Gone

by Linda K. Olson

  CHAPTER 11:

  Stopped, Dropped, and Rolled with It

  “I’m almost done. Be there in ten minutes,” I promised as I hung up the phone in the pitch-black radiology reading room at UCSD’s Thornton Hospital, where I’d been interpreting chest X-rays with the resident assigned to the service. It was August 27, 2007—twenty-eight years to the day since the accident. As soon as I finished dictating my last case, I planned to drive to the Breast Imaging Center for my afternoon shift of reading mammograms and breast ultrasounds.

  It was a short walk down the hall to the double glass doors leading out of the hospital. I pushed the door open, took one step outside, wobbled for an instant on a wrinkle in the large doormat, and went down like a tree being felled. When I hit the sidewalk, an excruciating dagger of pain ripped through my body. It took all of five seconds to know that my hip was broken. It took five more seconds for someone to walk out the emergency room’s door and notice me lying there, squinting up at the sky, fist clenched.

  “Do you need help?”

  The words floated somewhere over my head. This time, they were in English. This time, my legs were still attached. Of course I needed help. Even if my hip wasn’t broken, when on the ground, my fake legs were as useless as my real ones had been as I’d lain on the tracks after the train hit me nearly three decades before.

  “I need somebody to take me over to X-ray to see if I broke my hip.”

  “Hold on,” the voice said. “I’ll go get somebody from the ER.”

  Come on! Just get me back over to Radiology.

  The voice moved away, calling for someone to come and help rescue me.

  “Shit,” I said to myself. I wiggled my left arm to confirm that at least my wrist was okay. An ER tech and nurse rushed out with a backboard, cajoled me to scoot over onto it, lifted it onto a gurney, and rolled me back into the emergency room.

  Another August afternoon. Another accident. Another twist of fate.

  • X-rays—check

  • nondisplaced left hip fracture—check

  • IV running and first dose of morphine—check

  Within ten minutes, I was loopy but still with it enough to realize that this might change things. In twenty-six years, I’d missed only one week of work. Being disabled, I’d always worried about not pulling my weight. Will I be able to work? More important, will I ever be able to walk again?

  That morning, I’d been perched in my wheelchair at home, artificial legs partway on, drumming my fingers on the counter near the back door, waiting for someone to kneel on the floor between my fake feet and strain to pull me down into the tight suction sockets of my prostheses.

  For a moment, my mind flashed back to the days when I was pregnant with Tiffany and completing my residency in Los Angeles. I’d had Iron Mike, the device we called my best friend because without him I couldn’t have lived by myself. Once I got my permanent suction-socket prosthetics, I’d never been able to put them on by myself. So, for twenty-six years, Dave or the kids, our parents, brothers, sisters, neighbors, nannies, housekeepers, and even strangers had had to perform this procedure for me. That morning, our neighbor Maria Bauz was on call. I’d have given anything to be able to do it by myself, anyplace, anytime.

  “Hiya,” she said. “Are you ready?”

  I’d already powdered my legs and pulled the stockinet stockings all the way up to my groin. The other ends hung out through the valve holes at the bottoms of the sockets.

  “Let’s do it,” I said as I pushed on the arm of my wheelchair and levered myself to a precarious upright position. She wrapped a stocking around her hand, leaned down, and tugged, slowly pulling my leg into one artificial leg. Her wrists and forearms slammed on the floor as the stocking emerged through the hole in the socket.

  “Thanks,” I said as she finished the second one. “I really appreciate you getting up early to come do this.”

  “No problem. Anytime.” She flashed me a big grin, rolled her eyes, and pranced back home in her pajamas. Wonder if she’d think it was a problem if she had to do that every day.

  My foggy brain floated back to the ER, where the nurse wanted me to undress and put on a hospital gown. Taking off my blouse was slow but doable. Removing my slacks was a different story. Before I realized what was happening, she unzipped them and started tugging.

  “Stop! You’re going to pull my leg off!” I yelled. The nurse’s pulling jarred my newly broken left hip. She looked at me as if I was crazy.

  “Your leg isn’t going to come off; it’s just broken.”

  “Oh, yes, it will!” I screamed. “They’re fake. Don’t touch me.” Her look this time said she thought I was completely nuts.

  “Here,” I said, grabbing her hand and pressing it on the top of my rigid prosthetic socket. Her eyes got big as she yanked it away.

  “Well, we have to get them off somehow.” Out she went for reinforcements. That turned out to be another nurse and a second dose of morphine. Oh my, that did the trick. Once the pants were off, they started talking about taking both my legs off.

  “Nooo . . . we can’t do that,” I said, slurring only slightly. I was still lying on the backboard and by then had figured out that it would be to everyone’s advantage for me to keep my legs on. Since they’re suction sockets, it takes a lot of force to remove them—enough force that it would definitely have displaced my fracture and been excruciatingly painful. They were still shaking their heads as they left the room.

  “Hey, Linda, how are you feeling?” asked my friend and fellow radiologist, Meg Richman. Word traveled fast, and my colleagues had started arriving in my room.

  “Fine,” I lied. It hurt like hell. Worse than the train accident. I fooled no one. At least they hadn’t cut my pants off like the people in Salzburg had.

  “Hey, does Dave know about this?” Mary O’Boyle was another friend and radiology colleague.

  My tongue was now under the control of morphine, my speech more rapid and run-on.

  “No, he’s off hunting. I don’t think we can reach him. I don’t want to ruin his trip. Let’s just not call. I don’t want him to worry he has someone else with him and I don’t know where they are he’ll find out when he gets home sometime next week. . . .” I stopped to take a breath.

  Mary jumped in before I could start in again. “Come on, Linda. You gotta let him know!”

  “Okay, okay. Hey, can you call him?” Her husband, Bill Keen, was actually the person Dave had been hunting with in a remote part of Canada. They were due home later that day. It was getting hard to make sense.

  When Dave and Bill reached Chicago, they got the message that I was heading to the operating room for repair of a fractured hip. That evening, Mary met them at the airport in San Diego and offered to drop Dave at the hospital. He politely refused and headed home to take a shower and get the caribou into the freezer. There was nothing he could do, and he’d be at the hospital by 9:00 p.m., in time to see me come out of anesthesia. He’d be holding my hand and smiling at me when I woke up.

  The day after surgery, the physical therapist assigned to me popped into my room.

  “Hi. My name’s Sarah. I’m here to teach you how to transfer from your bed into the wheelchair, make sure you can ambulate to the bathroom, and show you how to use crutches.”

  She stood next to my bed, a petite young girl with short, curly black hair. She smiled and leaned on the back handle of my wheelchair. She didn’t seem to notice that the front of the wheelchair faced the bed and was pushed up against the edge of it so I could butt-walk into it.

  “I’m going to show you how to stand up and transfer over into this wheelchair,” she said as she unlocked the brakes and rolled the chair away from the bed.

  What is she thinking? Is she blind?

  I took hold of the sheet and, gritting my teeth, slowly pulled myself upright. Turning gingerly and supporting my bandaged leg with my left hand, I butt-walked to the edge of the bed, all the time watching Sarah’s face.

 
; “If you just put my wheelchair back where it was, I’ll show you how I scoot over into it so I can go to the bathroom. It’s a piece of cake. Didn’t they tell you I don’t have legs?”

  “I, er, huh . . . Oh my God!” she gasped. “How do you do that? What happened to you? I feel so stupid. . . . How can I help?”

  I don’t need help. I don’t want help. I just want to be back to my normal and back at work.

  Five weeks later, dressed in khaki shorts and a nice blouse and without my prostheses on, I pushed my one-arm-drive wheelchair into work.

  The first tech walked right past me. That’s strange. We say hi every day. I sat up a little straighter as I rolled down the hall. I’m back to looking at people’s belly buttons. . . . I’d better start talking so they’ll have to look at me.

  “Hi, Patrick. How are you?” I asked the next person coming toward me. He stopped abruptly and tilted his head as he peered down at me. I waited and smiled at him.

  “Pardon . . .” And then he stopped. “Dr. Olson?” he said incredulously.

  “Yup,” I said. “It’s me. I just don’t have my legs on today.”

  “I’ve never seen you in a wheelchair. And . . . I’ve never seen you without legs!”

  “I know; this is my usual after-hours attire,” I said with a giggle.

  “I’d heard you fell and broke your hip. . . .” And then he burst out laughing. “Don’t you think that’s carrying it a little too far? Cutting off your legs just because you broke a hip?” He couldn’t contain himself. “What a great joke, Dr. Olson!”

  I’d worked there for twenty-six years, but people were always dumbfounded when they saw me for the first time as a tiny little person without legs in a wheelchair. I’d told the accident story a thousand times over the years; they all knew what had happened. Even though I walked with a quad cane and an awkward toy-soldier gait, most of them had never truly understood what was really wrong.

  Over the next few weeks, it became clear that the soft-tissue shape of my left leg was different enough after the surgery that I needed to have a new socket made. In the ten years since my last legs had been fabricated, C-Legs, the first microprocessor-controlled knees, had been invented, and silicone liners had replaced the old method of donning with stockings and powder. My prosthetist, Kevin Calvo, thought I’d be a good candidate for this new technology. I was excited about the prospect of becoming a modern, robotic woman.

  To my dismay, the electronic knee experiment was a failure. While they allowed me to sit down in a more ladylike fashion, they caused problems. While I was driving, the lower part of the leg would lift, taking my foot off the floor. And I was working and didn’t want to take time off to learn how to use them. After a few weeks of struggle, I went back to the mechanical knees I’d used so successfully for twenty-eight years.

  The new silicone liners, however, were a life-changer. At age fifty-eight, I experienced newfound independence that I’d never dreamed I’d have again. The new technology allows amputees to roll a silicone liner up over their residual limb—like putting on a big gray condom. After those were on, with the aid of a spritz of alcohol, I could slip in and out of the suction sockets almost as easily as everyone else does their shoes. I could motor my wheelchair up to my fake legs, which waited in patient repose in the corner of our bedroom, scoot into them, and in less than two minutes bring my legs to life. Another silver lining.

  My fall and game-changing freedom were ironic and prophetic.

  Broken hips are an old-lady ailment that often heralds a slow downhill slide, but my fall brought me greater freedom and hope. But I was now more aware than ever of Father Time and of the reality that although I’d successfully fought my way back to as close to normal as I could get, I really was mortal. I would become more limited as time went on. It was equal parts elation and frustration.

  I became obsessed with the fear of falling and breaking another hip, so I started taking my manual wheelchair to work. I pushed it ahead of me like a walker as a means of increasing my stability. Just like when I’d started learning to walk, I simply put my head down and did it, pretending I didn’t know or care about how funny it looked.

  Reality finally sank in, and after I retired, I transitioned to a van with a lift in the back for an electric wheelchair. Back to belly-button height and craning my neck to look up at people talking to me. But, for the first time since the accident, I could independently get in my wheelchair and zoom five miles per hour, up and down a shopping mall or at the beach or around my neighborhood, several miles before needing a charge.

  My clumsy stumble and broken hip allowed me to get out and go whenever and almost wherever I wanted. My schedule is no longer dependent on someone else’s availability. I don’t have to ask for help: no leg-puller sitting on the floor between my legs, trying not to look at my crotch. People don’t need to arrange their day around mine. And, as important, it’s one more thing that gives me independence and one less reason for Dave to worry about me.

  “I’m ready,” I said.

  My college roommates, Juli and Carla, and I were in Livingston, Montana for our annual birthday celebration get-together.

  It was a worn-out phrase they’d heard me say for almost twenty-nine years. But this time, no one sat down on the floor to pull off the stockings. This time they came in and leaned against the wall while I pushed myself out of my wheelchair and stood up.

  “Can you believe this? I’m . . . “My voice wavered, and I couldn’t speak. I wiped my eyes with my right sleeve. “I’m . . . putting . . . my legs on . . . by myself!”

  Tears ran down our faces.

  “Pardon me,” I said to the man sitting beside me. Our plane was London bound, and we still had six hours to go. “I just want to give you a heads-up.” He smiled pleasantly but didn’t look up. “If you wake up in the middle of the night, half of me will be on the floor.”

  He turned, his full attention on me.

  I grasped the jeans on my right thigh and pulled my leg up. “These are fake legs, and I plan on taking them off pretty soon. I’ll just lay them on the floor. I don’t want them to scare you.” I flashed my big so-what-are-you-going-to-say grin and waited.

  “Really! That’s pretty cool!” he said. And, of course, then I had to tell him the story, the accident story, which over the years had turned into a love story.

  “This is my daughter,” I said, pointing at Tiffany, who was sitting beside me. “Both our kids were born after the accident, so this is the only way they’ve ever known me.”

  With tears in his eyes, he asked, “Do you mind if I tell my kids when I get home? They need to know your story.”

  By the time I was fifty-eight, I’d lost my right arm and both legs and broken a hip, but I was okay. More than okay. I’m okay whether I’m walking with protheses, whether I’m in a wheelchair, and whether I have my legs on or off.

  The world is far more accessible than it once was for me, and I now have a lot of independence, but I’ll always be somewhat dependent upon others. And that’s okay, too.

  Carry On

  “I hate dependency.” The thought of a strong-minded, independent young woman, one who had climbed Mount Whitney twice and was undaunted by a fifty-to-one-hundred-mile bike ride.

  “I’m embarrassed to be seen being carried.” The thought of every young woman or man concerned about how they fit into the world.

  Linda, with mental strength beyond imagining, buried all this negativity and embraced our shared roles. The prospect of access to the places we loved—the beach, the mountains, the countryside—was enough for her to push all those feelings into a box from which they have never emerged.

  Together, we advanced. I modified a pack frame, literally made for a hunter to carry a deer, so that I could carry my dear. And she adopted a spirit of gracious dependence. With a set of shoulder straps mounted in reverse, Linda could sit comfortably on the seat, safely buckled in by the straps, and ride on my back. When she was dressed in hiking clothes and ca
rrying a liter of drinking water, the whole enchilada weighed about ninety pounds. A heavy pack, but doable.

  I love this feeling of strength, of power, and of romance. But it goes way beyond that. She needs me. Going from point A to point B has become an exercise in intimacy between us and invisible to others. The carrying is part of our bond. It is also something that stirs and evokes something primitive and ancient in the soul of every man who sees us. I’m carrying my woman off. Off to wherever to do whatever. Every man wants to do this. Every man feels this instinctive need.

  Years later, as we reveled in the wonders of Machu Picchu in Peru, I saw this confirmed again.

  To tour Machu Picchu means to walk, to go up and down steep staircases of rock. After we stopped to rest, our guides offered to take turns. After the first guide’s turn, I leaned in to take over. Jose, who was carrying Linda at the time, looked at me with a serious stare. I turned, and Washy was giving me the same look. It was Benjamin, our principal guide and the one whose turn it was next, who articulated their thoughts: “I will never get a chance to do this again in my life. Would you take this pleasure away from me?” They had discovered Linda. They had discovered the intimacy of carrying and of being carried.

  “No, Benjamin,” I said, returning his smile, “I will not take this experience away from you.”

  As he hoisted her up onto his back, a grinning, happy Linda looked over his shoulder at me. For now, she belonged to them.

  “Yo lo comprendo,” I stammered back in rudimentary Spanish. I knew how he felt.

  I had seen that look before. In the eyes of the train porters and every hiker we’d encountered on trails across the Americas.

  We could canoe, and we could do backcountry. The frame allowed me to carry Linda easily on the portages from lake to lake on long, wonderful circuits in Canada and the United States, where we camped and fished and let our kids have the run of a purely natural world for two weeks at a time. We occasionally saw other people who were pleasantly surprised by the two-headed voyageur coming toward them on the portage trail. Linda’s grin and banter immediately disarmed them, and they went their way, having had their day biased toward the positive. I began to notice the look in the eyes of the men we encountered. They were jealous. I deserve to be envied.