Chairborne - A Column by Ben Hofmeister

About a decade ago, I got caught up in the home brewing craze. I don’t know that I qualified as crazed, but I had a lot of fun with it and felt that since it was probably encoded somewhere in my Hofmeister DNA, I should at least try it. One…

The first time you try something should not be the moment you absolutely need it. During my time in the military, I often applied this concept to both performing a critical task with my nondominant hand and using certain medical equipment. In both cases, the logic of “I’m sure I’ll…

I had a run-in with a nasty, mostly waterborne parasite years ago in Afghanistan. I managed to catch it by, you guessed it, contact with infected water — not by actually drinking it, but by washing my hands off in an irrigation ditch and then sticking them in my mouth.

The company I keep has changed over the past 10 years. I used to associate with people who were much like me. We had a similar way of thinking and faced many of the same challenges in life. I was a part of an upper tier of the U.S. Army,…

My wedding band is made of tungsten and rose gold. It’s heavier than most, but I’ve had it on for 15 years today, so most of the time I don’t notice that it’s there. Every once in a while, however, I glance down at my left hand and am almost…

Due to the nature of my work in U.S. Army Special Operations, or maybe just because of the nature of me, I had a couple psychological evaluations over the years. Don’t worry, I’m perfectly normal — if “normal” means the kind of person who has the right personality for…

I stopped driving nearly five years ago. That was probably six months or more after I should have. By that point, I was doing it mainly by using my truck’s cruise control and occasionally having to use my gradually weakening arms to lift my right foot off the accelerator and…

Migraines are quite an experience. People who have them wish they didn’t. I occasionally do, but I’m hesitant to compare myself with others. I’m even reluctant to use the word “migraine” to describe mine, because while I have many of the symptoms of a migraine, I don’t have any…

I recall one of my college classes from years ago, when the professor covered a subject that was rather difficult to understand. At the end, she paused, looked around the room, and asked if we all understood. We must have had blank expressions on our faces or our heads tilted…

One of the courses I helped teach in between overseas tours was U.S. Army Special Forces Advanced Urban Combat. While urban combat is governed by official doctrine, it is not composed of any definite rules because there are too many variables. Instead, there is a set of guiding…

Age is just a number, right? Most of the time, I don’t mind getting older, but it does occasionally bother me. One scenario is when I have to swipe more than three times to find my birth year on a website. Another is when a song I grew up with…

I’ve been afraid many times during my life, but I’ve almost always managed to get past the fear. One fear I haven’t gotten past comes with being handed a newborn child for the first time. Every birth might as well be twins: One nurse should hand you your child while…

Just before my last deployment, I remember sitting in a classroom with other Army Special Forces medics, listening to the representative from a supplier of chest injury dressings. It was common practice for suppliers to send someone to talk about or demonstrate their product as part of the contract.

One thing I learned during my Army medic training is that I’m not particularly squeamish — with most things, that is. I have a theory that everyone has at least one thing that will turn their stomach. Every medical provider I’ve met either knows exactly what can make them gag,…

A few years before I was married and had even thought about having children, I was at home alone when there was a knock at the door. I hadn’t lived there for long, and a small group of people had dropped by to welcome me to the neighborhood. I invited…

I spent the majority of my life wearing an Army uniform. As a result, I never had to worry about what I’d wear to work all those years. Come to think of it, I never had to worry about that during my civilian years, either. I’m the middle…

I almost didn’t write this column. It might be a sensitive topic, but I’m not afraid of offending anyone. Even if I do, it’s not intentional. It’s not that I don’t understood the subject, either. I think I do, but I’ve been having a lot of trouble putting it into…

Like so many others, I have a bedtime routine. There’s bedside water to fill, sleep attire to change into, and bedtime stories to read. These days I’m not much more than a bystander, as nearly everything I do requires the help of another person. I suppose I should really say…

I’ve been betrayed by my breakfast cereal. Other than eating it, I’m not sure what I did to deserve this. I always liked cereal and thought we had a good relationship. The only disagreement we’ve had was when I tried mixing two high-fiber cereals. The result was a bowl of…

I was once very good at getting out of the way. This skill served me well in dodgeball games when I was younger, and then later during my military career. Given my various injuries, you might be skeptical about that last comment, but I was actually renowned for my ability…

I had surgery on my right shoulder last month. I didn’t write about it at the time because compared with a shoulder replacement, the quick arthroscopic clean-out procedure wasn’t a big deal. The orthopedic surgeon removed some loose material from the joint area and cleaned it up without having to…

I spent a few of my years in the Army working as an instructor. It was never boring because I think I learned as much from teaching as my students did from being taught. My students weren’t new to the Army. For the most part, they were my peers…

I received a copy of “The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows” for Christmas two years ago. It provides names for emotions that need defining, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed leafing through it. I’m not particularly sorrowful, and I don’t really find the majority of the text to be sorrowful, either.

I have a doctor’s appointment coming up soon. It isn’t with my neurologist or another specialist. It’s a routine visit with my primary care physician and, other than the regular schedule, isn’t really routine at all. There’s a lot more to me than my multiple sclerosis (MS), a fact…

By the time this column is published, I’ll be at the Consortium of Multiple Sclerosis Centers‘ annual meeting in Nashville, Tennessee. I’m honored to be attending as a representative of the Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA) Multiple Sclerosis Committee. Along with the other committee members, I’ll help spread…

If I haven’t warned you that bits of my past in the military would sometimes leak into my present as a Multiple Sclerosis News Today columnist, consider yourself warned. I was in the U.S. Army for almost 22 years, so it’s bound to happen occasionally. If I’d become an…

I turn 49 next week. The fact that I’m in middle age already is unbelievable. I don’t think of myself as old. My mileage might be a little high, but I’m not old. I suppose I could consider myself to be vintage, like clothing, or perhaps even classic, like a…

Before multiple sclerosis (MS) took the normal functioning of my limbs, I enjoyed being in the kitchen — not merely to be underfoot or lick spoons and bowls, but to actually cook and bake. I won’t claim to have been a gourmet chef or anything like that, but I…

I feel like I’ve been in this exact place, saying exactly what I’m saying right now. Have I done this in a past life? Did I dream it and am now subconsciously acting it out in reality? Or is my brain performing a fact-check on its memory system and signaling…

Even as a small child, I enjoyed watching nature shows. They didn’t come on television often, but when they did, I absorbed every word. At school, I might not have been able to recite the Pythagorean theorem, but I could say with confidence that butterflies taste with their feet. That…