This was my first Christmas with Colin (nearly 60 years old) since he got out of the nursing home (August 2025) and into his own independent, 3rd floor downtown apartment (with nursing aide Ashley’s help morning and evening).

Colin is both paralyzed from the waist down and with two types of debilitating nerve pain, 24×7, the result of what I call Colin’s Catastrophe on August 16, 2023, when he suffered an “aortic dissection” (delamination of both ascending and descending branches of the aorta) that should have killed him, but did not. None of the docs expected him to live. The damage was much too severe. But here he is!

Over these nearly 2.5 years, the nerve pain has been very very gradually decreasing, with pain pills to keep it somewhat at bay; just how far his nerve pain will improve is hard to say, and were it not improving, I doubt he would have chosen to stay alive.

I have been writing near-daily posts on his endlessly suffering saga ever since. But I rarely post pictures. Yesterday was actually the first time I’ve been in his apartment. Usually, we meet over the phone, or out to a restaurant. But he decided he wanted to be the one to serve Christmas dinner on Christmas day.

See two posts on caringbridge.org, two of them, one with three photos, and the other with many more photos and text describing the event and what led up to it on his part.

There’s lots of back stories to these two posts. Go to colincudmorehealing on caring bridge, to find them, if interested.

 

No pictures of me, since I was the one  taking them. But here’s a photo that neighbor Carissa took of me about a month ago, on a morning when I had surprised her by driving out to help her with a garden for plants from which she creates dyes. Before her family left for California for the holidays, she sent her 10-year-old son Wyatt over with a poinsetta, a hilarious Christmas card, and this photo.

Happy Holidays!