Get Me the 2" Needle

On Wednesday of this week I spent a little time in the afternoon with my friend Tommy Hollenstein. Tommy and I are working on a documentary together about his life and artwork. For those who don't know, Tommy had a biking accident in 1985 and had a spinal cord injury that left him paralyzed from the neck down. Tommy asked me to join him for a doctors visit to film for the documentary. The visit was for treatments to his muscles to help ease the pain of a recent car accident (Tommy doesn't drive and it was the other drivers fault by the way).  I wasn't sure what I was in for.  Well, I prepared my cameras and off I went to meet Tommy at the doctors office. Basically the doctors plan was to inject dextrose into the muscle to help relax the muscle and realign it to the bone, this takes injections, lots and lots of injections. Injections with large scary needles that can be as longer or maybe longer than 2 inches. We waited for the doctor for a while and Tommy was getting antsy because he is not too excited about getting these injections and wanted to get it over with. Soon, the doctor came in and started poking Tommy in the neck with these big needles (after asking him where it hurts of course). "Get me the 2" needle" he said. He needed to get deep into the tissueThe doctor was pretty gentle, but when it was all over, we counted about 80 needle sticks in all....for that day, Tommy was a human pin cushion.  The footage is great and will fit nicely into the documentary. Stay tuned!!