PTSD / Mental Health Recovery Expedition Day 12 – “Whoever Saves One Life Saves the World Entire.”
One man can make a difference. If even one man shows humanity to another, he demonstrates the continuing existence of humanity in society—
We all have a story to share, but it’s not about “the story”. It’s about what we have endured, learned and overcome in our story that is meant to be shared with others. While the entire world is locked down, this expedition is our only option to try to inspire and motivate those in our world who are feeling the pressure, stress, and negative energy that surrounds us all during these uncertain times.
Huston, we have a problem.
We finally made it 3/4 of the way up Goat Mountain after nearly 2 long weeks of flipping the tire, setting up base camps, swatting mosquitos, and enjoying our freedom out from the “web”, only to find ourselves standing at the base of a massive avalanche.
There’s no way we could just pack it in now and go home quite yet, we have come so far these past weeks and a little ice and snow wasn’t going to stop us from achieving our goal. So we decided to at the least hike up a bit to test the stability of the snow pack.
Not even within 20 feet of trying to hike up, we soon realized by looking around at all of the debris that had come down earlier this year, it was absolutely devastating and the rest of our journey was not going to be possible.
The power of this this avalanche had tore up and demolished centuries worth of Douglas Fir trees as if they were just tooth picks and the size of the boulders this thing had moved was astounding to witness the natural disaster it had left behind.
As we hiked up more we could see by the depth of this 20 – 30 – 60 foot deep avalanche their were small open crevasses that dropped into no mans land.
If one of us were to fall in, there would be absolutely no chance for rescue , our bodies would certainly not be found until late Sept.
Our lives, safety, Camp and all of our sponsors reputation’s are on the line here so this is the point in our expedition where we needed to set the ego aside and do the right thing and not even bother continuing to flip the tire up this extremely dangerous “ice a – lanche”.
I’m always one to say “no excuses”, but in this case, by not flipping our tire the rest of the way up because of a very unstable, 1 km long, solid ice avalanche with a flowing river of melt beneath our feet, this was more of a “instinctually wise decision”, than an excuse.
I felt really bad and for some reason, I felt as though I was letting people down.
I felt as though we failed on the first leg of our expedition, never has any sort of weather or height of any mountain ever stopped us right in our path in over 5 years .
I had already felt horrible enough and pretty let down before we had even got here a few weeks ago.
We were supposed to be flipping this tire with 6 others teams this month, teaching, sharing and experiencing our Camp My Way adventures, tools and knowledge with many of our friends in all emergency service departments.
This was supposed to be for them, for the people, for all of our friends around the world who would benefit from the actions and stories of our Campers as to the solutions to helping ourselves, our departments, families and communities to recovery and ( or ) prevent Suicide and substance abuse from continuing to ruin many lives.
There is certainly a lot more to this story than meets the eye, these words on a keyboard is by far the toughest way to try and effectively communicate this experience, the message, the tools and understanding of how our recovery works.
I had signed off of yesterday’s blog while deep in thought of our first PTSD awareness “Breaking the Chains BC” 30 kms in 30 days tire flip I remembered why today is so important for me and a honour to raise the Georgian Flag once again in memory of Nodar Kumaritashvili.
This gesture in itself, out of respect to Nodars Family, his country and ours brings me the greatest peace each time I’m able to raise it high upon any mountain top.
Most importantly, for me personally, I had given my word to the universe, to Nodar and his family under my breath in early 2014 while I lay in my hospital bed, a broken man looking out of the window I had whispered the words .. “one day I will walk again and the world will remember”.
( Side note , 11:38 May 15 2020 )
I sit for days wondering how to share my lived experience, the tools and the formula we can use each day to recover from and prevent Post Traumatic Stress from consuming our lives and our civilization.
How does a man express the mathematical equation in rational terms through language, pictures and words in a blog post ? The data that’s expressed from one human’s experience to the others to whom’s mind span is incapable of comprehending by design the answers.
I for one am unable to fathom this way of communicating and I find it extremely difficult to effectively give the answers with my thumbs on this device not to mention the over whelming amount of “time” it takes is completely unacceptable, resulting in nothing but frustration and confusion.
We are in a time where humans are only able to take in what we want, pending on how we perceive the information at a estimated rate of merely 3 words per 2 sentences ( 3 % accuracy ) depending on the frequency that human is operating on.
There will be a day, when we “the cyber monkey, humanoid”, will be able to understand the transmission / communication at a estimated rate of 100 million terabytes per second absorbed effectively with 100 % accuracy.
Until then .. I will try my best with what tools they have given us today – sadly , it wont be for many more years before this writing, these messages, my personal thoughts are understood and read correctly.
I do feel, it will not be a human reading these, nor will the information, wisdom, and knowledge be taken in by their eyes, rather through the digital brain where we will be unable to instinctively rationalize our emotions any longer.
As we evolve, we are adding to much digital, to much energy to much robotics to our brains and for good reason.
It is not my place to speak of this further .. Thank you for your time today.
Let the Games Begin Chapter 18, ( Feb 2014 )
Written by: Terrance J. Kosikar
Editor: David Newby
The day went by without a hitch, and then the night began. The music was great and the ladies were all screaming and packed wall to wall. The guys were having fun, the entertainment was smoking hot, and all my bros who volunteered to be shooter boys and waiters were having nice times too. I was in the back doing a few pushups and getting ready for my show. All the candles were burning, and everything was fine… until I went to put my leather chaps on. They wouldn’t zip up the sides. Ah man, I had trained my legs so hard for this year’s show that, I outgrew my chaps by about half an inch. Didn’t matter. You bet your ass I squeezed into them anyhow.
Just as I was pouring the baby oil on me, I got a text from Jackie. She said she was in the city waiting for me to be done my show. I just threw the phone in my bag. Pfft, too little too late Hunny Bee.
I had finally gotten the zippers on my chaps done up, and put on the wig and white dress cap for my Michael Jackson costume. I didn’t want to do the same old Paramedic show I did the year before, so this show was going to be “Smooth Criminal.” I slid across the dance floor, busting down some Michael Jackson moves, or at least I felt like I was. Either way, the crowd went wild. I danced a few minutes to Michael Jackson, and then the music switched over to Adele’s “Set Fire to the Rain” as I slowly took my suit off, and stripped down to just pants and a white top.
Out of nowhere, my music cut to some hardcore heavy metal thrash… it was time to start getting naked. I stood strong in front of the crowd of screaming ladies, and ripped my shirt open from the neck down. I rubbed my abs for a second and then off the pants went. I had Velcro on the sides so they tore away pretty easy. Ohhhh DAMN… tight black leather ass less chaps, a leather T-back, with a leather harness around my chest and a chain hanging from both nipples.
The crowd went crazy. Ah man, the adrenalin you get when you have hundreds of beautiful women screaming at you and smacking you on the ass, and running their nails down your chest! How else could you imagine spending your night filling your ego? I got all sexy and stood sideways, looking at the crowd as I slowly went down into sexy Jean Claude Van Damme splits. Just as I got to full frontal splits, BOOOOOM, I felt a massive explosion rivet down the back of both legs.
FUCK. I rolled back slightly as if that was meant to happen and immediately stood up. I thought I had just blown both my hamstrings at once. I tried to just jump up, but my lower half wasn’t responding to my mind. I got on one foot and muscled myself to my feet within seconds. Ahhh fuck, my crotch hurt. I don’t if you have ever torn a hamstring, but damn does it hurt.
But the show had to go on. I kept dancing for about another 10 minutes. I couldn’t believe this happened during the fast part of the show; my legs just weren’t moving as fast as they needed to. But I’ve been on a stage or two before and just payed it off with sexy body moves and interaction with the crowd.
Finally, just as the ladies were pouring hot candle wax all over my pretty much naked body, I couldn’t endure the pain any longer. I had to cut my show a little short, and walked off the stage to the back. The ladies were all still screaming and some were left still with hot wax to pour on me, but I just couldn’t bear it any more.
Photo: Joern Rohde
I got backstage and sat down immediately. Greggers came back and asked if I was OK. He knew my show wasn’t over, and something had to be wrong for me to leave the stage like that.
“I dunno Greggers, I think I tore both my hamstrings when I did the splits.” I looked down at my belly and it was starting to swell pretty fast—for what reason, I had no idea. I looked at him and said, “Call an ambulance man. Please.” The pain seemed to get worse and worse by the breath. A few minutes later, the paramedics showed up to my change room and asked what had happened. I told them, and they asked if I wanted to go to the hospital. I said yes, please, the pain is unbearable. My gut was sticking out so much it looked like I was pregnant, and it just kept filling up.
The medics tried to put me on the spine board because there was no way I could walk out. My legs were totally non-weight bearing. But the second they tried to put the board under me, I just screamed in pain. They hooked an IV up to me and I knew I had to tough it out and get on that board and get to the hospital as soon as possible. Something was very wrong. They took me out the back door and off to the hospital we went.
When we rolled in, everyone was looking at me kinda funny. A friend of mine, ER Doctor Paul Walden, walked up and looked at me.
“Terrance, what in the hell have you done this time?
The look on his face was absolutely priceless. I guess it’d been a while since he’d seen a patient come strolling into the ER completely covered in candle wax wearing only black leather motorcycle boots, a leather jock, a leather harness, and a chain hanging from both nipples. I have to laugh as I write this because I didn’t even think anything of it, but I can only imagine what those nurses and other patients thought.
The doctor had me go in for X-rays immediately. I had never felt anything like this before, and believe me, I had gone through a lot of painful injuries in my many years of fucking around. About 20 minutes later, I was well jacked up on painkillers, and Dr. Walden walked in my room. He said, “Well, you’ve really done it this time.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re going to need to go to the city now for surgery. You broke your pelvis in half.”
I looked at him and said, “PARDON?”
“You have what they call an open book fracture, and you need to go to the city now for emergency surgery.”
As he said that, it made me want to squirm, but there was no way I was squirming anywhere. I told him I couldn’t feel or move my legs anymore.
He said I might have severed the nerves inside there, but he couldn’t tell from the X-ray.
My gut sank. “Umm, what does that mean Paul, does that mean I will never walk or use my lover half again?”
“It all depends on what the surgeon sees inside, and how surgery goes.”
“Paul, be straight with me bro. Will I ever be able to walk again?”
He put his hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry. I just didn’t know how bad the damage is.” I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.
I think my teeth are still a bit chipped at the back from clenching them so tight after he left the room. I just laid there for about 20 minutes by myself. I wanted so bad to just scream and cry, but I had no more tears. I had no more screams, nothing left in me. My emotions at that point were fully depleted.
Paul knew I wasn’t doing very well and came into my room. He told me, “You sure are a strong guy. I don’t how you even let those paramedics get you off the stage and onto a spine board. An open book fracture like this is by far the most painful break in the human body.”
“Paul, they didn’t get me off the stage bro. When I felt what I thought was just my hamstring tearing, I got up right away and kept dancing for 10 more minutes before walking off the stage myself.”
He just looked at me like I was nuts. As cool and strong as I may have thought I was, it was the absolute most stupid thing I could have done. When you have a patient with a broken pelvis, it is absolutely vital to make sure you don’t even move them a millimetre the wrong way. Doing that risks severing a nerve and leaving your patient in a wheelchair the rest of his or her life.
I lay there and thought to myself that not only did I move a millimetre or two, I went and tore up that stage showing off like a dumbass for 10 more minutes afterwards.
No matter how much physical pain I was in, I needed my ego filled. I needed the screams, I needed the attention, I needed the love, I just needed that feeling. Not even a broken pelvis was going to try and stop me from getting it. I craved it and just had to have more and more.
On the way to the hospital, one of the paramedics was riding with me in the back of the bus. She was pretty funny and kept me feeling pretty positive about the whole situation. Mind you, I was jacked up on so much morphine that anything would’ve been funny. It was a long, 2-hour ride to Vancouver General Hospital. My first thought was to call my Angel, but reality set in. She didn’t care anymore. She was done with me, and the last thing I needed to hear from her was the same “Oh well, good luck with yourself” she had given me when I left 2 months earlier.
Then it dawned on me that Jackie was in the city waiting for me. I asked the paramedic if I could use her cell phone to call a friend to meet me at the hospital. She dialed Jackie’s number for me.
“Hey Hunnybee, its Boulda. I’m on my way to the city; can you meet me at the hospital?” “What do you mean, are you OK?”
“No, I broke my pelvis on stage and they are rushing me in for an emergency surgery.” “Oh my Gawd Boulda, of course I’ll see you! I’m leaving the hotel now.”
About an hour later, they rolled me out of the back of the bus, and to my surprise, Jackie was standing right there the second the gurney wheels touched the ground. I reached out to hold her hand and we were immediately rolled into the ER. They put me in a room and pretty much left us there for about 2 hours. I remember one of the nurses coming in every few minutes to give me more and more morphine. At this point, I had an endless morphine drip and a shot in the belly every 20 minutes. I kept asking them over and over to please bring me something to eat. They said I was not allowed to eat because they didn’t know when I was going to have the surgery. They did however bring me a wet Q-Tip to keep my lips wet.
We waited for hours, and Jackie and I talked and laughed the whole time. I was so grateful she was there for me, and I don’t know what I would have done if I had to be there all alone. But after about 15 hours had passed and nobody was telling us when the surgery was going to be, I said, “Fuck it, I’m outta here.” Jackie, go get me a wheel chair please.
She got me one, and I took the drip line out of my arm and escaped the hospital as fast as I could. I was starving, and I assumed there was a store or somewhere to eat close by. Of course, jacked up on so many pain meds, I decided that we would go down the hill to find someplace. It was much less painful to just roll downhill than it was to go up. The hill was so steep that Jackie had to pretty much drag her feet while I clenched my hands tight on the wheels in order not to take off and roll downhill through 2 kilometres’ worth of traffic lights.
This was crazy. Here I was in the middle of winter in the city, in my hospital gown, in a wheelchair, ripping down this road to a restaurant. I tell ya, when I set out on a mission, I will succeed no matter what.
We found a restaurant, and I ordered pretty much 2 appetizers, 2 main meals and a huge desert. But after an hour of sitting there, all the pain meds were starting to wear off fast. Ohh fuck what had I done?
When we left, we realized that we were going to have to get all the way back up that hill. There was no way that was possible. We waited for about 20 minutes for a cab to drive by and nothing. Nobody. We wheeled around for about another 20 minutes and finally found a cab. I’ll never be able to describe the pain of trying to get out of my wheelchair and into that cab. Brutal, man.
We got back to the hospital and the nurses were PISSED. They had been looking everywhere for me, wondering where the hell I went. I couldn’t just get up and leave like that!
I said to the lady, “I told you I was hungry.”
“Well, you’re lucky your surgery isn’t until tomorrow morning at 6 AM. You can eat all ya want until 10 PM, and then nothing more. Let’s go, your room is upstairs.”
Oh nice, I had my own room? The nurse helped me back onto the bed, wheeled me into an elevator and off to a different part of the hospital we went. As we entered this ward, I was kind of stoked. It was not so bright, and the rooms seemed to be more relaxing. People were sleeping and—it was nice, actually. This was like a suite at the Ritz Carlton—huge, with a big beautiful window looking out of the 6th floor. Jackie was tired, she said she needed to go back to the hotel and get some sleep. She’d come back in the morning and be there for me right after my surgery.
The next morning before surgery, the surgeon explained the procedure to me as he took out a blue marker and started drawing lines on my belly. He explained to me how they were going to cut me open from hipbone to hipbone and then insert this claw-like machine that would go under my muscles and organs, grab hold of my pelvis, and pull it back together. He said it was pretty risky because my pelvis was cracked a few inches up the back. He said that when they were done pulling me together, they would place a thick steel plate in the gap between and use 6 long screws to keep my pelvis in position.
Wow, not something I really was looking forward to, I’ll tell you that much. I just laid there and looked back up to the sky as a few nurses walked around me prepping me for this major surgery. I asked the surgeon if I would ever walk again. He said he couldn’t make me any promises, and that he’d have to see what was going on inside me when he cut me open.
I had to stay strong and try and keep positive. By this point in my life, I was certainly ready to accept my destiny as it came to me; I really had no choice. Just when I thought the last few years had been torture enough, now I needed to accept the fact that I might now be sentenced to a wheelchair for the rest of my life.
The nurses washed me up, and things started to go blurry. This was my last chance to just smile. As I felt my cheeks trying to do so, I could feel the tears wanting to roll down my face as my eyes lids started to close slowly from the anesthetic kicking in. Then, it was as though I had just blinked and I was
awake again in a different room, lights dim. All groggy, I tried to move, but I had no strength whatsoever. I tried to wiggle my toes—no chance, no feeling, I couldn’t move a millimetre from my chest down.
A few hours later, I woke up again in the elevator. The nurse said to me, “Your wife is here waiting for you in your room. She’s really excited to see you.”
I thought, “No way, MY WIFE?? Evangeline??” Ah man, my smile just lit up like you wouldn’t believe. My soul jumped for joy, but was soon a broken fantasy when I realized, oh shit, Jackie is going to be up there also.
I said to the nurse, “Can you take me back downstairs please, If my wife is up there I’m gonna end up with 2 broken legs also.”
She just smiled at me as she rolled me to my doom. As we got to my room, there was Jackie. I looked around and was like, “Where’s my Angel? Did she go to the car to get a baseball bat or did she show up, see Jackie and say, ‘fuck him man’?”
I asked Jackie where my Angel was. After all, the nurse had told me my wife was there.
Jackie said, “I’m your wife silly, don’t you remember? We got married like 2 years ago.”
Oh man, here we go. Twilight zone.
She looked at me all serious then busted out with laughter. She says she had to tell the nurses that so she could wait for me in my room.
The surgeon came up about 6 hours later. We spoke and he said to me, “well, the surgery went well, but I can’t say if you’ll ever walk again. It all depends on how easy you take it, and how you heal up inside. If anything though, you’re more than likely going to be in a wheelchair for at least a year, and crutches for another year after that.”
My heart just sank. It took everything I had to hold on to the hope that, at least in 2 years, I might walk again. I held onto that possibility as my only lifeline, my only hope. The only thing I needed to focus on was getting to walk again.
But oh man, how was I going to eat, where was I going to live, and how would I pay for rent, heat, transportation, physiotherapy? I just asked for more morphine and a few more shots of pain meds in my gut. The nurse came in a few minutes later and said she needed to take the catheter out.
“What??”
She said yeah, I had a rubber hose in my penis and she needed to take it out. Could someone please just shoot me now?
All I could do was just lie there like a total vegetable. There was one guy across the room from me in his own curtained-off area, and I could hear him talking on the phone to someone about what sounded like a drug deal. When he got off the phone, I yelled out to him, “Hey bro, ya getting a delivery?”
“Yeah, man.”
I looked over at the bag that we had brought from the club to the hospital. It was full of 5 and 10 dollar bills from my tips.
“Order me some too, man. What can ya get?”
“I just ordered a bit of jibb and a bit of down.” Meth and heroin, in case you don’t know.
“Can ya get some rock?”
“Yeah.”
“Grab me a 50 piece and a halfer of jibb will ya?”
Within a half hour, our dope was delivered. It took me that entire half hour just to get out of my bed on my own, and over to my bag to get a hundred out to pay with.
Before you knew it, I was wheeling my way down the hallways looking for a soda machine to get a can to smoke my rock. The pain and the thought that I had just gotten out of surgery 2 days earlier didn’t faze me. All that mattered was getting that can and getting outside for a huge blast. Might I remind you I still have my drip line with me as I’m on the mission? That shit ain’t easy: trying to roll a wheelchair, and drag your drip cart with you.
I know every addict out there understands what I mean by this mission. NOTHING will stop us from taking that toke. It could be minus 45 degrees outside, wind chill of minus 100, with no matches or ashes, but we will get that fucker lit up one way or the other. Wheelchair-ridden 2 days out of surgery, broken pelvis or not, I assure you it was only a matter of time before I found myself peeking out of the side of my head in the bushes by the hospital.
I remember just how paranoid that first ringer got me. Drool was leaking out of the side of my mouth as I tried to break off another chunk while preventing the wind from blowing the few ashes I had on my can.
Geezus. Yes, it was only about 3 degrees out, and here I was in a hospital gown wheeling my way from bush to bush with my drip line, sketching out toke after toke. I was down to my last dime toke, so I thought I might as well make it a doozy. I sprinkled a few nugs of meth on top. Meth doesn’t burn very well in ashes but you don’t think that well after a few tokes of crack. Combined with all the morphine I was on, you don’t really think that it gave me any sense of reality, do you?
My hands were numb, and I was shivering like a leaf in a hurricane. After that toke, I just sat there wanting to die. Then, I got the idea that I dropped a piece back about 2 bushes ago. I spent at least another 2 hours outside searching the bushes from my wheelchair looking for a rock that I never dropped in the first place. Plus, I must have scraped that can so hard to get every last bit of resin out of it that I think I was really only smoking the paint and metal shavings.
Talk about total psychosis. Have you ever heard of people talking about having an out-of-body experience before they die? This is the same, but the problem is, it’s a real-in-the-moment living hell, a place where you cannot escape or make any decisions, a place where your mind runs itself and you have zero control of it. It’s a place where visions pop into your head that are not even close to real, but to you, they are. It’s the most frightening feeling any human can ever endure.
It’s a place where you think you see bugs crawling on your skin, while at the same time, the voices of your loved ones echo over and over. While you see nothing but the bugs and hear nothing but the voices, your heart aches. Your pain is so deep, it’s almost as though pure poison is attacking your nervous system, and every breath you breathe feels like your last. You hope for it to be your last, but there’s no sort of reality to any of your thoughts. It’s almost as if every bad experience you have ever had comes at once. Every voice you’ve ever heard echoes, while every tear you’ve cried, every hurt you’ve ever felt, every bad thought or dark place you’ve been in in the real world, all come back to haunt you uncontrollably at once.
All your brain keeps saying is, “Take more, just one more toke, one more bump. You will climb above this nightmare. Go ahead. One more.”
You keep taking more and more and get deeper and deeper into TOTAL KAOS.
Welcome to hell.
The uncontrolled demon that lurks within us all awakes, and ensures that you have no control. Not only that, but it will convince your that this is where you want to be. You don’t try to escape it; you only dig our grave deeper and deeper with each breath. Every heartbeat is another shovel of dirt over your shoulder.
Don’t think for a minute we are actually consciously thinking these thoughts or feeling these feelings; these symptoms are in a part of our brain that humans have no idea exists. And even when they do arise and you begin down this path, I have only met a handful of people who have escaped its grip. Most never leave for good. They only get out for a few days until they can find a way to get more substance to take them back.
That’s the insane part of it all. When you think about it, you think one would never want to go there after this experience, but that’s what the drugs do to our mental process. Our pains and our realities are so bad that we actually look forward to going back to that hell just to escape the moment. Coming down from the high and waking up 3 days later is about the only time we have any sort of reality, and it’s then when you say, ah haa, it wasn’t that bad—this reality sure is though, so let’s go back.
Life has to be pretty awful to think that escaping into psychosis is better than living your current reality. Our subconscious has tricked us into thinking that at least that escape to hell is a feeling, something better than the reality of our lives and all that we have lost. Think about it, things have to be pretty rough when all you have to look forward to is your eyes rolling around in your head, when all the hurt, tears, and pain you have endured your entire life is the only place you have to go just to feel something.
It’s brutal.
When I came out of the bathroom that morning, it was a completely different world. It was reality. The sun was up and my bed was still soaked from sweating in it for 2 days before I went out on a tear.
I wheeled myself over to the window and looked out at the world getting on with life. It reminded me of 14 years earlier when I was sitting in my prison cell 23 hours a day. I remember that when we were let out of our cages, I would go sit by the window, look out through the skinny 6 inch wide glass to a highway and wonder if I’d ever get out of there. I would think of how nice it would be just to be free, just to have friends to talk with, just to go eat when I wanted or walk to a park and just sit and listen to the birds sing. I wanted someone to go home to, someone to love me. The day dreams of one day being released back into reality are the only thing a man has to keep him from completely losing his mind.
I thought back to the days when I was locked up in the hole for 42 days for fighting. Twenty-four hours a day, 42 days straight, only getting to come out 1 hour every 3 days for a shower. No store, no phone calls, no visits, no sunlight, no clue what time of day it was. The only thing my body knew was when chow was coming. No clocks on the wall, no TV, nothing.
I remember it like was yesterday: looking out the little 10 inch by 10 inch cell window on my door, out to the wall across the guard walk. I would lie there, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, month after month, daydreaming about how I was going to run my life around when I got deported back to Canada, and one day work for Search and Rescue, or even a fireman.
I did just that, and 14 years later, after all that hard work risking my life and health for the public, I somehow found myself back in that cell again looking out to the world. Only this time, I was unsure if I would ever walk, and I certainly wasn’t very motivated to have many day dreams. I had done it all, I had chased all my dreams and accomplished them, I had nailed every goal and then some.
But the problem was this time I had let my survival guard down and relied on a government-run system to protect me, to help me if I served them as a good slave. I allowed them to take my money every paycheque, I allowed them to push me around and control my every step, my every dream. We give them our trust and our hard earned dollars only to get completely shafted in the ass. They don’t even spit on it first; they just slam it to you, whether you like it or not.
I spent 15 years in the street and 15 years working for the “good guys,”
I will say, living and working for the “good guys”, on this side of the tracks, is 100 times far more corrupt than “the people” have any clue. Most probably think it or feel it, but are too comfy in their own personal situation to actually say it or voice it. And from experience, I’ve yet to meet anyone who has waked the paths that I have to even live to tell the story. Take my observation only from one man’s point of view.
I do not like any of the legal systems that are in place, the education system, the ways of life and how society is run, it’s really only a matter of time before it all collapses ass backwards, and by the time the masses figure it out, It will be too late.
Imagine if you had millions of slaves to look after? How would YOU run it?
Let them feed themselves, let them have maybe 2 days off per week, but everything you or they will do, is only meant to or driven by making money, money, money, no not for us. We must pay pay pay, and as long as we keep paying, we can keep living, but the minute we are broken, or to old, we are of no use any longer.
As I lay in that bed, it just so happened to be the first few days of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics and I wondered if they had anything to say with respect to Nodar and the so called “accident” from the 2010 games.
For the first time in 4 very long years, I looked up the 2014 Games on a computer, their was a article by the New York Times ( I think ) and was a interview with Nodars father Davit. He mentioned that since the 2010 Games Nodars Mother Dodo had attempted suicide and even so much as still brought dinner to his room, later to share it with the kids in the neighbourhood. If I had tears left at this point they would have certainly shed down my cheeks, but what caught my attention also was when Davit said ” Our only wish is for the world to remember our Son”.
You can bet your ass that when I sat there in my wheelchair looking out the window that day, I didn’t fantasize about any new career. I didn’t fantasize about anything. I looked up, smiled and said, “I’m going to do everything and anything I possibly can to make sure I walk again, run again, and come back from this 10 times stronger and make sure that one day, the world will remember Nodar Kumaritashvili.
I will rise up and be respected, appreciated, and loved by the good people who understand this life.” I wanted to make sure that one day my voice would be heard, and that one day I might do something that helped people like me not have to suffer or walk the same footsteps that I have walked for so many years. One day, watch and see. One day.
That dream felt good for a second. But in reality, a few minutes later it took me another half hour just to get from my chair to my bed and get all jacked up on morphine again.
Pffft, who was I kidding. I’d been saying shit like that that my whole life, and look where it got me.
I thought to myself, “Who is responsible for this, how did I fucking end up this way?” When you are sentenced to be bedridden for who knows how long, you have a lot of time to think of who’s responsible, and who can help you. So I wheeled myself to the nurses’ station and asked if I could please send an email to Terry Wright asking for another sit-down, an email that I thought would be very important to my future and actually getting my life back.
I was broken and weak, and I had lost all my confidence. I had zero direction or motivation; I was all alone and completely lost. I only had one person I could reach out to, the person who I knew was my only real friend, the one person who I felt had an eternal bond with.
My beautiful Angel.
I called her and begged her to let me come home to try and heal. I had nobody to take care of me; I had been stripped naked of all my pride. My spirit at this point was completely shattered into a thousand little pieces and truly felt more alone in the world than I had in my entire life.
She came and got me from the hospital about 9 days later.
When I got home, it was a nice feeling to be back in my own bed. It had been months, and it was great to just lie on the floor, as crippled as I was, snuggle-wuggling with my bulldog Meathead.
I lay around the house for about 3 days and was going absolutely nuts in my head. The last few years and all the people that helped me get to that day were really boiling me up. I had 2 choices. I could either lay there and suffer and place blame on everyone else but me, or I could scrape my sorry, pathetic, broken ass up and go do something about it. I didn’t have the time or the mind strength to just sit around waiting for the tooth fairy to bring me my damn waking legs again. If I wanted to walk again, I needed to go work for it.
I was supposed to be in a wheelchair around my house, but it was certainly not wheelchair friendly. Besides, there was no way in hell any kind of wheel chair was going to plow its way thought the 6 feet of snow along the walk way to my front door. Fuck it man.
I got some crutches and dragged my ass to the road every morning where my good Bro Mike Gordon picked me up in his truck. He’d drop me off at that Meadow Park sports centre and I’d stay there nearly 10 hours a day, 7 days a week.
I would first roll into the boxing studio and put my wraps on.
It took me about a half hour just to change into my workout shorts and shirt. I know I couldn’t walk, but I just told myself that I would one day. I would then get my skipping rope out and go through the grueling task of trying to learn how to skip in my wheelchair.
No, this isn’t what you think. Basically, you go through the motions like you’re skipping, but and the same time you must roll your wheels trying to time it so that each time you rolled over the rope, you’d have to swing around immediately and then push your wheels with perfect timing to keep going across the aerobics room floor.
For the first week or two, I’d get a staff member to come and help me hang the heavy bag. I’d sit there for hours and hours hitting that bag, determined, focused, and always believing I would one day walk again. The voice of the surgeon telling me I might not ever walk again, or that I’d be in the chair for a year really pushed me to conquer those depressing thoughts.
After a few hours on the heavy bag and trying to do little pull ups, I would head upstairs to the gym to hit the weights. I’ll never forget the feeling of being in the little tiny wheel chair elevator.
When that door closed in front of me, I just closed my eyes and believed in myself and my recovery. Never for a second did I ever say or think this was permanent. I’d hit weights for another hour or two. I was amazed how many things I found I could try to do from my chair.
Then I’d go downstairs again, change into swim trunks, and roll myself into the pool. Fuck man, flopping into a pool without the use of your legs is scary.
Your mind says, swim, but your legs just don’t move I’d put 2 flutter boards under me and just float nice and slow, lap after lap, hour after hour every day.
Within only 2 1/2 months of extremely hard work, determination, and discipline,
I was back to kick boxing again and was just as strong if not stronger than I was before I had went into surgery.
How does any of this relate to PTSD / Mental Health Recovery and our Expedition ?
Undergoing any major surgery is also a root cause for PTSD, Mental, Emotional challenges we face, ice the cake with copious amount of pain killers is one of the leading contributing factors to substance abuse. It all starts right in the very hospital we came to get help from in the first place.
Please, do not get me wrong here, I am forever grateful for the amazing doctors, surgeons and medical staff who have helped me recover, but I feel a lot more can be done for us while we lay in our beds contemplating our lives and what just happened and what will happen for many if we are not given the tools, education and ( truth ) when we under go a major surgery.
For me today, flipping this tire shackled in chains is simply part of my person formula that must be used each and everyday in order to maintain my health, strength, mind, and spiritual connection to self on this earth.
Today, May x 2020 – Our word is kept, the Georgian flag has been raised, and we do remember Nodar Kumaritashvili.
“Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.” … The quotation supports the theme that one man can make a difference. If even one man shows humanity to another, he demonstrates the continuing existence of humanity in society—
Your Friend, Our Voice
Terrance J. Kosikar
Photos by the one and only Jillian A Brown
This Camp My Way Expedition is in partnership with The Surrey Firefighters Charitable Society and Surrey Honda Mental Health Initiative Fundraiser.
Very special Thank you to all of our friends and the good people out there who have helped support the Raffle.
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