2 Months and 2 Days

 That is the elapsed time since I was hit on the 18th of June, and yes, time has definitely elapsed.  For someone wearing a neck brace covering a neck of undetermined brokenness (I'm scheduled for a Monday update with a CAT scan, and we'll see what purrs), I'd say I'm doing pretty well, but then again, if you listen to that, you're taking the evaluation of a fellow with a Traumatic Brain Injury who continues to think that phrase deserves Caps.  Still, I believe I can support that claim with evidence.  For example, I'm now comfortably at home having walked about 13 miles of the way here.  In fact, this past week, I was cut loose by physical therapy after my first full meeting, partly because I mentioned I am regularly hiking about 10 miles, and my therapist said that SHE couldn't do that.  Of course, at least she knows not to trust the brain injury guy and put me through a series of her hardest balance tests which I seemed to pass intact.

As for the other part of the brain bit, yes, I'm taking, at times, quite a bit longer to remember names used less than once a week, but by my, again questionable, evaluation, the cognition aspect seems acceptably intact, at least to me.  After all, I am able to write a blog post, and general consensus is, my poor humor, unfortunately, has survived intact. Oh well, better luck next time, or maybe comedy therapy?

So yes, a few weeks ago, once I was cleared to walk on my own without an immediate assistant (thank you to Adele and the gaggle of friends who were those wonderful helpers to me the first week or so home), I feel I graduated to "a life I could live".  This is not to say that my recovery is in any way done or that I plan to settle where I am, but knowing that I reached a sustainable level was a huge mental boon.  I wasn't unhappy before that, at least not during the parts I can remember, but my life was agreeable to me as a transition phase, not an end state.  Both in the hospital and the recovery facility, I was given rooms with a window, and I have commented that I had a pretty good view of the world I was missing.  Again, I don't begrudge this time, and to be fair, I could easily not have been lucky enough to experience it.  That is to say, I could be dead.  But I am, quite happily, alive, and the living me does bounce a bit happier when I can venture outside of my own free will.

And then there is the bike.  After all, the title of this blog is "The GOT Bike" and you might notice, the Guy allegedly On The Bike is substantially OFF any bikes for now.  The thing about a broken neck, it seems, the doctors, nurses, and physical therapists, big thanks to them all, prefer to not transform that state into a broken spinal cord, and what do you know, I'm in strong agreement with them.  So yeah, I'm easy to talk into two to three months (even more if needed) of cautiousness to avoid 40 years as a paraplegic.  Heck, I don't even need scratch paper to do that math, and I'm the guy with a Traumatic Brain Injury.  Even all my walks are currently with ski poles, brought along as tripping insurance because there are currently just far too many ways for me to hit the ground badly.  So yeah, the bikes are waiting for me, and I'm pretty optimistic about my abilities to maneuver one again, but for now, we all must sit (or walk a long way) quietly and wait.  In the mean time, maybe you can ride your bike for practical purposes every now and again with the bonus that your action will also give me a smile.  Yeah, ride a bike!  Thank you.