Before I do anything else, I want to thank everyone who encouraged me to go to this event despite the difficulties, and who donated to help make it possible. On the former, I particularly need to thank my Godfather for his push/kick there near the end. On the latter, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate the gifts that helped me to get there. I may be a while paying off the rest, but it was more than worth it to get there.

I’ll cover general transport in another post, but also want to thank Old Paratrooper for his extreme kindness in picking me up in Knoxville and getting me to the conference, and for then picking me up at the end of the conference and driving me back to the bus. Riding in a convertible through the mountains was a thing of beauty. It was great to finally meet him in person, and we had fun sharing tales and stories. Thank you my friend! Also, thanks to Instapundit, Prof. Glenn Reynolds, for joining me for breakfast one morning. It was good to see him in person and to catch up a bit. More on that soon in another post (or three, we covered a lot of ground).

The short version is that I wish I had been able to attend one of these Lightning Strike and Electrical Shock Survivors conferences very much sooner. As in not long after I was hit. The amount of information I got was almost like being hit with a firehose. Even better was talking with other survivors and finding out I’m not alone and not crazy (well, not in terms of the after effects of the strike anyway).

The longer version is that the life I had is gone, and it’s not coming back. In the words of the song, it’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine. In fact, I feel more than fine. There is a part of me that is sad and other emotions at knowing that life is not ever going to come back. My mind and body are never going to work the way they did, and I will never be able to do some of the things I used to do. I’m still a pilot, though I will likely never fly again. If I can adjust to that, I can learn to deal with needing grab bars in the shower.