Sorry for the Gap!

I apologize for the gap in updates. Been kinda crazy with everything going on. I will be posting updates every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday starting today. I'll be covering not only my recovery thus far, but continuing the journey I have gone through as well so you can find out just how everything went and how everything is currently going.

If you have any questions please please post them. Comments are greatly appreciated as well, and as always thank you so much for reading and supporting us through all this difficult time!

Also, my Youtube channel will be getting regular updates as well every Tuesday and Thursday. Not sure what about yet. I may start posting walk-throughs and gaming videos, or maybe digital art, and speed painting videos.

We'll see!

Thanks again!

~Will

Amazing update!

I have begun to gain feeling in my legs as well as limited movement. It is PAINFUL like I could not even begin to describe. I will post a full update soon. For now, thank you everyone for your wonderful support. It was your help, combined with everyone else that helped me make it through this incredibly difficult time in my life and my family and I thank you for it.

Daily Thoughts -Day 1

There are times in our lives where a calm understanding comes over you. It is like a transition has occurred and you can make it out, but only barely.
There are times when these moments though calm, quiet, and difficult to notice, have profound and permanent impressions on us.

In these moments we tend to become nervous. We seek distraction from all areas of our lives attempting to forget what may have triggered it. Or, we fight the change clinging to the old way of thinking or acting and become unjustifiably bitter towards the people in our lives that only seek to help and love us.

Change, it can be terrifying, enraging, justifying, explanatory,  exciting.

I love my wife, daughter, family, friends, co-workers and so on. I loved the life I had before my disease. But, the strength this has shown me. The strength I have found within myself when I thought I had none. The fight I found to make it through to see my wife, daughter no matter the outcome. Just the ability to hear my daughter laugh, and my wife scold me for acting like a child. No matter if I was in a wheelchair, or confined to a bed unable to do more than blink and smile, or if I am standing with crutches and splints.

And yet those moments moved through my life as if they never happened. As if they were a breeze through the trees doing nothing more than changing the leaves and leaving a cool spring aroma in the air. The life I have now fits. It feels right, no matter how unfair it seems. And when I could stop distracting myself, and I could stop blaming people and things, and really revel in what I now have.

I embrace the moment, and I prepare for the future, whatever it may be. And I am happy that I have everyone in my life that I now do. I love my family more than I can even understand to explain. I am am prepared for the days ahead.

Getting back on posting, Happy Easter

Im sorry for not posting in the last few weeks. Ive been extremely busy catching back up with everything in normal everyday life. Good.news.is I.start going back to work this coming week.

Happy Easter to all those who practice it. And to everyone else, I hope you had a wonderful weekend and are ready for a new week filled with new opportunities.

Picking Up With Treatments

After the doctor explained the disease, and how it is a lifelong condition with no cure, saying I was nervous and depressed would be a severe understatement.

He began explain a treatment called Plasmapheresis (Yet another treatment so rare its not recognized by the library autocorrect.).

In Plasmapheresis, the blood is removed from the body, at an amount of 1/3 the total volume at a time. It is run through a centrifuge to separate the red blood cells from the plasma. The Plasma is where the antibodies reside. They then replace the removed plasma with a substance called Albumen, a synthetic plasma.

It has to be said now that after being explained how the treatment worked, I was told that Citrate is used as an anti-coagulant to keep your blood from clotting in the system. I informed the doctors that I am allergic to Citrate in its raw form.

This complicated treatments heavily. I struggled through the first treatment as the citrate was pumped through the catheter in my neck, directly into my heart. I was given a heavy dose of Benadryl prior to the procedure, but even with that pre-treatment I still had a severe reaction to the Citrate in my heart. My heart beat dropped to 26 beats a minute, my blood pressure bottomed out, and my breathing nearly came to a complete stop.

I went completely paralyzed for approximately 20 minutes during the treatment. The entire time all I could do was fixate on the respirator machine they had just outside the door waiting to be wheeled in and hooked up along side the rest of the machines already monitoring everything my body could do. The nurses kept slapping my on the chest and reminding me to breath.

After about 20 minutes I was able to breath on my own normally, without having to be prompted to breath.

By that time Rosemary, my wife, made it to the room and I had begun using her as a focal point. Seeing her reminded me of everything I had to fight for. Had she not shown up when she did, I may not have had that umph of energy to pull out of my current condition. I fought as hard as I could to keep consciousness through how terrible it felt to have all the current conditions. My face was ice cold, my chest felt like I had a softball being shoved into it, and I was so nauseous I have no clue how I didn't get sick. But, I fought for my wife, and she reminded me of our daughter, and of Cassidy.

I pulled out of that horrible event, and promptly fell back into the blackness of unconsciousness. When I came to, I must have been doing well enough. I was on several drips, my throat was soar from breathing so erratically, my head felt like it was in a vise, my chest still felt like there was someone standing on it, and I was still sick to my stomach, but I didn't have a breathing tube in my throat, and my wife was still by my side.

We kissed and she said, "Hey! We agreed no dying didn't we?! You can't break that promise!", with a little laugh.

"I know, I was just trying to make the doctors and nurses earn that paycheck." I said with a laugh reverberated in my voice.

And with that the first treatment finished. The doctors and my neurologist came in later that morning to see how I was doing, and go over how they were going to alter the treatment for the next 4 rounds.

Good god, I still had 4 treatments, one every other day, after this one...

Making It Home!

After a long fight in the hospital, and an intense and painful stay at the Rehabilitation Hospital of Indianapolis I am happy to say. "I did it!".

When I made it home it was the best feeling ever.
Managing the medications I have to take seemed daunting at first, but after a few tests, and some creative thinking on how to manage the dosages at what not, I believe we have found a successful way to handle all the pills and injections I have.

I will continue the Road To Recovery portion of this blog shortly. I would just to take this post to say Thank You to everyone for all of the wonderful support, kind words, and everything else you did to make this event in our lives manageable.

With Love and Gratitude
~The Rickard Family

I Get To Go Home And I Have A Face Book Page