
Dear Family, Friends and Followers, It’s been a very long time. Six years to long to be more exact. And some of you may have wondered what happened to us. Well it’s a very VERY long story. When last we met we had been in the midst of planning our quest, Excitement was high and we had a good solid five year plan…Oh woe betide those best laid plans… Life decided it had other plans for us and they weren’t very nice.
On June 7th, 2013 I suffered what would be a catastrophic injury to my spinal cord. I would spend the next two years bed ridden and in deep depression as I lost my ability to take care of myself and had to be utterly dependent on the care of others. The injury caused such trauma to the spinal cord that it resulted in Cauda Equina Syndrome
In my case it destroyed the nerves that control the bowel and bladder. I’m permanently paralyzed in the saddle area (imagine all of the areas of your body that come in contact with a horses saddle). It also affected the sciatic nerve and as a result of that I’m in pain and have nerve damage that causes my right leg to bounce uncontrollably. I ultimately became a hermit, mostly due to the bowel and bladder issues. It took a long time to get my strength back after being bed ridden for nearly two years. when my accident occurred and the bowel and bladder symptoms presented they had a 48 hour window in which they could do emergency surgery. I should probably mention that this injury happened on the job and the workman’s comp doctors were the ones who dropped the ball on this one.
Despite the fact that the emergency room doctors and specialists told workman’s comp that I needed immediate emergency surgery. they decided they needed more opinions and by the time I had my surgery it was six months later. their making me wait for surgery pretty much guaranteed the permanent damage to my spinal cord nerve bundle.
So we fast forward to now. I am nearly 100% recovered from another back surgery. And no, the back surgery did not cure the Cauda Equina Syndrome. Would that it could… We find ourselves trying to pick back up on our dreams. And we are even taking it one step farther than we planned. Pibbs Dream Quest has started a you tube channel called Beyond Mundania. You can also find us on Facebook We hope to chronicle the baby steps of getting our van ready for Van dwelling. So far we just have one video posted as of today. Instead of our plan to work at various places while we live in the van, we’ve had to make some modifications. I’ll be solo female van dweller most of the time and Phill will continue to work his job and just join me on the weekends and holidays.
We will be focusing on traveling with disabilities, music composing, writing, and art. We will also be showing how we DIY transform the van into a livable space. It won’t be anything spectacular but perhaps one day we’ll be able to attend a van build and get some help on doing it right. Eventually Phill will be Joining me full time on the road. he will still do like our original plan, working at various locations while living in the van. My contribution will be my SSD income. Hopefully we’ll be able to manage.
If you do check us out on YouTube and Facebook it would be really terrific if you could subscribe, like, follow and share out little page. We are really glad to be back and hope you will accept our apologies for being gone so long…but life really did get in the way for a very long time as I’ve been battling one disability after another. Hope we’ll see you all out there some day.
Krissie