It is me, Argo.

07:37 Surgery day I have repeated the procedures from yesterday. The sun outside was shining peacefully as I was strolling down to the department of day surgery as they call it. I was prepped for many hours of waiting like yesterday, but they told me that I was nr.1 on the list and that the surgery will start in 30 minutes . Sounds good to me, I told them. We will find out soon  enough. This time everything went really quick. I was prepared for hours of waiting in hald sleep, but no. The elderly nurse was very active and after changing to blue hopsital clothing, she quickly installed the IV on my right hand and only 10 minutes later we were strolling in the surgery room. The room was crowded as I expected. My doctor was a calm man in his fifties. Asking me some questions before leaving the room saying: " I will be at the coffe room. Let me know when you guys are set to go." That was cool and professional. A younger guy presented himself as an anesthesiology doctor w...

06:54 AM I woke up couple of times at night as I usually do and finally stood up at 05:45. A glance out of the window and a check on how I am feeling told me that it's going to be a good day. Now, don't get me wrong here. I am not an enteral optimist. I do envy those kind of people and sometimes they irritate me, but I am definitely not one of thrm myself. So, I know already in the morning when the day is not so good and I am taking it as it is. But today has a good vibe in it and the world outside the window seems also pretty convinced about it.  I showered twice as I was instructed. I ate my last supper at 15 o'clock yesterday and used my last nicotine pad at 21. My instructions where not to eat or use tobacco or anything else after midnight so I was well ahead of the schedule. I strolled down to the surgical department C7 at 0640 and was met by a nurse called Nina. She showed me the room and gave me the weird blue clothes. There was a man asleep so we had to...

Hi there, It's 07:55 I am sitting on a plane that takes me to Tromsø university hospital to have a surgery. The procedure should be quite standard and I will be sent home in two days if everything goes well. They are going to remove the titanium fixation plate from my spine. This is a long anticipated moment for me and will improve my condition at least a little bit if not more. The plate has kept me from bending my spine in its entire length and also causes me pain as I go about my walking trainings.  So, send all the positive energy and happy thoughts in my direction the next 24 hours  and have no doubt - I always know when someone does that. I will keep you posted with pics and stuff. Stay strong and take care of your bodies! 09:23 update Took a taxi from the airport to the hospital. I am generally calm, but the thoughts of when I was here the last time start to rise like bubbles from the depths of an ocean. Its slowly ripping open something that I thought w...

Dear diary,  I have more than seven thousand excuses for not writing for such a long time. To count a few and maybe name the most important one - my magic writing pen got empty of refillable ink. It’s one of those special-kind-of pens that needs a refill bullet every once in-awhile (depending on how much it is used(which is apparently a lot in my case)). It’s like one of those Parker pens, but not-parker to be more precise. As we started strolling away to that path I can of course mention how difficult it is to find those refill-bullets up here. Let me tell you exactly how it happened. The pen looks like this (the blue one): I went to town and strolled in the first book shop hoping for a quick solution (I really needed this, because I had already written two stories in my special notebook with an average pen, which was OK, but didn’t feel that special and could possibly damage my future writing skills). They offered me a lot of refills with a pointy end looking like this:...

The night is long and endless and despite the eternal light up here in the north, its dark and it is lonely for me. At first it is easier to shake of the pain carefully crawling towards me from every corner of the room. But it won’t leave and it won’t go until it gets its way, until it takes me over. And I don’t want to let go and I can’t give up, but the tons of misery are weighing heavy on my heart and it’s only a miracle that it still remains in its place under all that weight. The hours pass and there is nowhere to hide. No comfort, no safe haven to run to. As I desperately try to hold on to anything good and positive, reminding myself that the sun is always up there in the sky no matter how cloudy it seems to be at the moment. Taking deeper breaths is not enough as every next one seems like the last. Too smart, too brave, too strong and too MAN to ask for help. And who would be the doctor of my soul? Who can feel my misery and understand that nameless sorrow and that nu...

He was just supposed to help a friend, but ended up in a wheelchair after a fall from 6 meters. The only think he wishes now, is to walk again. Original text by: TORE ISAKSEN SEEBERG  Translation: ARGO LEETMAA  Photos: RUNE NILSEN It is 16. december 2015. Father of 4, Argo Leetmaa from Estonia finds himself in an old barn in Saltstraumen. He is there to help a friend to move some furniture which was stored there. It’s dark and the flashlight from his mobile, doesn’t work.  Suddenly, he is weightless. During the 6 meters free fall, he instinctively turns himself in the air. He lands on his back. The following minutes, he sees his own body from outside, while its lying helplessly on the floor, heavily beaten, bleeding from the head. – I felt at once, that I had lost the contact with my legs, but was most worried about the head injury, says Argo today. – I knew there was this hole in the floor out there, but it was dark and I was tired...

My first school wasn’t much of a community. Or if it was, I didn’t fit in there. I had 4 friends in that school and I only have close contact with one of them today. So, I went to the interviews of the first and only private school at the time in this sweet hometown of mine and apparently demonstrated some early skill and got accepted. It cost about 5 to 6 euros a month for my single, working mother and it was not a small penny in the beginning of 90s in a small town. This became my first community. The teachers, the activities, the friends, the parties. I also joined the boy scouts which allowed me to expand my network covering my entire home country and reaching to Sweden. I wrote letters (yes with paper and pen and envelops and stamps and all) to some girls I had met and stood in the phonebooth to call the guys. I had workout buddies from the track and field and different ones from the karate group. I was 15 years old. Then I changed school again. To a different place. A boar...

I like having music around me when I go about my things at home. There is almost always something playing in the background when I am at home. My favourite movies and TV series are the ones with good music in them. So, last night, after returning from a long trip to far-far away, to almost as up north one can travel in Norway, I put on some random music of my taste. As I was in the bathroom, I heard an old song playing in the living room. I recognized the starting melodies and the opening chords. No way – I was thinking. Is it possible that this song just randomly came up to my playlist? I sharpened my ears again and again. Yes! That’s the one, no doubt about it. As I exited the bathroom, the song changed into something completely different - far from the song I thought it was. Weird… But the song was calling me, and I quickly found it. It instantly took me back to my careless youth when I was 18 years old and the internet was just about to become interesting despite the slow ...

I find it interesting to wonder what drives people, what motivates them. And even more who motivates and supports them? Which are the promises to buy the soul of a person? What would be the price of it and does the seller even realise the loss? We are all looking for something and without success, we change our true calling to something more banal. Material or bodily pleasures, the short feeling of power over people’s destinies or the endless chase after the material independence and wealth. But still, our searching never seems to end. More is more. On top of the hill, your eyes find another one, even higher and until there is danger of someone else climbing it, if someone else discovers the most beautiful pearl or rises up to the skies on a magical latter – that long we will keep on our quest to the supplement-goal. It makes us blind and deaf and almost suffocates the careful whisper in our ear. The one, you first heard when you were born and it never stopped after that. Is ...

So. I have made this little video about my progress on walking with the KAFOs. .   Donations to my fund

I guess I have always been a lone wolf . Keeping to myself and keeping to folks and things I know. Hell, in some scores I guess I would be an introvert. But I learned the rules of the pack - I learned how to fit in, while being different, I learned to make them accept my difference as something cool and respect me for it. I guess in a way I got good at copying the things I thought would bring me success – in relations, in life and in being a better version of myself. And I read a lot and I studied – whatever caught my interest, I always tried to find out more about it. So, I was a lone wolf, but I knew how to be part of the pack whenever I felt like it. I liked the idea of being alone by choice and I found it hard to understand people who feared being alone. Then I realised that there is potential . Not really sure if I really ever realised it, or it was just the people around me telling me this quite often. This is the age between 13 and 30. If you are good in something and someone...