It happened in a car accident on July 28th, 2007, in a suburb of Seattle. I was at a standstill when a full-sized pickup truck hit me going about 60 miles an hour. My neck was broken by severe whiplash in the force of the collision, and my spinal cord badly damaged. I am now paralyzed, a C5/6 tetraplegic with severe, chronic neuropathic pain. It is very difficult.
I used to be a recording, performing musician, a singer, and guitar player (among other things). Now, I live my life in a wheelchair, I can’t use my fingers, and I can’t walk.
I am 30, I live in constant pain, and I have hope.
I found an alternate version of my song, “Magnify” from my debut record, “CodyWho” (2001) which I recorded in seven months with my close friend and producer Caleb. During the process of writing and recording music, we would often burn a copy of each day’s work and any progress we had made that day. This version was recorded on 8/26/01, and represents one of many, many different versions of the songs I’ve written and recorded. If you compare it to the final, album version you’ll notice the lead vocal track is mixed further “out front”. Also, the backup/harmony vocal is mixed in tight, and closely follows melody line. It’s obviously a very rough mix, but a cool find nonetheless. Listening to songs like this one is almost always a painful experience for me given this strange detour my life has taken in the last three years. However, tonight as I am listening and sobbing my heart is thankful, grief stricken, and sad, but not bitter.
I know I’ve been away for way too long. I started this blog as an effort to document my life as I grapple, struggle, succeed and fail in my life and journey with C5 Tetraplegia. I’m about a month and a half away from the three-year anniversary of my injury, but to be honest, it feels like I’ve been trapped, imprisoned by paralysis and pain for 10 years.
A couple of important things have been happening recently:
1) I returned to school at Bellevue college, and I’m taking an online class as a way of testing the waters to see if I can handle the work of going to school again. I want to pursue a Masters degree in counseling as my ultimate goal. So far I’m enjoying the process, but am unsurprised to find that homework…still…stinks.
2) I’m in the home stretch of the lawsuit I’m involved in. The jury trial starts in mid-September, and I’ll let you know how things went when it’s all over.
3) Even though I’m pretty sure I’ve not been the best leader, my role as College Director at my church has become very important to me. I’m learning a lot about my strengths and weaknesses, and doing my best to strengthen my weaknesses.
Right now my days are starting early, and ending late so I probably won’t be blogging as regularly as I would like until my legal issues have been settled, but I’m going to try. It helps to have an iPhone and iPad to document things, though.
Here’s an excerpt from an interview I did for an upcoming documentary, ” The Land of Milk and Honey”.
You can follow two very talented filmmakers, Jess and Reuben as they travel across the world, filming people, places, in the stories that go with them. Jess is from Australia, and Reuben is a very talented musician from California; both of them are creative and adventurous people who have decided to risk stability, and the security of their full-time jobs in order to make a documentary of their dreams.
