"Quick life story"

Who I am and where I came from I feel is a huge key to making it through such experiences like my experience being paralyzed. We develop strengths from the time we are born. How we are conditioned as infants, then toddlers, and all the way up to the time we reach adulthood is something that gives us our strategy options for overcoming all situations. My life began in a small town in Wyoming called Upton. I grew up like a normal kid in my small town of 900 people. I spent my childhood riding bikes, building ramps to jump my friends , fishing for tadpoles in the mudholes at the edge of town and of coarse the regular T-Ball experiences. The smell of fresh cut grass and watermelon after a T-Ball game is something that followed me as an empowering sensation to this very day. On top of my life as a kid , at a young age I developed a sense of what hard work was about. I developed this working sense from a few different sources. My dad ran a logging business and in his off seasons he worked in the oilfield and these were the days that taking your kid to work wasn't really frowned upon. I went to work with my dad on the oil rigs at age 5, by age 10 I could tell the company men the process of drilling an oil well from start to finish. In the logging side of things I literally had a chainsaw in my hands and supervised my first timber thinning project at age 12. At the same time my moms side of the family ran a ranch. I was roughly 7 years old when my grandpa wired blocks of wood to the pedals in an old 70s model Ford pickup and taught me how to drive in the hayfields so him and my uncle could throw hay bales in the back after haying. At 9 years old we moved onto the ranch and I was getting a solid taste of ranch life, the oil field, and the timber industry. By this time I already had experience operating random farm tractors and mowing the grass turned into just an every other week hobby. The equipment experience I developed grew and later turned into my full time career. That 9 year mark in my age was a real life defining time for me. Not only did we take living to the ranch  life where hard work, livestock, and dirt bikes were essentials but that was the age where I began playing guitar. Music had always been a huge part of my life. I was that kid at 5 years old serenading my grandma in the living room with my tennis racket guitar and broom handle mic belting out old 80s Bon Jovi songs. When I finally got a guitar in my hands it was a life changer for me. I needed that type of self therapy because my dad running a business and my grandparents owning a ranch didn't necessarily provide an easy going lifestyle. I lived in an old 1976 tin sided trailer house and our family car was a 1970s model Ford Pinto and second hand clothes were my norm. My younger sister and I were fed regularly and taken to the doctor when needed but there weren't many perks beyond that except my growing ability to drift into dreamland in my bedroom with my guitar. That guitar took me to a whole new life and from 9 years old all the way through high school I found myself playing roughly 5 hours a day. Running equipment turned into a passion right along with my music. By my teenage years I knew how to operate everything from dozer to excavator to scrapers and it truly made me feel like I was unstoppable. Entering those teen years I  was feeling pretty good. I could do more than most kids my age and I was impressing everyone around me with my abilities to play guitar but I was about to be  introduced to a new element, a new chemical to influence the feelings. I sadly had my first alcoholic drink at just under 13 years old. My uncle who played that somewhat farther figure role, while my dad was chasing rigs, had me with him one evening when we went to visit some family at a nearby camping area. At the time I really didn't know the consequences of alcohol and I honestly didn't understand the extent of my uncles conditions with drinking. All I knew was he introduced me to a well mixed Crown Royal and Coke and this was my start of about a 13 year drinking problem. Once I had started, I turned it into a regular habit but again didn't know where it was going to lead me. I went through high school living a fairly fun life but not 100% responsibly with my growing drinking problem. I was playing guitar, chasing girls, making money and having a good time. I graduated high school at age 18 in Upton, Wyoming. I started kindergarten and did every year of school in Upton and managed to graduate with most of the same people I started school with, which was under 30 people. When you spend all of grade school and high school with a situation like that you really become your own family with your classmates. We literally were closer than most of my actual family. We spent a lot of time together fishing, hunting, working, tearing up the mud in our four wheel drive pickups and simply loving the life we were creating.  After graduating, I ran away 70 miles to a local university to give my try at college. College turned into one huge party for me. I met my number one musical connection Phil in college and let me tell you we wrote some of the best music either one of us had ever played. Phil and I were playing little local entertainment gigs on campus and the local coffee shops and on the other end I was also playing guitar for a local cover band at the bars in Spearfish, South Dakota. There I was again spending my time playing music, chasing girls, and of coarse taking advantage of those alcohol resources. My uncle had taught me quite a bit over the years about autobody repair so my beer money was actually coming from a local autobody shop that I picked up a part time job at. Phil and I were living the real pre-rockstar life. Ramen noodles, cardboard microwave pizzas, parties and of coarse my bad habit of missing classes which eventually ended the party and forced me to go home and work. I went home and worked for a local excavation company running heavy equipment and eventually worked my way up to running my own crew until I took a job at one of the local coal mines operating the worlds largest equipment. There I was again making money and having a good time with it. I was horrible at managing money but growing up I never really had the guidance to the best money management practices. My dad was the same, very poor at managing money and what little bit my mom made as a nursing assistant went to the slack bills around the place while my dad was chasing rigs and sadly feeding his own addictions. So for my early 20s I somewhat led a similar situation. Work hard for good money and burn it on a good time. My drinking problem grew so much that I had a point in time where I was off work for 3 months after shoulder surgery and I was literally cashing a $1,500.00 check every 2 weeks at the local bars. I was throwing parties and really making the poorest decisions a guy could make at that age. I got a DUI in Sturgis, South Dakota when I was 21 years old which slowed me down a little but it kept coming back. This was about the age life introduced me to death and looking back I feel like that introduction was probably Gods way of trying to show me what happens. Every time I would turn around there was someone dying. I saw death first handedly more times in my early 20s than I've seen in every horror film up to this day. Car accidents seemed to be a common encounter I found myself having and I always seemed to be the first one there, it was like a curse. My first hard impacting accident and taste of death wasn't far from home and it set a life changing example after a drunk driver had a head on with a family of four and seeing this face to face with children involved honestly gives me nightmares to this day. Sadly the lesson to get control of the drinking was short lived. I sat face to face with a girl I knew whos boyfriend shot himself in front of us , I could not get away from these experiences but I was also stubborn to the lessons I should have been taking note of. I found myself in often depressive moods and it turned into something that realistically should have had a doctors attention with mental health but I self medicated with my guitar and of coarse alcohol. In my mid 20s I found myself working closer to my life changing example. I was running my own excavation business but still making poor financial decisions so I had that business owner status but a very irresponsible structure. I met this little cutie at a party that I ended up marrying and we had twin baby boys. Right after having our boys I ended up stopped dead in my tracks when I ruptured a disc in my back. Spinal surgery and a lot of physical therapy was how I spent a majority of my year after we had our boys. My boys turned a year old when I was finally about done with all my physical therapy sessions. We were broke, barely getting by living in a 1 bedroom house feeding the boys on food stamps and scraping change for gas and cigarettes. Little did I know one of the most impacting lessons of my life was about to really jump up and slap me. I went to my last physical therapy session and I was headed home the long way so I could stop by my grandparents house to return a paint sprayer to my uncle who was staying with them at the time. He had been going through his fight with his alcohol addiction and was dealing with a lot so he was home basing at my grandparent's house. I got to the gravel road for the last few miles of the drive to their house when a county deputy passed me with his emergency lights on. I followed him and followed him right into my grandparent's driveway where there was an ambulance. My first thought was that my grandma had fell down or something. I parked my car and one of my cousins was standing there crying and my mind went to maybe one of my grandparents had passed. I asked what happened and he just said we lost Uncle George. My heart dropped and I ran into the house right past the EMTs and into his bedroom to find him laying on the floor where I discovered he had shot himself. I sat on the floor next to him and held his hand for a moment and tried just taking it all in but my mind was racing as I shut my eyes to gather the reality that he had lost his battle to alcohol. I lost one of the most important people in my life that day to an addiction influenced suicide. Devastation took control and I decided I had better get a grip on my own problem now that I seen the death of my role model influenced by the same problem. I began my own battle with trying to quit and with this battle I began to really learn about influenced anxiety and depression. I was very thankful that I was married to who I was married to because she had been very experienced with anxiety and being manic depressive. I connected with her mental health doctor who helped me beat the anxiety but as well as that went for a couple years I found myself developing a new problem, a life threatening problem. This particular doctor wasn't real thorough about the treatments of anxiety and some of the risks of treating anxiety after kicking alcohol. Xanax turned into the new courage in my life and boy I had no clue what its negative capabilities were. Every time I would go in for a check up it was the same song and dance, "doc it works great but wears off fast." The same response every time from him "well lets up the dose." I didn't realize it was leading me to my death. There I was addicted to another chemical that destroyed my life. I lost my business, lost my wife eventually, and my relationship with my boys was very minimal for a little while as well as the relationship with my baby girl that we had not long before we split. I thought I was ruling the world when the whole time I was burning it down. Until a holiday weekend when I ran out of my prescription and found myself in the hospital having withdrawal influenced seizures. This was where I learned I had a serious problem. Rehabilitation was a pushed option but we really couldn't find a program that worked so I consulted with a new doctor about  ways to get myself off of it and I found myself in a 4 month battle with the devil himself. Withdrawal symptoms while weaning off an extreme amount of Xanax was one of the scariest experiences I'd ever had. I had more thoughts of suicide than I had ever had and thankfully my guitar was still my best friend. I would sit in the corner of my bedroom being the only person in the house with these racing thoughts of how to end it but I never took the step towards that, my steps went to my guitar case and I would sit and play for hours upon hours. Eventually myself and my guitar won the battle I fought with my second and last addiction experience. After finally getting through my final breakthrough with that I stepped outside and faced the world once again. I started another business and got myself back into heavy equipment. I later met my youngest boy's mom. We dated for a couple years and had things together fairly well before we had my youngest son. My relationship with my three older kids was healing up really well and things seemed to be going the right direction. We had our son and 4 months later work once again stopped dead in its tracks. My industry slowed way down and after looking at my options we decided to move to Colorado Springs to pursue a new avenue of my business and get some further medical help with my back problems that had flared back up. I was working hard at getting this new life kicked off in Colorado with my work and recording a lot of my original music, at least until the day I woke up paralyzed as you read already. I had my life right back on a path that I wanted and within that 24 hour period of time it was yet again ripped away. The story I've just told you is a very short version of every thought that made it through my mind while I laid in that hospital bed trapped in my own mind unable to move and unable to talk. These are just surface stories of the experiences I have had in my life that brought me to great realizations of what life can throw at you. These are my roots and these are the experiences that give a man like myself the power to utilize the natural tools I had to conquer my challenges. Now the direction I've dedicated myself to is helping everyone I can to develop those tools to defeat their challenges before going through some of these experiences. I've done so much with my life sing my experience with GBS paralyzing me. Still paralyzed from the knees down, I have managed to travel the country helping many of others in bad situations with sharing my experiences. I've also found a lot of evil on the road that has pushed me even more towards helping others. For example, in April of 2021 when myself and a coworker parked beside a pickup in a mountain highway pullout. The pickup was occupied by a gentleman that seemed to have had too much to drink the night before as the dash of his truck was covered in beer cans and he appeared to be passed out in the drivers seat. When we went to leave I insisted on honking the horn to wake him to simply make sure he was ok. Unfortunately this was when we discovered that he had in fact taken his own life with a rifle sometime the night before. I called 911 and got out of my pickup to examine him through thee questioning of dispatch. The cab of his pickup was filled with pure evil and at the same time pure peace. At a moment like that you can't help but to wonder where he was at in his life that made him take this step. With those thoughts we also wonder could something had been said to save his life from making that decision and with myself the experience took me to my past when that option stared me in the face. Sometimes people struggle with the challenges in their lives. The struggle is so intense that it fogs the mind's ability to find the one positive thought that it takes to change the course of thinking. My positive thought was always my music, but when you're paralyzed and that is no longer an option what do you do? I learned a lot of ways to cope through the challenges as they came and sometimes it took the right person saying the right thing. We all have the keys to the right doorways in our lives, sometimes it just takes the right influencer to help find the locks to open those doors! Thank you all for following me and hopefully you continue to follow for more to come! God Bless!! ~Shane Ankeney