When you’re an Invalid, you see other Invalids everywhere. It’s just like getting a new mint green 2002 Volkswagen convertible and anywhere you drive, there’s another mint green 2002 Volkswagen convertible in the lane next to you. I used to be in the majority class: the Valids. Just another white, male Valid. I casually walked around, effortlessly sat in restaurants with both feet under the table and never gave a second thought to getting out of the restaurant, with a heavy, self-closing door, an eight-inch step down, with crutches, in the rain, in semi-darkness, being attacked by a vicious family of opossums seeking vengeance for their kin. Okay, not the opossums. They’re waiting for me in my bedroom.

Now I have a new appreciation of life in the handicapped lane and an instant kinship with other Invalids. My crutches and neck brace define me immediately. It reminds me of the motorcycle kinship on the road. When bikers pass each other, most give a friendly hand signal, a cool downward wave, a thumbs up, some friendly gesture that says “I’m with you.” There’s no Invalid gesture, but there’s a silent understanding, a knowing. The crutches may give me problems in doorways, but they create open doors for stories from other Invalids, some that just stop me on the street…
Scott the Parts Guy at the motorcycle dealership. He was hit head-on by a truck. Bones stuck out of his legs at several angles. His knee still has a cavern where it should have a cap. In the hospital for three months, he doesn’t even remember the first two weeks.
My physical therapist’s uncle who was also hit by a drunk driver. His leg was pulverized above and below the knee. The doctors considered amputation, but finally decided to try and save the leg. They put 100 pins, yes 100, O pus, 100 pins in his legs…for a YEAR. How does he sleep? How does he bathe? How does he remain sane? Twice every day I have to do my “pin care”: Swab the skin around the pins with Q-tips soaked in salt water mixed with hydrogen peroxide. Break up the scabbing, keep the area of entry clean and open. His pin care never ends, like painting the Golden Gate Bridge. Once the workmen get to the end of the bridge, they just start painting it over again. I look down at my three cute little pins and think, “A mosquito bite, just a scratch, merely a flesh wound. How about the weather? Hot enough for you?”
The big black dude downtown at a street festival who pulls up his pant leg to reveal one large pin, complete with artificial foot, stretching down from his knee. “Thirty five years ago I lost this leg in the war. Got a new one a few years ago. Sometimes my foot still itches but it’s not even there!”

My injuries are miniscule compared to these people’s, compared to the countless others who didn’t live to tell their stories. The stories give me strength to cope. To cope, with hope. Of course, I’m just visiting. For me, being an Invalid is a formidable but temporal challenge, a painful but passing period. It’s a short prison term, not a life sentence. I will heal and be set free. I feel deeply for those who won’t have the joy of healing, of constant improvement, of ever-increasing mobility.

Oz, the Wonderful Wizard of Massage, enters my life. 27 years old, 250 pounds young. Black, bald, biceps the size of my thighs. In three seconds he could easily rip off my arm and hit me with the wet end. Personal trainer, massage therapist extraordinaire and nursing student, he knows the names of every muscle, bone, tendon, ligament, escarpment, isthmus, paradangle and orthometric clavichord in my body. When he tells me which part of me he’s massaging, I often only understand the prepositions in his sentence.

I am nervous the first time he puts his hands on my neck and gently turns my head. One muscle twitch and I’m the Headless Norseman. It feels good. He works on the hand sprains, the shoulders tortured by the crutches, the left leg that works overtime. Oz works overtime on me for an hour and a half, for $40, then says to me, a stranger, much stranger than most, to just pay me the next time. I mention that I like the music he played during the massage. At my next appointment, he gives me a CD of the music from the last session. Who says guardian angels have to be white with wings? He takes the pain away and gives me motion in return. He teaches me exercises and stretches to do on my own, unlike the Royal Doctors, only one of whom said one thing about anything the peasant patient could do at home, away from the Sir Doctor’s Office and his Massive Billing Hordes: Tapping on my Achilles’ tendon, which he didn’t name, he said, “We don’t want this to get too tight.” Carefully following the doctor’s advice, I never let my tendon drink too much.

By the time I return to Dr. Ortho, at the end of September, two months after IMPACT, I have exceptional movement in my ankle and foot. My right calf is somewhat shrunken with flabby skin, but the muscles in my thigh are normal size. The pain in the pelvis and the dizziness I experience when turning over in bed continues to subside. I’m anxious for my Show and Tell with Dr. Ortho so he’ll take these pins out of Frankenfoot!

Are they just going to rip the pins out? I’m a bit nervous since I have heard rumors that patients may have their pins removed in the doctor’s office. After my X-rays, I check in at the front desk of Dr. Ortho, and ask if this is true, if they use local anesthesia, if I’ll need someone to drive me home. She says, “Oh, sometimes they’ll pull ‘em out while you’re there in the room, without anesthesia.” I crutch back to my seat and quickly take two pain pills. “Snap to it, Vitamin Vicodin! Get into the blood stream and proceed immediately to Frankenfoot!” Preventative action. I furtively look around the room at other patients with pins, straps, girders, cranes and skyscrapers sticking out of their bodies. “If that wimpy-looking kid across from me can stand it, so can I. If that big, pasty lady over there can take it, so can I.” My name is called. With amputation scenes from “Gone with the Wind” screaming in my brain, I tremble down the hall with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, ready to bite the bullet.

I’m alone in the room with my pin removal fears, on the exam table, sitting appropriately on a sheet of butcher paper. Three doctors come in. I’m cornered, outnumbered. One doctor has a bulge in his pocket–– probably a pair of pliers for swift pin removal. We look at the X-rays. They show the navicular bone has pulled itself together and the procedure to remove the pins is scheduled for early October, with anesthesia. I’m relieved, but a little pissed. Dr. Ortho had told me in the hospital that my navicular bone was “powder.” It wasn’t. That word should never have been said to me, to any patient. It was over-dramatic, inconsiderate and insensitive. The bone was fractured into several pieces. In the X-ray, I could see the former pieces of navicular bone in the X-ray: random, not-quite-white geometric shapes reforming, like ice on a lake that has been broken into pieces and frozen again.

Since pin removal is imminent,  I take showers without a plastic bag, against doctor’s orders. Not medically legal, but the Ortho Police were nowhere in sight. Ahhh, the splendid feeling of hot water running over Frankenfoot. I even let him bear a little weight. Over the weeks, I have progressed from sponge bath near the sink to shower with a garbage bag fastened on Frankenfoot with three rubber bands. It was always a little tense getting the rubber bands around the pins before the mobility in my joints returned. Showers take forever since getting in and out of the tub is dicey, then balancing on the right foot, keeping one hand on the shower nozzle or top of the door, washing with the other hand. Then I have to get out of the tub, wet, on slippery tile. It is a lengthy affair. In many activities, I’m like a rock climber, in slow motion, each move carefully planned, cautiously executed, weight shifting from left foot to right hand, back to foot, then to left hand.

At the beach with my daughter Sara, I throw caution and pin care to the wind, the sun, the day, the sea. Unable to control myself, I crutch down the sand towards the great Atlantic Ocean. I feel like a thousand eyes are on me. There are a few surfboards in the sea but no other sets of crutches. Standing in shallow water on the shifting sand as the waves break around my legs is a losing battle. My four points of ground contact sink at varying speeds. The crutches drive themselves in deep. I’m a cripple stuck between two fence posts in a flood. I venture out till the water is waist deep, drop backwards into the sea, float peacefully with my wooden marine crutches at my side, natural pin care completed for the day.

The following week I meet with Dr. Ortho #4, who will remove my pins. I ask, “What kind of cast do plan to give me?” He says, “A hard plaster cast for 4-6 more weeks.” I say, “Look at the movement in my foot. I’ve been working on it for the past two months and I don’t want to lose this mobility. You can put the hard plaster cast on your head.” I recommend we use the removable “sport-boot-type” cast. Thank God, Our Father Who Art In Baptist Hospital, Hallowed Be They Decision, Dr. Ortho Fourtho agrees.

The pin removal operation is painless since they send me deep into Scooterville again. However, as usual, the hospital staff isn’t too thorough with the medical info regarding their pills and my pain. I awake in the night convinced Dr. Ortho is back, under the covers, reinserting the pins with a garden trowel and a red-hot poker. Too few pills taken too late means I’m pain’s personal punching bag.  

Pain takes time and then time takes the pain. Two days later, I remove the bandages. I’m alone at home on my bed, nervous, excited. I remove the five Velcro straps that secure the hard shell of the boot. I ease off more Velcro that holds the internal fleece liner. I unwrap the four-foot long, four-inch wide elastic bandage. I unwind the long strip of cotton gauze around the foot. I peel off the final three bandages over each pinhole. And there’s my foot, a little swollen, three red marks already sealed, no pins, no pegs, no bars, Frankenfoot is dead. Oh, the feeling of being in bed, foot on foot, lying on either side, no pins to grab the blankets. A true joy of joys!

That was Wednesday. Now it’s Saturday. Without crutches, I walk around the car. Not fast, no stomping, but no cane, no crutches. I’m in ecstasy. I love my sportboot-cast. I drive to the cleaners. I walk from the car to the cleaners, into the cleaners, back to the car. I’m giddy. I’m walking. I’m walking. I’m walking. I call several friends and brag pretentiously. “Okay, I know it’s not a big deal to you. You’ve been doing it forever, you did it yesterday, you’re probably doing it right now, taking it for granted, but I just took myself to the cleaners! I’m walked in and walked out. No crutches. Just legs and feet.”

I drive to Hickory for a mini-family reunion. I walk from the car to the house. Someone says, “Oh, I’m so sorry this happened to you.” I say, “Shut up. I’m walking. I’m in ecstasy. I’m walking. I don’t care what happened. I’m walking. You want to walk with me?” Some folks just can’t get out of the past. They can’t seem to follow the present healing. They’re still back at the crash. I’m overjoyed, they’re depressed. I offer them my pain pills, since now they’re a pain in my neck. Soon they understand my joy and I accept their pain. For the rest of the day, I play bocce, horseshoes, croquet, with and without crutches and cane. By 10PM, I’m used up, spent, throbbing, crisp. Sunday I’m not walking without help. Healing hurts. I tell myself: “I walked yesterday; I’ll walk tomorrow.” I don’t walk tomorrow. Mainly I worry, for about a week. “I broke it again. I did too much. I’m out of control. Frankenfoot will be back. Dr. Ortho Fourtho was right. I’m a bad person.”   ( Previous page ) ( Next page )

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