30

I'm 30, the big three oh, three decades of life on earth. No matter how you say it, I'm getting older, just like everyone else.

I read one comment that thirty is when older adults start to respect you and kids say you're old. It will remain to be seen on those notes, but it would be a nice change for the first one to be true. After today, I'm not feeling as old as yesterday for some reason. Maybe the idea is just settling in better, we'll give it a week to see.

Over the past few weeks though, my pastor at church has been giving thanks for me achieving this milestone. In a few months I will have my 27th anniversary of being a quad. There's no debate that this has been an easy life to this point, but I have been blessed with a caring family and, relatively speaking, good health. Statistics say I should have died in my early to mid teens, even updated ones give me just another decade.

In college I had one "nurse" who liked to continually remind me that I should not be alive, that I had lived longer than I should have. I wasn't aware that I had an allowance on life span, but I guess I had overspent my allowance, according to her. It is true that high-level quads that depend on mechanical ventilation, just like me, tend to have a shorter life span than most people.

Of the quads I know at my injury level or higher, only one has a longer post injury life span than I do. He was injured in his teen years though and is now in his mid forties. I have known a number of quads through CHAMP Camp and the "grape vine" of contents, but several have passed away years ago. One that I keep track of turned thirty a few months ago, but he was also injured two years later than I was.

These past three decades have been interesting, and full of highs and ultra lows. I don't know how many I have left, but I know that I need to continue to trust in God's lead, and look nowhere else for a clue on the future.