On May 17, a Friday . . . about 80 days after first entering
the hospital . . . I tried on a new leg.
David Loney the prosthesis maker (Willow Brook Prosthetics
and Orthodics) made a finished leg instead of a test leg in the hopes that it’d
fit perfectly with minor adjustments and we could start rehab with a leg. It
fit, but he wasn’t completely happy with it, so he took it back to his shop and
presented me with a shiny new leg the next week. I have to say that after
spending weeks in a hospital, sometimes feeling fabulously helpless since I
couldn’t get in and out of bed without assistance, which included at one point a ceiling
lift hoisting me to a wheelchair, seeing that prosthesis for the first time was
pretty incredible.
The leg was really the first physical sign we were coming to
the end of the rehab road. Not that the road would be easy at all, but just
having that leg pulled over the stump of my right leg brought tears to my eyes
. . . the feeling of helplessness started to fade because I knew, or at least
thought I knew, that with a prosthesis, I’d be all right. I stood up with the
leg on, a post at the bottom of the urethane sleeve that went over my stump
(the politically correct term is “residual limb”) clicked into the metal piece
at the bottom of the carbon fiber socket.
David inspected, moved the prosthesis a bit, and checked how
high the ridge of the socket was on my leg. Then I stood up.
For the first time in
weeks, I could balance my rather substantial bulk on two legs. Ok, one of them
wasn’t really mine, but still, the feeling was wonderful. The prosthesis didn’t
hurt, rub or press against parts of my leg that it shouldn’t. A gentle firmness
held the back of my leg (which will, over time, get smaller and smaller as the
existing muscles and tissue shrink).
My physical therapist, Cindy, stood at my right shoulder as
I stood up from the chair. David, with his hands on the safety belt around my
chest, watched me take a few tentative steps forward. Holding on to the
parallel bars, I had to look down since I had no idea (let alone feeling) where
the rather fake looking rubber foot (stuffed into a sneaker) was going. But
everything worked . . . more or less . . . and that feeling of helplessness
faded a bit more as we talked about the changes that would be made to the final
(hopefully) finished leg.
The fake foot on the prosthesis was a size too big . . .
“Your foot’s in the mail,” David told me with a straight
face.
Rehab at Valley Regional Hospital was going pretty well.
Three young women were responsible for that . . . Jessica, my occupational
therapist, worked with me to get in and out of bed, in and out of the shower
and, along with my physical therapists, safely in and out of the wheelchair . .
. both before and after I had my prosthesis. Cindy was my main physical
therapist, charged with teaching me how to, in essence, walk again . . . using
a walker, and later crutches. Sarah, the head physical therapist, also made
sure I was, literally, making steps . . . OK, they weren’t always pretty steps
and often a bit unsure . . . in the beginning, I kept catching the toe of the
prosthesis as I moved it forward . . . pretty much giving everyone a heart
attack as I stumbled a bit each time.
*********
Erin visited me in the rehab hospital about three weeks
after I got my leg, and watched a physical therapy session before lunch with my
parents, who had been visiting regularly after migrating back north to Vermont
from Florida . . . Erin got a bit teary when the two of us went back to my
room. It was the first time she’d seen me out of bed since I first went to the
ER February 27 . . . and the first time she’d seen me walk since then as well .
. . Never really knowing if I would be able to walk again. Thanks to my leg
maker . . . Yeah, I’m a sap . . . I cried, too.
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