Just before 11:30 a.m., Joe Borsky is watching the clock.
The ex-soldier and athlete will rise from bed, transition to a shiny gray wheelchair and begin an hourlong window of exercise that is his only reprieve from the day.
Before February, Borsky had looked forward to a major national track and field event in Portland. Now he counts the hours until the next morning’s lap around the veteran’s home in Lebanon, Oregon.
To lie there in a bed after so much mobility is strange. But Borsky is burning through virtually all of his income by existing, paying for a room as a veteran with a disability — but not, technically, a disabled veteran.
“I don’t know what the future is,” Borsky said. “There’s nothing to take hold of.”
Pressure
Borsky can’t feel the wound that’s gnawing at his body.
His legs and the lower half of his body have been dead to touch since the 1990s when a bullet severed the nerves which translate pressure against his skin into electro-chemical impulses sent to his brain.
But pressure is exactly the problem. Borsky’s lower body is ulcerated where it frequently contacts seats for extended periods of time.
“I felt healthy. I felt alive,” Borsky said. “I had a purpose. That, to me, is living.”
He was very active — sports and driving all over the Willamette Valley for work. Yet even as Borsky was always moving, his lower body mostly was in one position:
Seated.
Borsky was rolling his chair 5 to 10…
