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I was recently reading a post by @jennifer78 about her near death experience. This got me thinking that I don't really share much about my life, I share my interests but not really much about me other than music I like and my gym training.
So for this series A Window into my Life I will be sharing things about me which I guess I don't really share with anyone.

I would like to encourage other Steemit users to kick off their own version of this series using the tag #windowinmylife
I think this could be a really great way to get to know people better.

To Participate just use the tag and post 1 post per month, where you share something which had dramatically impacted you life. I'm sure we will see a huge range of cool posts.

Yesterday I shared a part of my life, in rather vivid detail which is something I never share in that much detail. If you missed that post you can check it out here.
I had to cut the post off and leave out a lot of the other details like recovery because I could see the post would be huge. So today I would like to share the recovery process in detail.

☠️ Road to Recovery ☠️

 

When the accident happened I was extremely lucky that I didn't lose my arm. The doctors told me that if it was even slightly more worse than it was they would have removed it, and normally they do when there is such a high level of damage. But because I was young they decided to save it, and push the boundary of what they can do. Plus I was fortunate that a really exceptional surgeon was flown in to Adelaide for a different person who needed specialist surgery, so I got the benefit of having him in town.

After surgery the next day I could not even move my fingers, and had to really struggle to even get a faint twitch out of them.
The Doctor told me that although we saved your arm, you will never have your strength or range of movement back. He also told me that I would have chronic pain and hyper sensitivity in that arm for the rest of my life.
This struck a nerve with me and from that moment I was determined to prove them wrong.
I kept trying to move my fingers from that moment on, all day I kept trying again and again.

Also it's worth noting that major parts of my arm started to die, from loss of blood flow.

Day 1 I couldn't stand, I had lost so much blood I needed 3 blood transfusions and did require more, but the doctors gave me the option of having more blood transfusions of letting my body regain that blood naturally. So I decided to build it back naturally.
I have never been so weak in my life, something as simple as going to the toilet was a massive challenge.

Day two I could make my fingers twitch. It was only a slight twitch but they were responding better than day 1.
Again all day I just kept trying to move them.

Day 3 and I had enough of hospital, and just wanted out of there. They urged me to stay in a few more days, but I wasn't having a bar of that so I went through the dispatch process.
When I was discharged I had to have an appointment with the occupational therapy department, and had to come back every week for specialist help.
At the first appointment they gave me plasticine to grip for my exercises, but I still couldn't make a fist at that stage and could only wriggle my fingers a little bit.

The next week I just kept moving my fingers and after about a week I was trying to make a fist, it took me about another week before I was starting to make a fist. I could now start using the plasticine to start trying to build my grip strength back.
I also got a heap of exercises from my occupational therapist, as I didn't have really any range of movement in my wrist and my elbow range of movement wasn't all that great.
So for the following weeks I just kept at my exercises.
Also up until this point I was on morphine, quite a strong dose of 60 mg every 4 hours. But it would make me chuck up so I wanted to stop taking it, the trouble was my arm was really painful.
I just persevered through the pain and got a little relief from alcohol and kept at my exercises.
After about 6 months my arm had improved but it was not even 20% of before the accident. My range of movement and grip strength were really low. Using the grip strength tester I could barely crack 2 kgs grip strength, where as my other arm could crack 60 kgs grip strength.

I knew I had a lot of work to do, so I just kept pushing myself further.
The first 6 months I guess I was concerned with doing damage, so I took it easy with my exercises. But now it was time to push myself to the max.
I started working on my car and just doing things to push my arm further, and it continued to improve.
After about a year, I hit a really bad bout of depression and started to drink really heavily.
This went on for a few years and I didn't really do much exercise for my arm, other than working on my car so my arm didn't improve much. Buy this stage my range of movement had improved but was at about 60 % and grip strength at about 8kgs.
Then I woke up one morning after passing out the night before, and I wasn't feeling good from a major hangover and thought nope this is the soft option and I don't want to live my life like this.
I wanted to be able to at least look back and say you know what at least I done something with my life.

I joined up with a gym and enrolled myself into an basic level IT course. I also decided to get back into gaming.
This was the best decision I ever made, and I became obsessed with IT and would sit there all the time tinkering.
The gaming gave me real enjoyment and really helped me stay on the right track, as when you quit drinking life can seem really boring and mundane for a while.

I continued to push myself to the limits in the gym, which was a real blessing for my grip strength and range of movement.
My doctor was amazed because he had never seen anyone before with such bad injuries improve so dramatically before, let alone actually get in the gym and train with such bad injuries.
I kept complaining to him that my back really didn't feel right, it hurt all the time and I couldn't stand for very long without it aching like crazy. That's when he did the scans and found three crushed vertebra, 2 over 20% and one at 30%.

He told me to keep up the gym as it will help to build up strength.
He was right as I kept improving, which in turn motivated me even more to keep pushing through the pain.
I had to go on trammadol for a while because the pain was really strong while trying to train. So I started at 200 mg and then gradually brought down the dose over 2 years to push my pain threshold. The last 3 years of training I have not needed any pain killers except for the odd day here and there where my back was really playing up.

Now after about 6 years of the gym, my grip strength is almost back to where it was before the accident.
I have full range of movement back and the strength of my bad arm is getting closer to my good arm. It still isn't quite up to my good arm, but that is to be expected as it's constantly playing a game of catch up.

It's kind of hard to describe but the feeling in my arm has always been a mix between feeling numb and constant pain, hot pain, cold pain, shooting pain, stabbing pain, throbbing pain and that real aching pain.
Since going to the gym the feeling has been coming back more and more, there is still some numbness but especially in the last 2 years I actually have feeling again and it's slowly starting to feel like a normal arm again.
The pain has also died down slightly, it hurts like crazy when I'm in the gym and after a heavy back day(back day is always the worst). But it has improved a bit.

All the doctors and specialists I have spoken with have told me that it is impossible to build back the muscle I lost from the accident, which was a rather large chunk. But through constant training and constantly pushing myself it's slowly growing back, which my doctor is amazed with.
He said that he was going to put my story forward to the medical committee of Australia, as he had never seen anyone do what I have before.
When I told my doctor I have a job I think he was more excited than me, as he has seen me pull myself out of a really dark place and overcome a lot.
He told me when I got the job that I was his one success story, and that all the people he deals with that have bad injuries like mine are hopelessly dependent of drugs or alcohol to get them through the day. Most don't even work and don't go to the gym.

I have been diagnosed with severe PTSD, you can't live through an experience like mine and not have it. My doctor told me that my story rivals most war veterans.
I also apparently have depression and anxiety issues, the psychologist managed to determine that the signs are there but I'm such a strong person that they don't present themselves to people. I overcome all those issues through determination.

I'm now a junior to mid level full stack web developer working towards becoming a high level full stack dev.
I stand very proud with where I have come from, and what I have managed to accomplish. I do have my average days, where I'm in a lot of pain and feel down but they don't happen very often.
I'm so glad I managed to pull myself out of that dark place I was in for a few years after the accident, otherwise I can only imagine where I might have ended up.

There is a quote which I absolutely love, and gives me strength. I plan on getting a tattoo of it somewhere now that I'm working again and can afford it.

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Thanks for taking the time to read my story, I hope this can inspire others to make good choices in life. If I can help motivate 1 person to turn their life around it would make my day, so if I do help you please let me know.
Cheers,
Uncle Villan

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☣️ A Window into my Life - My Accident