You Prob'ly Think This Blog Is About Me

I used Grammarly to grammar check this post, because it's 3AM and I haven't spent time reading my latest Kindle acquisiion.
Don'cha? Don'cha? Don'cha?
It occurred to me this morning as I was reading a book by a well-known blogger and actor that, despite the fact that the title of this blog refers to me personally (tidbit: before it became The Wheelchair Users Guide, this blog was known as Firebird Folio), I rarely write about personal matters.
Today is different. Today I spill my guts (not literally, I hope).
Regular readers of this blog,  if any actually existed (Bueller...? Bueller...?), would know that my life has had more twists and turns than a Hitchcock movie.
First, in 2001, I lost my job of 20 years working for a major telecommunications firm (ahhhh, I'm not gonna let them be anonymous; it was SBC, neé Southwestern Bell and now AT&T, having defeated its own mother in financial combat and appropriated her name).
So I worked for SBC for just over 20 years, earning a number of awards and accolades, until they began an undocumented and unprovable purge of service representatives with long service somewhere around 1999-2000. There are a bunch of us, many more than could be considered coincidental.
Anyway, after a job search of more than a year, during which time I worked for a tiny, low power TV station basically for the experience and learned some video editing skills, I went to work as a teacher's aide and sign language interpreter for the Bentonville, Arkansas school district, in the high school's special education class.
The work was very fulfilling. I saw kids that were withdrawn and anti-social seem to blossom over the first three months of school.
Then, on December 4, 2002, that all stopped.
Coming home from work on Interstate 540, which is the main north-south corridor through Northwest Arkansas, an SUV driven by a young woman (I think she was 20, maybe 21 at the time) was struck from behind by a pickup truck driven by a 19-year old kid in too big a hurry. The driver of the SUV lost control and crossed the median.
I first became aware of the fact that the SUV (a Dodge Durango, for those of you who are interested) was approaching me about .00001 second* before it plowed into the 1993 Ford Mustang that I had  borrowed from my daughter that morning, as my pickup truck was out of commission. 
The next thing I knew, I was halfway out the drivers' window, nearly to the waist; my hard head (not quite hard enough, apparently; I was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury, or TBI) having busted out the window as I attempted to exit the vehicle so that I could become a grease spot on the busy highway.
Fortunately, my girth precluded any success in that area, and I found myself hanging out of the driver's window, face to the sky in a snowstorm, aware that the engine was on fire.
A quick ambulance ride to the hospital turned into a longer one to the trauma center in Little Rock, and a twelve hour surgery. After that, I was in a medically induced coma for nearly two months.
The next thing I remember, apart from some extremely weird 'dreams' I had while I was comatose, was waking up and hearing Dan Rather announce that the date was February 1, 2003, and the Space Shuttle Columbia had been destroyed upon re-entry. Two months of my life were gone in what seemed to me to be a single night of fitful sleep.
I learned that, besides the bruise to my brain, the left side of my body had pretty much borne the brunt of the impact. (Why do we say that? What is a brunt and why is it necessary to bear it? I'd prefer to let it find its own transportation, thank you.) Along with the blow to my head, I had a compound fracture of my left radius and ulna (both bones of the forearm, which were protruding through the skin -- fortunately my jean jacket hid that from my sight), my left hip and pelvis, and my left femur and kneecap. Along with all of that, both ankles were shattered badly enough that the doctors later determined that there was quite a bit of nerve damage there, meaning that I haven't been able to wiggle my toes or move my feet at the ankles since then. More on that later.

Four years of struggling to recover brought me to the point where I was fairly self-reliant, but still dependent on a wheelchair for most of my mobility, as I am to this day. 
My personality was markedly different, which I attribute to the TBI, and in 2006 I went through a divorce. In 2007 I remarried and moved to South Dakota. 
In the summer of 2008 I began to feel ill and was eventually hospitalized and diagnosed with acute renal failure; my kidneys had shut down. I've been on hemodialysis three times a week ever since.
In 2010 I decided to go back to school after a hiatus of nearly 30 years and try to finish my Bachelor's degree. I'm still working on that. 
In the meantime, I was hospitalized twice more; once with a cellulitis inflammation in my right leg in December 2011 and again in September 2012 after falling and suffering a small injury between the toes of my right foot which, left inadequately treated, turned into an osteomyelitis infection in the bones of my fourth and fifth toes. 
Despite repeated and extended treatments with a series of powerful intravenous antibiotics, the infection continued, and I underwent a partial amputation of the right foot; those two toes and some associated tissue were removed. That was done on June 17, 2013, just shy of three weeks ago as I write this.
You can just call me 'Alan Eight-Toes' now. 
I'm recovering nicely, having a pleasant summer and plan to head back to school in the fall.
I'd like to take this opportunity to tell you that no matter what kind of problems you're dealing with, you can overcome them; just look at me. 
Have a great day!
*Not based on any accurate system of measurement.  Read: "awful damn quick."