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Growing up Now I was born, the healthy son of my mother and father, who divorced 18 months, after I was born. I stayed with my mother and traveled up and down the east coast, back and forth between Florida and New Jersey, so my mother could find work, usually as a waitress, to put food in my mouth and clothes on my back. I don't remember much, until I started attending kindergarten, then I remember her walking me to school and we were late. I felt like a new kid at school, arriving in the classroom and being introduced to the rest of the class. Every year was a new school. I was always the new kid in school. Thats the way it was and I didn't realize I was any different. I was always sad about the friends I had lost and the possessions I had to leave behind. It wasn't until, I was senior in high school, I realized my calling would be in the military. I did very well on the aptitude test and was accepted into the signal corps. After a year, I got out. I didn't like it. I wanted to be free, to do what I want, when I want and I did for 11 more months anyway, then became paralyzed. After rehab, I had no money and no source of income, until I had to find a place that was easy to roll my wheelchair in the doorway. It wasn't easy, and I even made a trip to florida and lived there and attended college for a year or should I say a semester, anyway I was there from march 1979 to march 1980. I finally found a nice co-op apartment and lived there for fifteen years with my mother and met my wife when I was very sick in dire need of medical attention and she was the admitting nurse that day at the VA hospital. The rest is history.
So let me tell you, like I'm really the sort of guy to listen to, when it comes to maintaining your health, well anyway I did learn early in the stage of my paralysis, that maintaining your physical health is very important,and your mental health as well, because it's funny how these problems can come back to haunt you later on in life. When you're in a wheelchair, it's especially important to have good health, in order to funtion optiminally, which anything less should be unacceptable. You might say,"who wants to die healthy anyway?" It doesn't work that way, we're all going to die, sooner or later. The secret is to have the best quality of life, for as long as possible. That way you'll be able to cope with death more easily, when the time finally does come. June 29,1975 was a special day for me. Special not in a good sense though. Special in a way, that would change my life forever. It was the day I broke my neck diving into a lake. I don't remember doing it, but I do remember waking up at 3am the next day, in a hospital. The doctors and nurses didn't know I was paralyzed till I told them. I asked them if it was permanent, and they said they didn't know that either. I had always been healthy, I was 19, just out of the army, working as a civilian truck driver on vacation from my job. I had the best health coverage, and now I could sure use it. I look back and I know it certainly made a difference as to where I am today, and where I would be without it. From the beginning, I knew it important also, to have a good attitude toward my new disability, after all I didn't have anybody to blame, but myself for the pathetic condition I was in. After being in traction for a month, with tongs embeded in my skull and weights attached to pulleys over the back of my bed, to relieve the pressure on my neck, and on a respirator for a month, with nothing to do, but look at the curly fingers, attached to the arms, that I could bearly lift off my chest. I was transferred to a very good rehabilitation center, in manhattan, that was affiliated with New York University Medical Center. That's my story, but that's not the end of my story, that's just the beginning of my education of knowing what to do and most important, what not to do in maintaining general good health. I'm going to tell the things you shouldn't do first. I have to confess, I am guilty of at least one of one these detriments. They are as follows: Don't smoke, don't drink, stay away from fatty foods, avoid sugar and salt in your diet, and just stick to foods in the five food groups, stay away from additives such as preservatives. Don't be too strict about any one idea remember everything should be in moderation, so be flexible in your choices. A half hour of vigorous excercise doesn't hurt either, something comparable to, as simply pushing a mile every single day. That's it, Simple enough? I hope so.
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