A reflection on surviving life’s valleys
For six years my life felt like being lost at sea in an old wooden sailing ship.
Not the kind of ship that confidently crosses known trade routes with a clear map and favorable winds, but the kind that wanders deep in unknown waters while violent storms tear at the sails. The hull creaks, the masts groan, and the waves crash over the deck. You cannot see land. You cannot see the stars. You only know that you must keep fighting to stay afloat.
That is what those years felt like.
The accident began the storm, but the real ordeal came afterward. Surgeries, complications, and the slow collapse of my spine pushed me into a long, grinding battle for survival. At times the pain was so severe that a single night felt longer than an entire year. I remember nights when the agony burned through my body so intensely that I cried and screamed until my voice was gone, every minute stretching endlessly while the clock barely moved.
Pain like that does something strange to the mind. During it, time slows to a crawl. But afterward, when you somehow survive it, the years collapse into fragments. Six years of suffering can feel like they disappeared into a fog. You remember that it happened, but the mind refuses to fully relive it.
The worst moment came when the pseudomonas infection spread through my spine. The hardware that held my back together began loosening as the infection destroyed bone. My spine finally broke at T10. By the time I reached the emergency room, the situation was critical. The infection had spread along the surgical hardware, and surgeons later removed hundreds of cubic centimeters of pus from my back.
I went into what would become the final surgery.
When I woke days later, one of the surgeons stood beside my bed. He told me they had kept me sedated longer because they knew how painful the recovery would be. He was right. My body felt like it had been through a war. My legs and abdomen were swollen with fluid. My feet were barely numb. My body was in full crisis mode, and doctors told me honestly that recovery was uncertain.
Hospice staff even visited me during that time.
It is a strange thing to lie in a hospital bed not knowing whether you will live or recover. In those moments you begin navigating by whatever lights you can find in the distance.
For me, those lights were my children.
I prayed that God would let me live long enough to see my daughter become a doctor. I prayed that I might live to see my youngest daughter marry. I hoped to meet my first grandson.
Those moments became my navigation points. Like distant islands seen across dark water, they gave me direction. I didn’t need to know how the whole journey would unfold. I only needed to make it to the next light.
Then something unexpected happened.
I began fighting legal battles related to what had happened to me medically. Those cases brought something back that illness had nearly taken away: my mind. After years of relentless pain and infection, I had drifted into something like a diminished mental state. Pain and exhaustion can reduce a person to pure survival.
But the legal fight forced my mind to wake up again. I had to think clearly. I had to study records, analyze facts, and build arguments. In a strange way, my mind recovered the same way my body did—slowly, painfully, but steadily.
Meanwhile my physical recovery was happening in small, almost invisible increments.
I had to learn to walk again.
Not once, but four different times across those years.
At first it was fifteen feet.
Then fifty.
Then ten yards.
Eventually I could walk to the elevator. Later, to the lobby.
Each step felt like a small victory, but also a reminder of how far I had fallen. A man who once moved freely now celebrated the ability to cross a room.
Still, the ship stayed afloat.
The true turning point did not come all at once, but through a series of confirmations that the storm was finally passing.
In August of 2025, my surgeons confirmed that my spine had fully fused. After years of instability, the structure of my body was finally stable.
A few months later, infectious disease specialists confirmed that the pseudomonas infection was no longer showing up. They reduced my antibiotics to just a small maintenance dose at night.
Then, in December of 2025, the VA issued its ruling acknowledging the harm that had been done.
That was the moment when I finally felt something I had not felt in years.
The wind was at my back again.
For so long I had been sailing directly into storms, fighting wave after wave just to survive. Now the sea was calmer, and the wind was pushing forward instead of against me.
I am not the same man who set sail years ago.
My spine is fused from T4 to the pelvis. My body carries scars from surgeries and infection. The ship that survived the storm is damaged and still in need of repair.
But I am still afloat.
And perhaps more importantly, I am wiser.
I know now how fragile life can be. I know how quickly strength, health, and certainty can disappear. I also know that survival sometimes depends on nothing more than finding the next distant light and steering toward it.
Now I feel as if I have finally reached known waters again.
The ship still needs refitting. Getting my home will be part of that final repair before the next voyage. But for the first time in years, I am beginning to feel the old sense of purpose returning.
I may never be as strong as I once was.
But I will appreciate the voyage more deeply.
I may never move through life with the same ease again.
But I will value even the smallest freedoms.
And if love ever finds me again, it will not be shallow or casual.
It will be deeper.
Because storms like this change a man. They strip away illusions and leave only what truly matters.
The sea is calmer now.
The ship is battered but alive.
And for the first time in many years, I can feel the wind at my back.