Just A Note

Just wanted to take a moment to thank all those for the comments and encouragement. I’m trying to get the next little chapter written but I am still adjusting to the new schedule.

I was interviewed by the St. Petersburg Times this afternoon concerning being one of the Crossing Guard Patrol and part of the Citrus County Sheriff's Office, headed up by Sheriff Jeff Dawsy.

So, since this blog was mentioned in the interview, (I can’t imagine by whom) I thought I might leave a little thank you for anyone who might visit after reading the news article.

The Post should be read in proper order beginning with November 2006, the post which may or may not have been mentioned in the paper were those pertaining to my life. Which are labeled as, “What Can Be Said” in order beginning with 001.

The regular posts will resume shortly. Thank you again.

Paul R. Dickinson

What Can Be Said 010

One of the most significant differences between going into a hospital to heal and entering a hospital to recover is the Rehabilitation. The different between the two is when you are healing what you get is nurses catering to what ever needs you have. When you are there to recover and rehabilitate what you get is a daily regiment of instructions, which sums up to pain and discomfort in order to change you from your current condition to a better state of being.

This, however, is not completely unfamiliar to people who follow the teachings of Christ. In the same way, God who loves us enough to want the very best for us does not leave us in the state we were in at that moment of reconciliation, nor the state we are currently in. God tells us in the (Gospel of Mark 4:32) we are to grow up in faith, (Ephesians 4:13) we are to become more Christ like, (Romans 12:2) we are to be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God,
(2 Corinthians 3:18) we are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. This is just a sample of scriptures that tell Christians there will be a daily regiment of instructions, and with that there is sure to be pain and discomfort. How can one change from one state of being to another without the accompaniment of tenderness. Even to ask of such a thing would be to deny what Christ sacrificed for us. See John chapter 19 for more understanding.

I really had no idea what I was in for, in fact I had never heard of “rehab” before this all started. The time I had spent in the last hospital did not include exercising or stretching. So after showering and having breakfast a Therapist would come in the room and help me to stretch, as much as was possible with all the cast and braces on me.

I do not remember how long that went on before the Halo brace was removed, really all I remember is the actual day it was unbolted from my head. I realize I am using phrases that make removing the brace sound very graphic, but that is the only way I can get across to the reader the pain that accompanied this could only be weighed against the pain of the bolts being tightened the first time.

I think that it might be possible my dates might be off some, it is difficult for me to remember proper sequence of some memories and some dates. Thinking back, I remember Christmas that year being either just before or just after my arriving back in Maine. The reason I wonder about this is that there is a memory of Mom and my brothers and sister waiting until I got out of the hospital so I could have Christmas with them. I tell you the truth, whether Church family or biological family, life with out family would make recovery far more difficult.

Before I could leave the Hospital there were several things, I had to be able to do. The first was of course was being able to take care of myself, meaning bathing, dressing and being able to transfer into a vehicle.

Part of the daily regiment was to be able to do one hundred pushups, every day, five days a week, one hundred push-ups were required along with a half hour of stretching and standing in a machine that holds you up-right. This was to increase blood circulation through out my body. Interesting how that works, God did not design this body to be permanently in the sitting position.

I was soon to leave the hospital after what seemed years rather than months, though I still had to prove myself to the head of the Physical Therapy Department. She had me come to the department room and sit on the edge of mat, which was about two feet off the ground sitting on a platform that looked much like a full size bed. Once I got there she walked over to me and shoved me backward. Then again she shoved me to the right and again to the left, trying to push me off balance and to fall back onto the mat. The idea was to make sure I could catch myself before falling. To make sure all those things they had taught me were going to stay with me. And in fact they have always stayed with me.

Those things which were taught to me were taught with a reason and a purpose. I remember the Doctor telling me on a particularly rough day I was having. He said, “You have two choices, you live with your disability or you die with it. And if you live with it, you live with it alone.” He was telling me not to rely on anyone for help. To be totally independent meant not needing anyone, to be solely reliant on no one.

That statement did get me out of the Hospital and it did help me to deal with the idea of being restricted to a wheelchair for (what they said) would be the rest of my life. However that same thought process had later proved to be (and still to some degree) one of the hardest things to let go of. (John 3:30) “He must increase, but I must decrease”.

The day I left I was brought to a small house about a mile or so from the Hospital. It still was not clear in my mind that this is where I would be living and that I would not be going back to the farm. Somewhere in my mind I must have figured if I went back and lived on the farm again all this would just disappear. But truly there was no way I could do all those things necessary to live the way we did such a short time ago.

It is simply amazing how fast life can change, but that is another day’s story to tell. Continued…

What Can Be Said 009

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It’s a funny thing about a child’s perception. As time was passing and I was trying to adjust to all that had happened, I was asked a question. I was asked where I wanted to spend my time in rehab, as that Hospital was a Teaching Hospital and did not offer the kind of rehabilitation I was going to need. I was told there was a great Rehabilitation Hospital in Jacksonville. But that really didn’t sink in. All I could think of was going back to Maine. My mind processed it as going back in time. Erasing the last few months and pretending it never happened. So I said I wanted to return to Maine but in my mind I wasn’t going into another Hospital I was going home, back to what I had left behind.

Since I had been hospitalized there had been several News articles written about myself and that accident. Many of the reported things about me were only partially correct. There were rumors that I had died, that I would be paralyzed from the neck down and such things as that. When Christmas came there had been a rather large article called, “Home for Christmas” and the challenges we would face in doing so. I remember there had been one gentleman who had read the article who offered to fly me home in a private plane, and one of the nurses that cared for me offered to fly up with my Mother and me to help insure a safe trip.

The News Paper, (The Inverness Chronicle) had also wrote about the rather large sum of money it would take to make such a journey. They had asked the public to help make that Christmas one I would remember. There was also a woman who’s name was Lee Blair, who had been there from the start. I had no idea who this lady was, only that she was a dear Christian woman who wanted to help. I still don’t know who she was or where she came from. Only that she was a tremendous blessing sent from God. It was she that had collected all the donations from all the people in this area who chose to help a Mother and her son.


As it turned out we didn’t need the nurse of the private plane for the trip. I don’t remember why we ended up on a regular commercial flight after all the concerned comments about the dangers. I can tell you this though, I was quite a sight! My left leg in a cast up to the hip, a body cast that went from my waist to my neck and sporting the latest fashion in neck traction! Not one person passing by could resist looking at me and of course, I had to be seated in the very front row from easy access.

It is easy to look back now and smile about it or to make fun of the situation, but at the time I felt as though I belonged in the circus. As odd as it may seem, I think it was the looks from the children that helped to adjust to being looked at all the time. Or worst yet, to be looked at and see a quickly turning head as I look back at them. However, with children it was different; kids don’t quickly turn away before you can make eye contact. And it gave me a chance to smile at them and to see them occasionally smile back. Kids are very open and honest with their questions or comments. But they never judge you by what you look like. Adults seem for the most part to have forgotten how to do that. They think its rude behavior or impolite, at least after they get caught looking at what obviously seemed odd or different to them.

It isn’t my intention to put other adults down, but only to express that children have something that we adults have forgotten. Perhaps that’s why they are so important to Christ, and why He says we must become like children in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven!
Matthew 18:3 “and said, "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven”.


Once we got to Maine we landed at the Bangor (ban gor) not (ban ger) International Airport and was shuttled in an ambulance right back to another hospital. And here I would spend the next six months before getting to go home. Only, it wasn’t going to be the home I remembered. Continued…

What Can Be Said 008

Two months or so had passed between the events surrounding returning the car to its owner and when I found myself lying in a hospital bed, torn from everything that was familiar to me. Everything in my world was about to change in a way I never would have imagined.

Not too long ago I had been given an opportunity to deliver a Sunday afternoon message to a wonderful group of elderly folk who lived in a local long-term-care-center.

As I sat before them ready to deliver my message, I flashed back to the days I spent hospitalized. I began to express to them, (with a depth of compassion I had never felt before) how I could feel what they were going through. How I felt their emotion, their depression, even their sense of self loss. I told them how I understood the feeling of being torn from the lives they knew.
Their sense of freedom, their ability to make their own decisions, but especially how it felt to be plucked out of the very world they had come to know, that world they had come to rely on, that which they had felt comfort and security from. It didn’t matter if their world was in their opinion a good one or not, you can get used to most any situation after a while, even realize there was a kind of comfort, once that comfort has been removed and replaced by something completely unfamiliar.

What I remember most about the time in the hospital was the smells; you can become very used to the smells of your own little piece of the world. A type of comfort you never realized was there, like the particular brand of soap or shampoo, the way your clothing smelled fresh out of the dryer. Then to suddenly wake up to an entirely different world of smells in a controlled environment. Our senses play a big part in forming our memories and create a sense of security.

My intent that day was to express to those kindly people that God had not deserted them. Just as He had not deserted me all those years ago when I was plucked from the world I knew.

Returning to November 1980 mid-way through the month. Once I became alert and somewhat oriented with where I was, the Dr. which was caring for me as well as a team of nurses surrounded my bed. In his seemingly cold, professional way, he began filling in the blanks for me. As he told me what had happened, (and even to this day) it felt as if he was telling me about someone else. You never envision that tragic events like this could happen to you.

He gave me the highlights and my mother filled in the details. She told me how I was hit be a passing car which was heading in the same direction, that they brought me to the little hospital here in town and as they had no way of properly caring for this type of injuries they had flown me in a Coast Guard Helicopter to a much larger Hospital some fifty miles north of here.

She explained what damage was done and how it would affect my life. There were a total of seven bones broken in that incident. Both lower bones in my left leg were broken, (the tibia and fibula) the left side of my pelvis had received such an impact it was shattered into pieces. My spine, although technically had not severed, was damaged beyond modern medicine ability to repair.

I still remember how she bald her two fists up to symbolize my spine and showed me how my back had arched to a point of chipping the edges off the vertebrae, (Thoracic 5, 6&7) And last, but absolutely not lease, one of the vertebrae in my upper neck had been severed. Level, C2. (Cervical level 2) I was told had the break been another vertebrae higher it would have taken away my ability to breath.

Other than by the grace of God Himself, I never understood how the nerves in my neck had not severed and the nerves in my back had. I was left as a Paraplegic rather than as a Quadriplegic. (Para- meaning two limbs, quad- meaning four).

They also had to explain to me that because I had broken my neck I had to have my neck in traction. This consisted of two half inch bolts which they had screwed into the temple area of my head while I was still unconscious. At the other end of a cable there were two weights that kept my neck straight while it began to set and heal. And that’s where I stayed for the next month.

As I began to heal and get a little strength back and as we talked about going back to Maine, there came the problem of mobility. As another team of Doctors and nurses gathered around the bad, they sent my mom out of the room after explaining what they were going to do. They not only sent her out of the room they told her she had to leave that floor of the hospital. I remember there was one person there who was responsible for making the cast for what would be the anchors of what they called a Hallo Brace. Although this contraption is fairly well know now, in 1980 it was still knew and few who had heard of this Hallo Brace.


As they began to stick needles in four areas of my head, to (as they said) numb the area before they screwed knew bolts in, I remember holding onto the hand of the man that was standing beside me, he turned out to be the same guy who made the casting. As I grasped his hand, he held on and never let go through the whole ordeal. I realize this in it self doesn’t seem very important but this gentlemen was the first African American I had ever met, not to mention held on to. There just weren’t many African Americans in the area of Maine that I lived in. This man helped to shape and influences my opinion of a totally different race of people. I will never forget how that man stayed there with me ever moments of what was by far the most painful thing I had gone through up to that point. The amazing thing about all this is that My God even through all this was teaching me to love my neighbor. Continued…
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What Can Be Said 001

The phrase, “what can be said” is a general topic concerning all that God prompts me to write about. I felt “prompted” to begin by putting down in words how God worked in my life both as a new Christian and through out the last twenty seven years of my salvation.
My name is Paul, (my wife calls me Paulie) I’m 42 years of age and reside in Hernando Florida. I have been here for the better part of 20 years in the same County now. Aside from a couple years now and then to visit other states. Prier to that time I lived in the State of Maine.

At the rebellious age of 15, my Mother made the very wise decision to take her 4 children to Florida to visit and stay with her Parents. It was September, the year was 1980. We all crowded onto a Gray Hound bus heading south. Once we got to the sunny State of Florida we tried our best to get comfortable and start life over again. My younger brother and sister were enrolled in the local school system, while my Mother and I began looking for jobs in this then still small town. The town itself was small but the main road was already a very busy place. We at various times would walk the mile or so downtown to seek employment.

I remember walking into the only fast food place in town then, (McDonalds) and filling out an application. I was hired that same day. I worked one day and got a call from the local Pizza Hut. I remember it so well because it was my 16th birthday and we were having cake at the time they called.

October 1st 1980, As soon as I got there I was asked a couple simple questions and started me out washing dishes that very same day. Very little time had passed when they trained me to make pizza. One week turned into two and two quickly into three, I would often go in early to help open up and get things ready for the lunch crowd, even when it wasn’t my days to work. Even when I didn’t get paid for it.

It’s was November 5th now, and there was my schedule, I got up, jumped in the shower, sat and watched The Love Boat, (though I’m still not sure why) then headed down the road to help out and to get free lunch to-boot. I think I had eaten more pizza in that month than I have in the twenty six years since.

Thinking back, there was never any sense of impending danger, or even the feeling that I shouldn’t go out that day. That particular day started out just the same as any other day in the last month.

I remember as I walk along the roadside stopping to pull the sandspurs off my pant cuffs, or perhaps I had done it so often I just imagined that I had remembered doing it. The same can be said about the memory of needing to cross the road before entering the busy intersection. I had done it so often I really don’t remember if I did that day. All I remember was that I had a destination.

I became aware that I never made it to work that day, though more than two weeks had passed since I started out. During those two weeks there had been a great battle going on. And from where I was laying it seemed the majority of that time had been a losing battle. When my eyes did open and I realized that I didn’t recognize my surroundings. I began to panic. When I tried to lift my head, it was met with searing pain. When I realized I couldn’t move my legs I thought someone had tied me down. I obviously wasn’t thinking very clearly. It was but a few moments before I passed out again. The next time I awoke I found my mothers gentle face there beside me…. continued