Summer, for me, was over before it began.
I was looking at eight weeks of sitting in a recliner, stumping around with a walker, and hobbling on crutches. No horseback riding. No outside jaunts with Tipper. No tending my beloved rose garden.
The first full day at home, I stayed in bed, exhausted but not alone. Principal Mike had included the news about my injury in our school’s latest email blast, and visitors began trooping in to wish me well.
On day two, I began outpatient physical therapy. Earl drove me to the Orthopaedic Center of the Rockies and watched me stump my way with my walker to the evaluation room.
Dr. Lundy had hand-picked my physical therapist. Todd’s personality was a perfect match for me. My mindset was that I was not in rehabilitation; I was in training, just as I would be for a sports competition. I needed to focus on training for future performance instead of rehabbing a past injury, and Todd understood that immediately.
During my first appointment, Todd asked me to raise my fractured leg. My brain kept telling my leg to rise, but my leg didn’t move. I could move my foot back and forth and slide my leg side to side a little, but no matter how hard I tried, my leg stayed on the tabletop.
Gradually, over many weeks and PT sessions, I was finally able to lift my leg.
Home itself provided plenty of challenges. Going to the bathroom was problematic. First, I had to maneuver myself and the crutches through the narrow space between Earl’s side of the bed and a dresser to get to the bathroom. I had to be especially mindful of not falling with my new crutches. I crashed into the dresser more than once.
Once in the bathroom, there was the problem of actually sitting on the toilet. I’d discovered in the hospital how painful lowering myself onto the seat was, and that seat had been higher than a standard toilet seat, as well as having grab bars for extra support. Why hadn’t anyone told me about potty risers before I got home? With one of those in place, I didn’t have to bend so far, and sitting down was less painful.
Taking a shower involved sitting on a transfer table in the bathtub and using a handheld showerhead, which our plumber had installed specifically for my recuperation. I could get myself onto the table, but at the beginning, I couldn’t move my leg to get it into the tub. Earl had to lift my leg up and over the side of the tub for me.
I yelled at him the first time we practiced this in the hospital’s therapy room. I sat beside a mock-up of an automobile (the movement to get into a car is essentially the same as getting into a bathtub, except the wall of the tub is higher). Earl wasn’t paying attention, and instead of gently lifting and moving my leg, he hoisted it up and dumped it over the side of the automobile. I would have laughed if it hadn’t hurt so much.
By the end of my first week home, I could lift my leg well enough by myself to shower on my own. It seems like such a small thing, but I felt tremendous freedom when I finally reached that milestone, showering alone except for Cowboy Joe, our other new kitten, who sat between the shower curtain and liner and watched me—my very own Peeping Tom.
Because space was tight upstairs, we kept my walker at the bottom of the stairs. I navigated the stairs and second floor with crutches.
I mastered the stairs faster than I expected. Going up, the good leg leads; going down, the bad leg (with the crutch) leads, or, in crutch-walking parlance, “The good leg goes to heaven; the bad leg goes to hell.”
Six steps marched up from the first floor to a small landing. Another twelve steps finished the climb to the second floor. To get to the second floor, I parked the walker, tucked one crutch under my left arm, and held the other crutch by a finger in the same hand. I gripped the banister with my right hand. Next, I hopped on my good leg onto the first step. Then I brought my bad leg and the crutches up on the step. Hop to second step, bring bad leg and crutch alongside, hop to third step, repeat until I reached the landing.
The banister from the landing up was on the left side, so when I reached the landing, I switched the crutches to my right arm, gripped the banister with my left hand, and resumed the good-leg hop-up until I reached the top and could switch to using a crutch under each arm.
Coming downstairs was the same thing in reverse: crutches on the outside, spare hand gripping the banister; put crutch on first step, bad leg bent so that the foot barely touched the step; then, supporting my weight between crutch and banister, move good leg to the step.
The first day home, I got the hang of it right away, zipping up and down the stairs with no problem. I wasn’t ready for crutches full time, so when I made it to the bottom of the stairs, I leaned them against the corner and switched back to the walker.
At night, I went upstairs and stayed there. During the day, I camped out downstairs. I created a nest of sorts next to my reclining chair, where I stashed the TV remote, pens, paper, and meds.
I put my mealtime vitamins in a paper cup and carried the cup in my teeth as I stumped my way back to my chair, carefully observed by Cowboy Joe and Frank. Soon, both of them began carrying paper cups around the house in their mouths! Eventually, they switched from paper cups to pens and pencils; it wasn’t unusual to wake up and discover half a dozen pencils in bed.
My friends, vet colleagues, and school family were wonderful, bringing meals, sending cards and flowers, visiting, and calling. One friend, a retired flight surgeon who had an artificial knee, took Tipper the Wonder Husky for a long walk each week, a lovely treat for Tipper and one less thing for me to worry about.
My mother-in-law, Beverley, had been widowed eight months to the day when I had my accident. She needed to work on settling Bill’s estate in Colorado and Wyoming. Despite her social schedule and heavy workload with estate issues, she helped out too, shuttling me around when Earl wasn’t available. And she helped me with the compression stockings I was supposed to wear, until I decided they weren’t worth the effort and threw them out.
Those stockings! TED hose—thromboembolism-deterrent hose—are supposed to help prevent deep vein thrombosis, which are blood clots in a deep vein, usually in the leg. They can form when you don’t move around much. It’s a life-threatening complication, because a clot can break loose, travel through your bloodstream, and get stuck in your lungs, blocking air flow. That can be fatal.
So there’s a good reason to wear them, but this was the middle of summer. The outside daytime temperatures hit the nineties most days and cracked the hundred-degree mark more than once. We didn’t have air conditioning, and the upstairs bedroom was an oven until sunset brought cooler air and a gentle breeze through the open windows behind our bed. Downstairs was marginally better. It was a struggle to get the stockings on, and once on, they were truly vile in the heat. I figured I was taking an anticoagulant anyway, and my weekly test to check my blood-clotting ability would help flag any concerns.
A few days after coming home from the hospital, I made my clumsy way to the barn, not an easy feat with a walker on our flagstone path. Hannah was relaxing in the barn, looking out the window.
I shuffled over with my walker, stood close to her on my good leg, and burst into tears. “It’s not your fault,” I sobbed, hugging her head and stroking and kissing her soft muzzle. I think she understood.
Over the next several weeks, I gradually shifted from mostly walker to only crutches. In the process, I figured out how to sweep the barn on crutches. I placed one crutch against the gate to the hay room and supported myself with the other crutch and the push broom, sweeping the stalls without putting weight on my injured leg. It took strength and balance, skills I’d first developed long ago in gymnastics. Scooter skulked around the barn and, when he thought I wasn’t looking, would nab the spare crutch and chew the top of it or toss it in the air. The work and watching Scooter’s silly antics were a wonderful psychological boost for my banged-up self. I left the manure shoveling to Earl. Shoveling took two hands, and besides, my banged-up self didn’t need that big a boost.
I had taken long-term sick leave from my work as a junior high s
chool teacher because I knew that I needed to be as physically and emotionally fit as possible to interact with this age group. I would return to teaching biology part time in November; until then, a substitute teacher would cover my classes. Beginning in November, the sub and I would each work half time.
Despite feeling miserable—bone pain is horrible—and taking one of the strongest narcotics available to manage the pain, I spent all of July writing a full semester of day-by-day lesson plans for the substitute teacher to use. After I finished each unit, Bev would drive me to school, and I’d stash the huge binder on my office desk. I placed the orders for papers to be printed for the kids, and I reserved the dates the classes would need the library too, which helped me feel calmer.
I discovered later that since I was on long-term leave, I wasn’t required to do any plans, but even if I’d known that up front, I would have done them anyway. I knew it would be a great help for my substitute, who wouldn’t be hired until a week before school started. It also gave me something constructive to do and was one of the few things I could control . . . not to mention the irony of “Just say ‘No’ to drugs” and creating lesson plans while under the influence of high-octane painkillers.
The highlight of my long and miserable summer was seeing my beloved Chicago Cubs play the Colorado Rockies at Coors Field in Denver. Long before my fall from Hannah, I’d purchased seventh-row seats in the “pay attention” foul zone of right field. I didn’t care that it had been barely six weeks since my great crash. No force in the universe was going to stop me from going to the game!
Our group included my cousin Michael and his wife, Debbie, visiting from Chicago; my golf buddy, Diane; Earl; and me. We got to the ballpark with plenty of time to spare. The ballpark attendant wheeled me to our seating section.
And only as far as the section. I had to clamber down thirty rows on my own to reach my specific seat.
But we had a plan. Diane would go first, to catch me if I fell forward. Earl would follow behind me, holding on to my spotting belt, a souvenir from my hospital stay. Michael and Debbie were backup and would run for help if needed.
“Bad leg goes to hell,” I muttered and lowered my crutches to the first step. I swung my bad leg into position, shifted my body weight from my good leg to the crutches, and landed my good leg onto the step. One row down, twenty-nine to go.
Diane shouted something that sounded like encouragement. I swung down to the next step. It wasn’t as hard as I’d feared. I didn’t even notice Earl holding on to my spotting belt.
Oh. That’s because he wasn’t holding on to my spotting belt—he was now in front of me, ahead of Diane, intent on finding our seats. I had no idea where Michael and Debbie were, and I wasn’t going to risk a fall by turning around to look. I ignored the faint whispers of “gravity is a constant” and kept moving: crutches, bad leg, good leg, crutches, bad leg, good leg. I reached our row, proud of myself for making it on my own and resisting the temptation to smack Earl with a crutch for spacing out on what he was supposed to do.
The ballpark was a sea of red and blue. It was Cubs fans, after all, transplants from Chicago like me, who had brought Major League Baseball to Colorado. Coors Field even looks a lot like Wrigley Field, including an ivy-covered wall.
The game was exciting, and like everyone else, I jumped up from my seat many times—up and down on my good leg, using Earl’s or Diane’s shoulders for balance.
One fan a few rows above us took a foul ball to the head, left to get stitched up, and returned to the cheers of the crowd a few innings later, proudly displaying his new row of black sutures. A few rows in front of us, people started yelling and pointing. As the crowd shifted, we could see two guys fighting. Security collared them and threw them out as the crowd cheered its approval.
Two and a half hours later, I made my way up the thirty rows (good leg goes to heaven), exhausted but thoroughly happy. I knew all that up and down during the game wasn’t my best idea, so I took my pain meds while waiting for the wheelchair assistant. I slept all the way home. Even with pain meds and plenty of rest after the game and back home, it took me five days to fully recover.
The Cubs won, five to one.
Sometimes, the pain is worth it.
Two weeks after the Cubs game, I was finally allowed to walk without crutches. “Wean yourself off crutches and use a cane” was the advice. I carried the cane with me, but I discovered I could walk without it. Walking was not, however, pain-free. My hip had collapsed, and the neck of the femur had disappeared. I now had about an inch of the screws sticking into my hip muscles, so I walked with a limp. I continued with physical therapy twice a week. I tried running with Tipper, but it was uncomfortable, so we settled for walking.
I also contacted an equine clinician at the Veterinary Teaching Hospital who had suffered a fractured hip the year before and asked her what to expect during recovery. She recommended that I buy a packet of ten Pilates lessons with Don Spence of Big Toe Studio. Don, a certified Pilates instructor with extensive experience in rehabilitation and sports fitness, offered both group and private classes using the full complement of Pilates equipment. When I met with him for an evaluation, I told him point-blank that I wasn’t interested in “rehabilitation”; I was in training. That appealed to him. I’ve been practicing Pilates with him ever since; he’s still one of my best cheerleaders.
About the same time I was transitioning off crutches, we took Hannah to Steve, our horse trainer, for remedial ground lessons. He determined that at the time of the accident, Hannah had had a sore hip herself. It had healed by September, and she’d done well with her lessons.
I was itching to ride again. A week or so after I was officially off crutches, I was sitting on top of a chuck wagon, watching Hannah’s lesson. I asked Steve to bring Hannah over to me.
Steve held the lead rope while I tentatively mounted Hannah. Then he walked us around a little.
Rudimentary as it was, I was back on a horse again. On Hannah again.
In October, the month before I returned to teaching, I was able to ride and move around enough that I could drive our rig alone to take Marcie to Lory State Park to ride.
Free at last, except for the step stool I now needed to get on her. The fracture had done a number on my right leg’s range of motion, though when I mounted Marcie, the limited range of motion seemed to come from my left leg—my “good” leg. That’s the leg you mount with; it was tough reaching up to the stirrup for a long time after the accident.
To psych myself up for returning to work in November, I took a trip to celebrate my freedom. My cousin Barbara was getting married in late October, near Chicago. Earl was invited too, but the Colorado State–Wyoming football game was the same weekend as Barbara’s wedding. Some people attend church services; some go to the “Border War” game. Earl was definitely in the latter category. There was no way he was going to help his crippled wife negotiate suburban Chicago during that all-important game. He remained home to cheer on his beloved Wyoming Cowboys with friends at the stadium on the west side of town.
And so I trekked solo to Barbara’s wedding. I hadn’t been alone all summer, and I was tired of being a patient. It was time for some fun.
I imagined I was a queen with my personal staff wheeling me through the airports. The Orthopaedic and Spine Center of the Rockies had given me a wallet card that said I had orthopedic hardware in my body, but the security agents said that bad guys carried those cards too. I had to “assume the position” just like everybody else: from queen to criminal and back to queen again.
In Chicago, I rented a car and used my shiny new handicapped hangtag to get convenient parking places. One of my greatest pleasures in life is to stay in nice hotels by myself, and this time, my handicapped status snagged an extra-special hotel room for me.
Although I wasn’t walking very well, I managed to shop till I dropped in between all the wedding activities. At Northwestern University in Evanston, where I’d earned my master’s degree, I c
leaned the gift shop out of alumni items, including T-shirts, sweatshirts, a nice jacket, and key chains.
I drove up Lake Michigan to my hometown of Highland Park and visited some of my former neighbors. Doc Canmann, who had been my pediatrician as well as our neighbor, was ninety-three that fall. We reminisced about those days when all the neighborhood kids played in his yard while his sweet wife watched out for us.
I cruised along the scenic North Shore with great enjoyment. It is a lovely area, cursed only by dreadful weather. In October, the beauty was breathtaking. I played tourist, snapping pictures of Lake Michigan. I swung by our former home on Indian Tree Drive, which had been enlarged and remodeled over the years. On impulse, I knocked on the door, in case anyone inside wondered why I was photographing the house. The nanny let me tour the house; three little girls lived there with their doctor parents, just as the three girls of my family had.
The real estate market had taken a turn for the worse when we’d sold the house after Mom died. Now the market had recovered, and with the over-the-top remodeling (it even had a butler’s pantry!), it was now close to a million-dollar property. I think that would have surprised my mom.
Barbara’s wedding was a fancy affair at her brother Michael’s suburban country club. Cocktail party-attired guests swirled everywhere.
No cocktail attire and fancy shoes for me; I don’t even own a cocktail dress. I wore a regular dress—nice but not fancy—with sturdy Merrell Jungle Mocs, which helped me walk without disaster. They mostly matched the dress. I had a large backpack instead of a purse so my hands would be free if I needed to use my cane. Michael quietly put my backpack out of sight in a closet, but I didn’t care that I had the dumpy old lady look; I was just happy to be able to stump along with my cane.
After the visits, the shopping, and the wedding, I returned home in a wonderful mood, ready to return to teaching.
To keep my spirits up at home, there were the boys—our cat, Matthew, and the kittens, Frank and Cowboy Joe—and Tipper the Wonder Husky to play with. There were horses—Marcie, Scooter, and Hannah—to take care of, talk to, and ride after school.
Drinking from the Trough Page 22