When the universe speaks , I listen. Could it just be bad luck?

You know I think it may be time to sell off all my gear. If not for bad luck I'd have no luck at all. If you look at my past posts over the last few years the common theme has been me trying to spend more time playing my kit with the result being getting my chops back to where I feel they should be. Each time I start the process something happens to bring it to a screeching halt.

First is was severe joint pain and gout. A couple years ago it was a broken arm. This year I was making some decent progress and on May 8th a fall at work. Fell 10 feet on to a concrete floor hitting my head on some metal beams on the way down. I suffered a traumatic brain injury , a minor brain bleed , a major concussion , and two broken ribs. The opening in the top of my head required 15 staples , the one going from the top of my left eye up my forehead took a bunch of stitches.The Doctor says I'm lucky I walked away from it. I'm doing fine now but still have occasional dizziness. Can't play my kit at all because the head movement causes dizziness. Doc says it will pass with time. All recent brain scans look good.

Strange thing is I have no idea what happened. One minute I'm filling holes in a concrete wall standing on a metal extension plank , the next thing I know I'm in the hospital. I was told I walked out of the building I was working in with my head covered in blood. Someone sat me down and called 911. Don't remember the ambulance ride either. I was working on two extension planks stretched across metal beams , one behind the other. I was told after the fall one plank was up top and one was on the floor. something went wrong lol.

Doctor feels that because of the shock of the impact my brain won't let me remember the fall , like it's shutting me out of the memory. The first few weeks after the fall were not great. Slept in a chair for 4 weeks and was on pain meds for two weeks. They gave me enough for 4 weeks but I stopped taking them after two, I have a high pain threshold because of having gout so I didn't need to be popping oxy's for 4 weeks. the worst part was the ribs , holy crap don't sneeze!!!! Ouch!!!!

I'm back working now some days I do half a day others I do a full day , depends on how I feel. Actually feeling real good now just need for the occasional dizzy spells to go away. Well there's my latest update. hope to be playing again soon.... Hope you are all well and Covid free . Rock on.....

Very sorry to hear about your fall and your chain of bad luck. Listen to me... do not sell your gear right now. We are often left shaking our heads, trying to make sense of our experiences but we can't really know why things happen so we end up speculating. But speculation is not fact, it just helps us to feel in control of our destiny. Give yourself some time to get through this latest set back. Then get back to drumming! If a few years later you still feel that it's not in the cards, then you can make that monumental decision at that time. This is my opinion anyway. Again, sorry about your challenges and I know things will improve. Keep your chin up and live in the day (only). My best to you drum brother!

So sorry for all of your hard luck, NPYYZ. As drummer eluded, don't sell your gear.

I hope you're on the complete road to recovery. Take time, ease back in, play harder gradually.

Thanks for sharing.

Although nowhere near as severe as your injuries,I snapped the Achilles tendon in my right foot last year and spent 3 months in a mobility scooter and on crutches,which put a stop to any drumming activity. About 4 months after the operation to rejoin my tendon I was only just starting to walk without a limp but still in pain at which point I decided to hang my sticks up and sell my gear.
Luckily for me,some good mates and my wife convinced me to hang in there and not do anything too rashly and I took their advice. Fast forward almost a year and I still have the pain and restricted movement but am back playing and shudder to think that I almost sold a kit I've had for 30 years.
Things may not go back to what they once were but they do improve and we just need to adjust to it.
Hang in there mate.

Sorry for your accident, but it’s awesome that you’re recovering!

Good thing you’re a drummer. A fall like that would have killed a Lead guitar player.

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Originally Posted by N2Bluz

Good thing you’re a drummer. A fall like that would have killed a Lead guitar player.

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:loller4:

BAD LUCK is being married to the wrong person.

Everything else is easy.

I was hit by a moving tree, not too many people can lay claim to that.

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Originally Posted by rickthedrummer

I was hit by a moving tree, not too many people can lay claim to that.

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I can't imagine the insurance claims adjuster's face when he saw that description, LOL.

Trees don't tend to move that much here in the states.

If 1 gets hit by a mortar shell and shatters, that makes it a whole different story.

WOW NPYYZ.................
That is a rough fall........glad you are doing better recently.
Take all the recovery time thankfully and don't sell any gear...........time will heal the body and the mind.
I've had the broken ribs too......I know what you mean about the sneeze.

Questions: how did you beat the gout ?
Was joint pain because of gout or combined with something else ?
Hands, feet, or both ?


Rick:
Trees don't move.
signed,
Sonny Bono

Sorry to hear about all that... glad to hear you're doing better..

"Rick:
Trees don't move.
signed,
Sonny Bono"

Stand about 20' in front of 1 when a mortar shell hits it and see how far it doesn't move.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ricardo

WOW NPYYZ.................
That is a rough fall........glad you are doing better recently.
Take all the recovery time thankfully and don't sell any gear...........time will heal the body and the mind.
I've had the broken ribs too......I know what you mean about the sneeze.

Questions: 1. how did you beat the gout ?
2. Was joint pain because of gout or combined with something else ?
3. Hands, feet, or both ?

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1. You never beat it , once you have it , it's for life. I'm on medication that lowers my uric acid level so I do not get flair ups.
2. The joint pain like gout is a form of arthritis it's a separate thing from the gout.
3. My joint pain issues are mainly in my feet , ankles , knees and sometimes but not often knuckles on my fingers .

A little update:
First I haven't sold my gear. So somehow a squirrel got into our basement. For a couple days we were hearing this weird scratching sound on the living room floor , like it was up between the sheetrock ceiling downstairs and the floor upstairs. So I went down and started poking around , literally poking in all the spaces with a 4 foot pole to see if I could find it.

Sure enough I got close and he scurried across the room , so I opened a window hoping he would go back outside , but he did not. So I set a have a heart trap , put some peanuts in it and left for work. When I got home he was caught. I brought him outside and set him free.

Then I went back into the basement and there's my kit sitting there. I haven't touched it in 9 months. I decided to sit down behind it. I started playing , just going easy to see if the dizziness was still there. So far so good , kicked it up a bit, still not dizzy. Now going full force , not dizzy. Now I'm playing and letting my head move as it naturally would while playing and all is fine.

So now one last time it's back to the drawing board. Many years ago there was a time when I could pretty much play any Rush song note for note , or beat for beat. In my younger years I was obsessed with Neil Peart and Rush and I made it my goal to learn as much of their music as I could. So now I've started the studying , watching Peart's DVD's , refreshing my memory.

My next task is to clean the basement and my kit , will also probably put on new heads. Then I'll start practicing , knowing a song and playing it at age 61 are two different things. I put on a drumless track of Red Barchetta , a song I used to play all the time. I still knew all the parts I just wasn't able to get them from my brain to the kit without messing up. Not playing at all for 9 months , and playing only sporadically before that , it's going to take some time to once again try and get up to speed.

I still enjoy playing and I still want to play so I'll give it one last go round. I'm going to make a serious effort to relearn all the Rush tunes I once played years ago , and if that proves to great a challenge I can always play some Rolling Stones tunes...........

PS: Not sure if I mentioned this , I've been self employed pretty much my entire life. In October I went on payroll with a large welding company. I've been painting for the owners of the company at their other properties for several years and they sat me down and said :

"Joe you've been painting for us for quite a while now. When times were tough you gave us a break on your pricing and we always said we would not forget it and we haven't. You have also shown yourself to be someone we can trust. We are now prepared to offer you a job at our welding company. We currently send out all our painting of our structural steel to an outside painter. Trucking the steel to his shop and paying him for the sandblasting and painting cost the company between $300,000.00 to $500,000.00 per year. We now want to do all this painting in house and we want you to run the paint department. Year one we will put you on hourly pay , anything over 40 hours is time and a half , Sundays is double time. We are giving you 4 weeks paid vacation per year , 5 paid sick days and 7 paid holidays, and first quarter of 2021 we will get you a company truck. We think this will be a great job for you to finish out your career until you retire. Once we have you up and running for a few months we want you to interview and hire one young assistant. Someone who will want to learn the business and take over when you leave."

So of course I jumped at the offer. I now have my own paint shop right on site. The welders fabricate the product. It then goes to the sandblasting area , then it gets brought into the paint shop. This is the best job I've ever had , no climbing ladders , no cutting in , just painting steel of all shapes and sizes.

So with this job taking up a lot of my time the drumming will take a while longer as my practice time will be limited but I'll get there.

Lots of good news here.
Happy to know you can get back on the kit when you feel like it.
Also happy to know this steel gig can let you transition smoothly into retirement when that time comes.
Congratulations !

Thanks Ricardo,

Yesterday I spent 5 hours cleaning up the room in the basement where my kit is. It was a mess. A years worth of cardboard boxes and other junk we have been just throwing down the stairs all winter. Also reconfigured the kit a bit. I kind of copied the set up of some Drummer who played in a band from Canada before he passed away last year.

I played for about an hour, had some fun.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...57bf8390_z.jpg158327984_10225526055521999_6873463150240951848_o by Joe D, on Flickr

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...de3180ce_z.jpg157881091_10225526055842007_1750281314043283336_o by Joe D, on Flickr

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/...4e88eefc_z.jpg158166806_10225526056202016_4371438025011332911_o by Joe D, on Flickr

WOW sorry about the fall, that sounds horrible. Did OSHA get involved? I know your a private contractor but whomever you were working for can still be held lilable if they did not suggest or provide fall protection or take proper safety measures.

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Originally Posted by MDK

WOW sorry about the fall, that sounds horrible. Did OSHA get involved? I know your a private contractor but whomever you were working for can still be held lilable if they did not suggest or provide fall protection or take proper safety measures.

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No OSHA involvement. The company I was painting for at the time I was doing as a self employed contractor.

They stepped up and covered my medical bill even though they were not at fault, the bill was $17,000.00.

I am now employed by that same company, since October 2020.

So I cleaned up the room and adjusted my kit on Saturday , Yesterday (Sunday) I went down and played the kit , just me playing whatever I felt like , did that non stop for about two hours. It felt great. It's funny when you haven't played for a while and you first start back up everything is sluggish. My speed was way down , my coordination was off a bit , I was missing the mark on a lot of things. But the more I kept playing it all started comings back. Things got smoother and started flowing nicely again. So after i finished my two hours of just playing I played to some tunes.

Did some ZZ Top -
Beer Drinkers
Waitin for the bus
Jesus just left Chicago
Nasty dogs and funky kings

Yes -
Owner of a lonely heart
Roundabout

Rush -
Closer to the heart
YYZ
Subdivisions - This one was a mess. I never really learned this one I just really like it. I've got to practice sections separately to get up to speed.

And I finished up with Heart's Barracuda

All in all it felt good to be playing again , no dizziness at all.