HI Connie, and thanks for the kind words. Don't be surprised with you get a bill from my haberdasher though, I'm having to replace my hat because you made it swell too much!

Suggest to your dad that no matter what life takes from us as payment for hang around this planet, it always leaves us something we can use and adapt to make up for the loss (or enough of it, anyway).

When I got shot, I lost the use of my right leg below the knee due to a bullet through the right sciatic nerve.

At first, because I was young and inexperienced with dealing with adversity, I was devastated! As a person who loves driving for its own sake, loss of the use of my right ankle seemed like a crushing blow because not only is the right foot used to work the throttle (gas pedal), it's also used to operate the brake!

Having no control over my right foot (and very little sensation from it as feed-back as to where the foot was), I was well and truly bummed out! I'd spent a great deal of time learning to perform and master the "Heel and toe" technique used to simultaneously apply and modulate the brakes, while doing the same with the throttle. This allowed "Double-clutch" downshifting while applying the brakes going into a tight corner at speed.

Hell, I thought it meant that my days of even operating a manual transmission were over, and I'd be forever doomed to driving "Slush-boxes," vehicles with automatic transmissions. No fun in that, eh?

Well, the truth is that I still haven't learned to "heel and toe" again, but I did quickly learn that I could plant my right heel against the floor as a pivot point, and with my foot on the accelerator peed,l push forward with my thigh to add throttle, and pull in back the same way to back off the throttle.

I do have to lift my entire leg and simultaneously move it (from the hip) and lower it to the brake and press down with the thigh. Woot!

However, I was also an avid motorcyclist and had cut my teeth on european hardware where the brake is operated with the left foot and the shift lever with the right. Years of riding had ingrained this pattern into my brain.

When I returned from Vietnam (several years after being shot there) I purchased a used Honda CB750, the first of the Japanese multi's. Guess what? Japanese motorcycles have the shift and brake on the opposite sides!

If you don't think that re-learning to ride with one leg that hardly works, is sufficiently challenging, just imagine trying to do this in San Francisco, where every stop is on a hill.

It was a fun adventure for two weeks, before I decided that I could manage the open road, and left to spend the next 6 months doing just that, living off the back of my scooter!

Never fret about what is gone, that's history. Focus on what's left, and adapt. Before long, your adaptation will become second nature and you won't give it a thought, unless you need to encourage someone else!

Good luck to you both!

Bart