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Title: Registered User
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Posts: 4 posts
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Bio: My name is Bruce Walz and I live in Northern Arizona, a place I never thought I'd want anything to do with, even after my mother and stepfather told me they were moving here in 1979. When I helped them move, we drove through Northern Texas and New Mexico, I thought there should've been a sign saying: "Welcomed to Hell on Earth" with nothing much more than but sand, very little vegetation and what there was looked like a scene out of the cartoon, "The Roadrunner & Wile Coyote" nothing growing except sage brush and cacti! Being that I grew up in the Midwest and I didn't know anything but green landscape with tree's and rolling hills... With that thought of cartoons running through my head, I couldn't have been more wrong as I was quite surprised to see that Arizona is by far one of the most beautiful state with more diversity than anywhere I've ever lived and I've been from north to south but at the time, only as west to the Mississippi River. Now I'm living at 5300 feet above is sea level so we get plenty of snow in the winter yet the summertime temperatures are very comfortable and I wouldn't live anywhere else even UNLESS my life depended on it, then I might think about moving elsewhere but that's doubtful!
In 1985 I had a motorcycle accident which left me paralyzed roughly from about the mid-chest area down. I never looked back on my life and wish but things were different, as convenient that would have been but life goes on and you just need to take what it dealt you and make the best of things. If you let something like spinal cord injury drag you down and into a hole, you may as well start digging yourself one as you start pulling the dirt on over your head and go to sleep! Life can be as bad as you make it for yourself -- keeping a positive outlook on life and that will make you feel one heck of a lot better. Though my life lives like a soap opera, a visit to my website will explain some of the bigger losses which make a spinal cord injury seem like a scratch will writing a bicycle and needing a Band-Aid on your knee, none of which losses I would want anyone else to need to go through...
Prior to my spinal cord injury I was in automotive technician and had an associate's degree in automotive/diesel technology and business management and even though it was over 25 years ago, we talked about this same type of technology that is out there right now. At the time that never seemed possible and it wasn't that we thought our instructors had a few marbles missing, it just didn't seem like that technology was ever going to happen after seeing what the early 1980s cars and trucks were made like. Times have changed and so has the technology that goes into each car and truck that we drive. I've always been a Ford person and have owned three 1969 Mustang Mach 1's, using one as a drag car with a 428 cobra jet, one with a 351W 4-bbl and last but not least one with a 390 cubic inch V8. I now have two Ford Windstar's with one of them having a 3.8 L supercharged engine and it. When it's completed (hopefully very soon) and will put out over or 425 hp, that's more than what my 428 cobra jet Mustang was rated at from the factory. Call me crazy or call me nuts, it's just that once you have all the horsepower "you think you need" it never gets out of your blood, or that's the way I feel anyways!
Back to my spinal cord injury; I've been up and down when it comes to health as this past year nearly scared me to death! At the end of January I had what I thought was just a "little cold" but it wasn't going away and I kept getting more and more congested until I end up being carted off by ambulance to the local hospital. From the end of January until mid February I was knocking on death's door with double pneumonia brought on by some sort airborne bacteria. For the first nine days I have no idea where I was more that I was in the hospital as my fever was over 107° and climbing and finally with the fever broke after but I still wasn't out of the woods. After those first nine days I woke up and was totally oblivious as to my surrounding since I was unable to talk or write down anything since with paralysis, I don't have the use my arms and hands to communicate with others. I was on a ventilator so I was unable to talk nor vocalize what I needed and just about everything else you can imagine. When I overheard one of the respiratory therapist talking to my nurse and saying, "...Mr. Walz is never going to get off the ventilator..." It was at that time I knew that I had to prove them wrong AGAIN as I was told the same thing after my accident in 1985. Just as they told my parents to "prepare for a funeral... " and later that I'd never get off the ventilator that I would be with it the rest of my life. I don't give up, especially when it comes to overcoming large obstacles as I'd never let it get in my way as there is ALWAYS a way of overcoming obstacles that getting your way, it's just a matter of fighting hard enough to do so. -
Last Visit: Jul 23rd, 2015 at 09:25 AM
