full circle

I want to express my sincere gratitude for everyone who joined us as we celebrated life and yet another year since my accident.  The weather was less than ideal and for that reason I am so appreciative for those of you that were able to come out in the rain and cold, I know you didn’t have to do so. Thank you.

I had a great time and I do hope you did as well. It was so great to see everyone. I am humbled by the support that I’ve been given because I know that sometimes this thing, I can be difficult. It’s taken two years to get here but after a day like yesterday, I feel energized to continue further. I don’t know what the next step is going to be or if there’s a  next milestone but what I have just witnessed will carry me to where ever this journey leads.

After we left the rainy soggy park, we warmed up and dried off.  Then we went to a movie. THEN we went to a place, a bar in fact that I had frequented many times before my accident. It was nice to go to a place I had been to so many times before. Only this time, I was able to walk out standing, SOBER, not intoxicated.  I was able to come full circle yesterday from beginning the cold rainy day with the people I hold so dear to my heart and ending the day walking out of  a bar with the friends that  possibly two years to the day walked in to the same bar but this time it was different.  We walked in sober, walked out sober and I can honestly say that I had more fun than ever.  This was probably the best day of my life since accident. THANK YOU ALL!!!

FULL CIRCLE.  Who would have thought two years ago walking out of the same bar so much would happen to us all?  We hold each other up, united we stand.

Keep Hope Alive

it’s still not over

Having just watched the new video, I come to think.  How far I have already come and to translate it (the progress) into a term or terms understandable for people NOT in my shoes.  I just started a new therapy with an area renowned speech therapist.  I think, I hope, that this will be yet another step leap in the right direction.  For me, this time around, this life I’d been blessed enough to be granted a second chance at attempting to do the right things, to treat people right, and to treat myself right. 

My friends are treating me the same way I hope to have the courage to treat the new people as they come into my life, with patience, understanding, and respect.

I just had another birthday, 27 years to find purpose?

I guess, ya know I’m not even sure about purpose so much anymore.  I think it is more about direction. 

In which direction am I headed?  Well, right now I can say that at least it’s not destructive.  So sure, I’ve traveled, I’ve been to the beach on both coasts, I’ve even been snorkeling in the Carribean.  I’ve been to school and learned new things. 

I feel like now it is time to do those same, similar things PBI (post brain injury).  After all I’m going to (knock on wood) be a brain injury survivor for a long time coming. 

Such a drastic change from October 2007, geez 2007?  Seems like a lifetime ago, oh how things change.  I feel like it’s up to us to try and continue to make changes as positive as possible. 

Yes, it (this journey after trauma) is not over, but it is still moving forward and as of yet there is no way to stop time from continuing to progress.  So,if you’re going to work on anything, try to make its impact as positive as possible.

From where I stand currently that is at least my perspective.

Who am I kidding?

Look, I’m coming to realize that maybe I’m setting my goals too high.  I mean I have always been a huge dreamer, dreams of a fortune 500 company, a 100ft+ yacht, an astrophysicist!!!!

I live at home and I just turned 27,  granted I did suffer severe head trauma and I do realize its live at home again……still, no excuse in my mind.

I feel like it is all collapsing on me again….I feel like this has happened to me before.  Throughout my life I have had serious ebbs and flows like I just can’t get it right. 

Maybe its that HE hasn’t figured out my plan, all-knowing……I don’t want to be blasphomous but….all-knowing should mean, ahhhh scratch that……I don’t even know what I’m talking about posting on the world-wide web this gutter trash.  Who am I kidding?

Am I giving you hope?  Does it help you to read about another man’s struggle?

I feel like I’m crazy or at least soon-to-be.  Have I lost my mind?

I think I know what happened

consider the following:
enter stage left – one man with an appetite for destruction, who drinks away his sorrows.  Add the alcohol, make sure it is an obscene amount, mix in a muscle relaxer/pain killer to increase the effect of that alcohol.

There also once was this jeep wrangler that the “fellow” would use to cruise around.  It wasn’t a very nice vehicle, but it got him around.  

Then consider that this person was living in Arlington, VA at the time and would on occasion visit his parents who live in Manassas, VA.  Succomb to maybe a type of self-inflicting peer pressure, he drinks to excess.

So we have an obviously intoxicated person who then may make the descision to drive home as he then decides to take the pain pill. Is it any wonder there was an accident to follow?  Maybe the surprising part is the extent of his injuries and how he has lived to tell the tale, perhaps being able to pay it forward in communicating his story.  Severe Traumatic Brain injury, coma for about 30 days, and then a lifetime of rehab.  

Hey, at least he’s no longer drinking.

I read a quote that said “Unless a man undertakes more than he possibly can do, he will never
do all that he can”.

what happened?

what the *&@!#$ happened to me?
I used to be somewhat of a “Renaissance” man before severe head trauma, working as a systems engineer,realtor, recruiter…..an all around “do-anything and everything” type of guy, the quintessential type of person.
Now I’m just another “baroque” man……intelligence still intact, and lesson learned, the hard way
Still though, I mean I seemed to have not only been knocked down by severe head trauma but also by the Gods.   I’ve come so close to death so many times by disrespecting life…fate seems to have caught up with me. I mean come on, give me just one break, make one thing easy. I’ve always been fairly independant though and this seems to be another one of these many, many stumbling blocks on my way to at least some kind of ultimate victory.

I realize that this is Mike Rosner’s blog and countless numbers of kind people have come by to visit me. 

Well, we can count actually……I added back the cluster map so that we could count.  So I thank all of you, thank you for caring about one families’ struggle back from the darkest place anyone would ever choose to visit.

Dear Mama

When I was young me and my papa had beef
fifteen years old left out for ya place
Though back at the time, I never thought I’d see her face
Ain’t a woman alive that could take my mama’s place
Suspended from school; and scared to go home, I was a fool
With the big boys, breakin all the rules
I shead tears with my baby sister
And even though we had a Lame daddy, the same drama
I reminice on the stress I caused, I was hell
Phone calls for my mama from a jail cell
And who’d think in elementary?
Heeey! I’d see the penitentiary, one day
And runnin from the police, that’s right
Mama catch me, put a whoopin to my backside
And even me an alcoholic, mama
You always was THE General, mama
I finally understand
For a woman it ain’t easy tryin to raise a man
You always was committed
A single mother on her own, tell me how ya did it
There’s no way I can pay you back
But the plan is to show you that I understand
You are appreciated

Speaking to God

OK, now start with little disclaimer. It is not my intention to offend and I do apologize in advance for doing so. But I’d been thinking that it is funny what we let pass these days. Speaking specifically toward people who have made peace with God but not with anyone else, espescially not to the people who have been offended or hurt by those specific or certain actions. Personally it has become a pet peeve of mine, for a person to say that they had made peace with God but NOT with the people who had been hurt by said actions. Now if anyone knows about the forgiveness of God it is obviously me, re:a letter to my pastor. Seriously though, you’re not dead yet, and just because maybe, and I stress the word maybe, the LORD has forgiven you does NOT mean everyone else has. Sorry if anyone was offended but it has been on my mind.
Keep hope alive

I’m coming clean

Alright, the time has come (again) and I feel it necessary for me to be healthy both mentally and physically for me to get a few things off my chest…..ala,”hello world”…..number one on my list is I LOVE AMANDA KIBBEN, sorry Chris but I think I do love you also just for just understanding. Amanda I am sorry to you because I feel as though I am soo needy now that I must be in constant communication with you. Not necessarily constant contact but maybe just daily would be nice.
Number two is Erin Gay, I posted on the blog, world-wide-web, a while back, something, an attack and it was unjust, I am sorry. I wrote you an email apologizing (weak and pathetic).
(Now you, more than likely do not care but it has been weighing on my conscience, thats right people IRON mike does have feelings, and I needed to get it off of my chest…so done and now back-to-business)
I read old comments on the blog almost daily because it helps give me a sense of the accomplishments I had made leading up to this the most important battle of my life and its not over, ha, far from over, its never over. I will forever be a traumatic brain injury survivor until maybe another fateful day when maybe I’m assassinated for being too awesome?
Until then…………

from blue ribbons to code blue and back

I want everyone to know and the people who know me perhaps already do know that I had been a Olympic swimmer (that’s right Dad, I can count Junior Olympics).  I would say no doubt that had helped me throughout my recovery.  Thirty day coma, 6 months of rehab, I don’t think that there could have been a previous training that could have helped more to get through everything, so it did and here I am.  I’m a winner and blue and I go very well together.  I have bluish eyes and lots of blue ribbons.  The only blue that didn’t go over very well was code blue.  so I’m thinkin’ there was a guy Ive heard about who did the Ironman Triathalon. He had been in a car accident that almost killed him for good but he had been a champion swimmer also, so I’m thinkin’ being the champion swimmer that I am and who says I can’t do that.

well, one thing would be fatigue issues stemming from a traumatic brain injury that has been very huge for me to hurdle. I’m tired from the moment I wake up. Physically exhausted. But I think this cold weather has also had a lot to do with it. Summer time is around the corner and that’s where I thrive.  Run- I had been very physically active until this past winter walking a couple miles daily.  My knee was one of the first injuries I sustained from the car accident and is still troublesome. Last summer my mother and I would try to mix in a light jog with that walk so that I could gauge how much I could do with this bad knee. troublesome yes but my hope is that with time comes healing and that more healing is what needs to be done for my knee to be at 100%. I started walking the two miles again recently and no knee problems to report. So what, we have run, bike, swim.  Bike- balance. Yeah, not so good still but I would go so far as to say marginally better. I would basically have to learn to ride a bike again but that’s ok. I actually got on Nate’s bike today and aside from my mother running beside me wanting to hold my arm the  whole time and then Nate freaking out because I ran up to the curb, all in all I think it went pretty well. And then we come to swim- now just because I had been a champion swimmer doesn’t mean I could jump in and swim 2 miles, although I would argue with anybody that swimming is easily my greatest  strength.  so, the thing again would be endurance coupled with my, thanks to the brain injury decreased initiation I’ve got a heck of a challenge. But again I’ve never been one to shy away from a challenge. The Ironman Triathlon consists of a 2.4 mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride and a 26.2 mile run the Half Ironman consists of 1.2mile Swim | 56mile Bike | 13.1mile Run. I think with training, I can set my sights toward an “Ironman” Triathlon

Last year when i first started using my planner I set a mission statement and this is what it said “I realize that the mountain I must climb today may seem like a hill to others and I except that”. Now, this mountain may not seem like a hill to anybody and I know it’s a big undertaking but I am willing to work towards it. I’m learning that it’s ok to set my goals high and that it’s also ok as long as I can find motivation in smaller successes. speaking of small successes I use Nintendo DS as an informal cognitive trainer and I set my sights to finish a game I got for Easter. I’d been playing it daily, it’s been my go to game on DS and this week I beat it. So small success comes in a variety of shapes and sizes. I know that a half triathlon is not an immediate goal but neither is a PHD but if I can stay focused for long enough and work hard enough and be patient enough with myself then…

weluvmike.com

World

Wide

Web

The scale of this website hit me the other day. That truly it is the world, and from looking at the cluster map, I feel like now it is my mission to make it the entire world, its funny ’cause already every computer I’m on I make sure (if not already) to set the internet homepage as weluvmike.com.

So in addition to pHd I see it as my mission to set the worlds computers’ homepages to www.weluvmike.com.  I guess I should apologize for my coming if as egotistical…..I’m sorry