve learned several new functional movements in the gym thanks to working in a gravity bound environment instead of in the pool. I’ve also started going to vocational rehab, which specializes in finding employment opportunities for people with disabilities, and they are supporting and helping me to start a business that aims to improve quality of life among the disabled and their caregivers through the development and supply of assistive technologies and rehab equipment that increase the ability of the disabled to live independently. Movement has been slow on my business so far, mostly due to finding an original name and product designer, but now that I’ve come up with a name, things are poised to move forward in 2019 with product development and launch, which is exciting.
As you can hopefully tell, I stay busy(did I mention, I include an hourly workout routine at home on my days off?), but I will try to blog regularly. I hope you’ll be reading. This photo is one of myself pushing up into a seated position from side lying in the gym, I remember working on this and being unable to do it in 2013, so it took awhile, but thanks to the help of my trainer, I’ve gained enough strength to surpass this long awaited milestone this year.
Who but I?
Filled with naive optimism and youthful arrogance.
Stagnated their progression and postponed opportunity?
Just to be disappointed and distressed?
Agonizing to shuffle a foot forward in tardy progress.
Who but I?
In absence of wisdom, ignored invaluable advice?
Filled with naive optimism and youthful arrogance.
My mistakes in hindsight.
Agonizing to shuffle a foot forward in tardy progress.
I find myself stuck, sand burping below, sediment crumbles in my hand as I claw myself out of the abyss.
Who but I?
en Route 