Moving Forward in Reverse

by Scott Martin

  Moving Forward In Reverse

  By

  Scott Martin and Coryanne Hicks

  Text copyright 2013 © Martin/Hicks

  All Rights Reserved

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  Photos available at

  www.Moving-Forward-In-Reverse.com

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  Contact the authors at

  MFIRaMemoir@gmail.com

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  This book is dedicated to our family and friends for supporting us through this project and the doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals who gave us something to write about.

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  Author's note:

  This is a true story, recounted from memory to the best of my ability. To protect the privacy of others, some names have been changed and personal details altered. Dialogue has been included for story-telling purposes and, while the gist of what was said is true, it should not be taken as a verbatim representation of the conversations included herein. At the end of the day, this is solely my side of my story. Others may remember it differently, but this is how I recall the events that transpired.

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  Cover Art by Tatiana Villa

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  1 Waking Up as Someone Else

  2 A Mother’s Ultimatum

  3 Welcome to Rehab

  4 What’s Up With Bagels?

  5 Breezin’

  6 The Bane of Captain Hook

  7 So Far Yet To Go

  8 Bleeding Out is Cold

  9 Go Kick Some Ass!

  10 My Hospital Office

  11 The Enduring Pain of Standing

  12 My Night with Captain Morgan

  13 Every Problem Has a Solution

  14 Cracking the Top 10

  15 On My Knees

  16 Time for Some Answers

  17 Back on My Knees

  18 I Trusted You, Damn It!

  19 My Guilt

  20 Perception is Key

  21 Bogart and Me

  22 The Yellow Pages

  23 The Tricky Part of Fate

  24 On to Gonzaga

  25 The Power of the Press

  26 Words That Represented Us

  27 Wecandothat!

  28 The Email

  29 45 Minutes in Giurgiu

  30 A Kiss Goodbye

  31 Romanglish

  32 A Mom in Tennis Shoes

  33 Martins Don’t Quit

  34 Penguins in a Snowstorm

  35 Rrribbit

  36 Layla House

  37 The Boy in The Paper

  38 Humbling

  39 The Mariners Cap

  40 Our Full House

  41 The Pittsburgh Protocol

  42 Questions of Concern

  43 The Measure of a Man Rebuilt

  1

  Waking Up as Someone Else

  I looked around me and recognized nothing. The sounds, the walls, the lights, the blankets, none of it familiar. There were machines to my right. Giant monstrosities of blue metal making perfectly timed noises. Tubes snaked from the mechanical contraptions to where I lay, disappearing down my throat. I gaped as one of the machines to my right pumped up and down, mirroring the motion in my chest. It was breathing for me.

  Why is a machine breathing for me? I thought in panic. Why can’t I breathe on my own?

  My eyes rounded on my surroundings, scouring them for answers. A wash of pale walls, sterile lights, and white handrails along my bed, I drew the only conclusion I could: A hospital. I’m in a hospital.

  I tried to sit up, tried to throw these covers that weren’t mine off. But my body wouldn’t obey. Fear clinched inside my chest. I tried to lift my arm, move my leg, turn my head. None of it would work.

  I can’t move!

  I tried to yell but no sound came out. I was paralyzed. Mute.

  ‘Scott,’ a woman’s voice drew my attention. I quickly followed the sound with my eyes until I found her. She was standing with her back to me, her shoulder-length brown hair loosely tied in one of those elastic bands women seem to love so much. The chocolate color of it contrasted sharply with the hunter green monotony of what could only be a medical uniform.

  Definitely a hospital. The knowing brought me no sense of comfort. What am I doing in a hospital bed? In this room? With these machines controlling my lungs?

  I looked to the woman in green, imploring her to hear me. Please! You must know what’s going on. Please!

  The way she had said my name – so familiarly, as if she’d used it a hundred times before – had to mean she was involved in my care. She wouldn’t be in here if she wasn’t.

  Please help me! I begged, terror pulling at the muscles around my eyes – the only muscles which still seemed to work. Am I paralyzed? Tears of despair made my eyelids clench as I felt something slice its way through my gut.

  I forced my eyes open further and stared hard at the woman, firing questions at her back.

  Who are you? Why am I here? How long have I been here? Why don’t I remember anything? How did I get here?

  ‘You really need to see this,’ she said. From where I lay whatever she was looking at was blocked by her form. I could hear what sounded like women's voices cheering and shouting. Television.

  I don’t need to see a TV. I need to know what the hell is going on! Why can’t I move? What happened to me?!

  Was I paralyzed? The thought of it made me nauseous. I couldn’t be paralyzed. I was a trained athlete. A soccer coach and player in his prime didn’t develop spontaneous paralysis. Real life didn’t work that way.

  The last thing I remembered was playing a casual game of soccer with the other coaches at the Nike Soccer Camp near Chicago where I’d been invited to speak. I’d been fine, perfectly healthy –

  No! I hadn’t been fine. I’d become sick. I could see myself curled around the toilet bowl as an endless amount of fluid came up out of me; then tossing and turning in a bed due to fever and chills. Heat exhaustion, I’d thought at the time. I could remember visiting the ER and the young doctor with stress beading across his brow. Heat exhaustion, he’d readily agreed. IV fluids on a gurney in the corridor of the busy ER, a prescription for Tylenol, then off to my mother’s house to spend the night because her place was closer than mine. So I hadn’t been fine, but neither had I been paralyzed. How had a case of heat exhaustion turned into this?

  A startled exclamation came from the direction of the woman. Jolted, I looked over frantically to see what caused her outburst. Enormous, round eyes were staring back at me. Her mouth was parted slightly around the ‘oh’ that was still dissipating on her lips like a puff of smoke. I returned her startled gaze with a pleading one of my own.

  Please tell me what’s going on. Am I paralyzed? Am I going to die? Just tell me. Please!

  Waiting as she opened her mouth to speak was like watching a turtle emerge from its shell. Slowly, carefully her lips began to form words. I mentally held my breath, feeling another repugnant surge of bile when I realized I couldn’t do it physically. All I needed to hear were four sweet words: Scott, you’re not paralyzed. Say it. Just say it. That’s all I need to know.

  When she finally did speak, it was thirteen words, only one of which I had asked for.

  ‘Good afternoon, Scott,’ she said, now calm and composed. ‘You were asleep quite a while.’ She paused for a brief moment, a smile stretching across her face until it became almost giddy in its exuberance. ‘I'll be right back.’ And as quick as that she twisted towards the door and strode purposefully from the room.

  ~~~

  Though I didn’t recognize the face of the man who came into my room next, his whit
e lab coat, suit, and tie made one thing known: A doctor.

  I squinted my eyes and focused on the somber line of his mouth, the grave set of his jaw, the narrowness of his brown eyes; studying him as if something – anything in his countenance could give me a clue as to why I was here. Though not tall, he seemed so broad – expansive; overshadowing all else in the room like a mountain rearing amidst a forest – as he leaned over me in my hospital bed. He placed his left hand on my right shoulder and bent at the waist so as to bring his face comfortably into my view. His tone was cool and confident as he spoke to me, carrying the foreboding weight of titanic truths hard to tell and even harder to hear. I forced my eyes to stay fixed on his face, told myself I couldn’t hide from what he had to say. Whatever it was, it had already passed and I could only fight to stay afloat in its wake. Besides, it can’t be any worse than what I’ve already imagined. Can it?

  ‘Hi, Scott,’ the doctor said. ‘I'm Dr. Henrickson. You've been very sick, and had all of us very worried. This he said with an earnestness that shone in the recesses of his eyes.

  He really was worried for me, I realized and was abruptly overcome by gratitude at having had my care fall into his hands. For a flicker of time, I felt a blessed moment of reprieve from my fear and anxiety and swooned on the comforter of trust. Surely with this doctor watching over me I would be safe. Dr. Henrickson wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me.

  ‘But you have made it down a very long road. The tube in your throat is providing you with air and is connected to this machine.’ He gestured to the blue, Star-Trekian monstrosity which I had already determined to be my source of oxygen.

  ‘The other machines have been necessary to keep you alive and may remain so for a little while longer. The ones you can’t see are the pulse oximeter which has been monitoring the oxygenation of your blood, an intravenous drip to keep you hydrated, and the dialysis machine which has been taking the place of your kidneys.’ He paused and took a breath. I felt my mind rock and sway the way it might moments before sleep. Pulse oximeter. Intravenous drip. Dialysis. Keep you alive. Dr. Henrickson’s words replayed across my mind, cycling like a broken tape caught on the scene of the protagonist’s destruction. I was dying. I had been heading towards death, and I might be still. These machines were the only things keeping me alive.

  ‘I want to tell you about why you are here and why you are bandaged.’

  Bandaged? I despaired. For all I knew everything below my neck was currently wrapped in gauze.

  ‘You contracted a serious illness, Scott. One which nearly killed you. We refer to it as Toxic Shock-Like Syndrome, but the official name is Group A Streptococcus – GAS for short. It’s a bacterium most commonly recognized as the cause of strep throat and impetigo, but in its invasive form it’s been known to cause diseases such as scarlet fever, rheumatic fever, and necrotizing fasciitis. In the throat or on the skin, the bacteria can reside unnoticed or with only mild symptoms and discomfort, but in rare cases such as yours, it’s able to infect the blood, muscle, fat tissue, or lungs and can rapidly become life threatening. As the disease progressed, your system went into multiple organ failure and shock. We were forced to put you on full life support in a medically induced coma for the past month.’

  Month?! I’ve lost a month?!

  ‘During this time, the necrotizing fasciitis – you might know it better as “the flesh-eating disease” – caused the skin on your hands and feet to become gangrenous.’

  I closed my eyes, wishing I could cover my ears – wishing I could un-hear everything I’d just heard. It was already too much to endure: flesh-eating disease, a month in a coma, gangrene? Please, I thought, wishing I could get away from it all. No more. Don’t tell me anymore. But he was still talking, forging ahead, his stern yet sympathetic tone saying, ‘You have to hear this, Scott. I know it’s hard, but you must listen.’

  ‘In order to prevent it from spreading and eventually killing you, we had to amputate.’

  His tone hadn’t changed; the pace of the words spilling from his mouth hadn’t slowed, but as my eyes reopened to this new horror, his final words seemed to echo, vibrate, and swell to several times their natural size. Amp-U-Tate. I found his face, gall turning my gaze distrustful. Amputate what?

  Dr. Henrickson pursed his mouth and glanced away from the expression he saw lacing my eyes. ‘We were forced to remove your hands up to your mid-forearms and the front part of both feet.’

  For the first time I gazed down at my own body, straining to see around the off-white pallor of the plastic tube obtruding from my mouth. And instantly wishing I hadn’t.

  My arms rested outside the beige blanket, nestled against the shallow swell of my abdomen. What had once been two well-muscled biceps were now nothing more than sagging skin and bones. One at a time, I traced the course of each of these disproportionate, emaciated limbs, following the ridge of my humerus as dread twisted its gnarled fingers around my stomach, dipping over the indent of my elbow as my eyelids tried to close in fear, continuing over my forearm where my radius and ulna were two folds in the fabric of my skin, then–

  Nothing. My arms ended like an unfinished sentence. Cut off. A cushion of bandages covered the amputated ends like partially eaten lollipops, rewrapped and saved for later. I stared at the space where my hands should have been, silently willing them to materialize out of thin air and make this all some terrible magic trick. If Dr. Henrickson was still speaking, I couldn’t hear him, only the incessant ringing in my ears. For innumerous, horrific seconds, it was just me, this trilling in my ears, and that open, oppressive space by my waist where my arms were meant to be.

  How could you? I thought, the words a soft, vehement hiss in my mind. How. Could you?

  My eyes drifted close, trying in their own way to shield me from the unbearable weight of my shock. A tremulous voice, pitched with dejection and grief, offered a whispering internal moan: How dare you save my life then leave me with nothing to live for.

  How was I going to play soccer with no feet? How was I going to coach my team? All those recruits I’d just signed – my first season with my own recruits – how could I train them if I had no hands or feet?

  Dr. Henrickson’s voice reached out to me from somewhere distant and irrelevant like a meddlesome neighbor always looking over your fence to comment. I kept my eyes shut and mentally shook my head. No more. Please, no more. I can’t take any more.

  ‘Scott, I know it’s hard to accept these things right now, but you have to understand if we hadn’t done the surgery, you never would have survived. The disease would have killed you. I believe that you only did survive because you're a fighter and were in excellent physical condition.’

  I let his calm, affirmative voice waft over me like an assertive breeze, pushing me where it wanted. You never would have survived. Never would have survived.

  I had survived. My life was irreparably altered but now all I could think was: I should have been dead. The disease should have killed me. I supposed that in comparison the loss of a couple limbs seemed almost insignificant.

  Ah, but the pain of it was still too sharp to ignore. I thought of soccer and my team of college players waiting for me back at the University of Wisconsin’s Eau Claire campus. What would they do now that their head coach was handicapped?

  ‘You're past the most difficult part. Now you need to heal. You and I will talk more after the intubation tube is removed tomorrow or the next day.’ He squeezed my shoulder and straightened up so all I could see was a white sliver of him from the corner of my eye. His lab coat swishing behind him, he turned to look over the machines I was attached to – the machines I was depending on. He checked this, tapped that, and jotted a few things down before returning his attention to me.

  Laying his hand on my shoulder once more, he said, ‘Your mother and step-father should be here soon. Rest.’ With two pats of his hand he said farewell for now and strode from my room, on to the next critical patient.

  ~~~

&
nbsp; I was thankful for the lonesome reprieve. This was all too much. I couldn’t – didn’t want to – process it all. I glanced down at my body and my eyes once again fell on what was left of my arms. They were so thin. When I had last seen them, my arms had been layered with conditioned, lean muscle. And now they were. . . I felt wetness on my face and instinctually thought to wipe it away but the mental instruction went unheard. I didn’t even have enough muscle to lift my arms, nor any hands to wipe away the tears.

  Unable to prevent it any longer, I surrendered to the sobs, lying motionless as they wracked my decimated body. Tears streamed from my eyes, clogging my nose and sliding into the corners of my open mouth. I gagged against the tube in my throat, needing to cough and sputter. Everything was so wrong. It was like going to sleep one man and waking up another. My last memories were of a healthy, thirty-five-year-old collegiate soccer coach in the best shape of his life. And now I was this atrophied, amputated semblance of that man. What future could I hope to have now?

  I sobbed through thoughts of what I had lost and how little I had to look forward to. This was not how my life was supposed to go. I had done everything right – worked hard; trained hard – and yet here I was, ravaged and heartlessly ripped from the life I had built for myself, the future I had planned. It was infuriating. Unacceptable.

  A Mother’s Ultimatum

  By the time the sobs and the fear and the anger and the desperation had relinquished me from their persecution, I was thoroughly exhausted and could do nothing more than sleep. Minutes or hours slid by while I dozed. So abysmal was my sleep that I didn’t even hear them enter, only realizing company was here when a timid hand fell across my shoulder.

  When I resisted, it shook me, dragging me from my peaceful slumber and back to the caustic reality that had suddenly become my own. I heard the beep-beep-beep of the machines and felt the plastic tube swelling in my throat.