re: The Butterfly Effect: Tiny Things that Changed Your Life

After a coma in 2016 I lost my ability to walk to atrophy and my balance was completely destroyed by repeated emergency operations on my abdomen (core). As late as the winter of 2019 I could only walk with the aid of a walker. Anything more than 50 feet or so and I was confined to a wheelchair. I couldn't so much as step off a curb without assistance or I would fall over.

I was 40, 5'9", 250 lbs, and in a wheelchair. The future did not seem sweet.

I'd do all the recommended exercises and physical therapy but eventually hit a wall and never progressed. My doctors and therapists assured me I was doing well and told me not to expect to progress much further. I was pretty depressed about this, obviously.

And then one day, I was sitting on the couch, perusing the OT as usual, and I just decided "frick this, I'm taking a walk." Walker and all, I struggled to get outside and just told myself to make it around my building.

A couple of weeks worth of daily walks later and I started looping the block. The walker is replaced with a cane.

I'll spare you all the milestones, but fast forward two years, and, I'm averaging 15 miles a day, with a rucksack. The cane is long gone. I'm 5'9, 155 lbs now and in better shape than I was as a 20 yo infantryman. It gets to the point that it's probably obsessive, the constant urge to go further and faster.

Fast forward again to 2023 and I'm a cook at a busy restaurant. It's my dream job. Feel free to laugh, but that was my first job, and I'd always wanted to go back to it. The camaraderie, pressure, controlled chaos, and dark humor of a kitchen is the closest civilian equivalent I've found to my time in the army. I just thought I was too old and slow to handle it.

I'm on my feet, in constant motion, and relying on my balance all the time. I appreciate being active, in motion, blood pumping, waaaay more than I did before the coma.

It's changed so much about me and it's also inspired my son to lead a physically active life after seeing what it did for me. Oh, and he stands right next to me on the line, cooking every night. We went from an objectively bad relationship 5 years ago, to being best friends, coworkers, and hiking partners.

And it all started with that one oweo post that made me say "frick this, I gotta get out of the house."

So you’re saying reading the OT was so shitty that it motivated you to overcome a severe debilitating injury and successfully start a new life?

Well. Okay.

Point made.

quote:

---

northshorebamaman

---

Damn. Good on you man


Your post reads content AF

First time a girl swallowed was life changing for me personally
—-Tiny thing, huh?

1996 ACL tear. "I could have been an contenda."

Not as interesting or off chance, but a local businessman and zealot for AU in my town (we went to the same church) got my name from some other kid he’d suckered into being an Auburn fan when I was 8 or so. He took me and a couple other church kids to some directional school game and it changed my life. Not a single Auburn tie before that.

Met my wife there, etc. Good thing my parents let me leave the state with a relative stranger, I guess.

Wanted to be an AF pilot, was told no in ROTC. Crushed, I quit, grew my hair long.

After a couple of years, I graduated. I moved home and was washing planes at a flying club and working on finishing my private pilot's license, before I moved into the real world. My dad had given me my PPL for my 14th birthday but I always had a summer job and played sports, so I could never string together enough flights to finish. He said, move home, finish and move out.

Ran into a family friend that I hadn't seen in 4-5 years. I knew he was in the AF reserves and he asked me in our conversation, "are you still trying to fly?"

I told him what I was doing and he told me I needed to apply to the unit next to his, they couldn't keep pilots. Well, it took nearly 2 years, but I got hired, sent to OTS and pilot training. Now, 25 years later, I'm still trapped flying in the AF. That dickhead.

quote:

---

How much different would my life be if I didn't get curious about that newsletter mailing list, or never sent that simple little email?

---

I think about things like this often.
What’s the chance, with billions of perspective female mates in the world, that each of us ended up with the exact right one?
I’m thinking that’s slim odds, unless you believe in things like fate.