Chapter Eight: Confinement, Part Two

Still in the Step Down unit, I had a very tough time adapting to my situation. Changing the bed sheets was an ordeal in itself, and going to the bathroom was far worse. I won't go in to much detail there! I was also on respiratory therapy for the first two weeks after surgery. A week after surgery, my IVs were removed and my morphine pump taken away. Unfortunately, I was given vicodin as an alternative, and I started going through those like candy. After taking two on an empty stomach, I was bordering on delirious and turned on the TV across the room for some background noise. Not being able to see it or fully comprehend what was going made it just short of irritating. The doctor ordered another x-ray to see what everything looked like, and Tanya, the x-ray technician, wheeled her mobile unit in. I didn't even realize that the TV was tuned to the Maury Povich show, which, on that particular afternoon, featured a few transsexuals with the audience guessing who was born a woman and who was not. Tanya immediately noticed this, and from that day forward, teased me about it.

The x-rays were taken and I was left to spend the rest of the day mostly in solitude. All I wanted to do was see something other than the bars surrounding my hospital bed and the tiles of the ceiling. I tried to count them several times, but the combination of vicodin and almost no food left me fairly confused before I could count to 40. I was fortunate to have a few visitors during my stay, including some distant relatives from Florida whom I hadn't seen in years and the teacher who took me to Orlando and helped me acheive my fifteen minutes of high school fame. Knowing that people out in the world really cared and wanted to see me recover made the trials and tribulations worthwhile and encouraged me to work a little harder on my therapy.

Day 11

The doctors decided that I could leave the Step Down unit, as I no longer required constant monitoring. I was moved to the room next door, still alone for the time being. Knowing that in a few more days I would be getting a cast, the Physical Therapy department brought up a "standing table" to assist my preparation. This particular device, at first, seemed like it would fit in nicely with the private collection of the Marquis de Sade. It was a thin and hard board, barely padded, with an extension at one end for my feet to rest against and straps down the length of it, vaguely reminding me of the bed one might find in an execution chamber. Removing my traction rigging left me with an intense urge to scratch my leg, although, to my disappointment, I was unable to reach it! This feeling would pop up regularly during the next three months. I was situated on the standing board for the first time and given the control to slowly tilt the table up so that I could eventually stand and support my weight on my left leg. The first try left me dizzy, panicked, and in great pain. More vicodin to the rescue! They kept me on the board all day and told me to take it slow. Since my body had been accustomed to one position for almost two weeks, it would take some work to tolerate standing up again. By the next afternoon, I was standing straight up on the board and finally able to see the TV.

Over the weekend, I spent most of the daytime on the board standing up. The nurses told me that I would need to be standing for a while when they put the cast on and that once they began, it would be unlikely that I'd have a chance to rest. After hearing the doctor's description of the cast, I had too many questions run through my mind.

Day 15

The nurses managed to get me out of bed early and wheeled me, on the standing table, down to the Physical Therapy department one floor below. Apparently the level of planning for this event was somewhere between the Academy Awards and landing on the moon. Sheets were draped around a set of assistive bars for patients learning to walk again. I was wheeled up to the bars and brought up to standing once again. After acclimating to my vertical position, I was given a few minutes to rest my left leg as it would have a lot of work to do for the next few hours. During this time, I was given the opportunity to find out how it feels to have staples removed from my skin. It was a rather unique feeling, but what surprised me was the fact that I only felt every other staple coming out. After a few minutes with a small cloth, the minor bleeding ceased and it was time to get started. Given the plan of the cast, it was necessary for me to strip down to a small piece of cloth that offered very little coverage or comfort. Once it was in place, I was once again brought to a standing position and told to reach for the bars. The straps were released one by one, with my father standing alongside me to offer support if I needed it and give me a little encouragement. Trying to hop forward on my good leg without moving my right hip was a painful and serious challenge, but somehow I managed to make it two feet. Maj. Ross and Dr. Haynes began the casting procedure with help from two of the orthotics staff. They started at my ankle, positioning my knee and hip at the correct angles and adding steel support bars around my knee. After twenty or thirty minutes, my leg was encased from the top of my thigh to my ankle. The next step proved to be much more difficult, as my arms were close by my side, hands gripped firmly on the guide bars to take some of the pressure off of my left leg. My father and one of the orthotics staff came in on either side of me and each took an arm over their shoulder to hold me up. The doctors then began to wrap my abdomen in the cloth liner, then in the casting material. An hour later, I had two disconnected casts and wanted nothing more than a vicodin with a vodka chaser, but alas, our task was not yet complete. The next task was to fit the upper portion of the cast to my arms so that I could comfortably hold myself up to complete the procedure. It only took two cuts on each side and a few pieces of padding before I was holding myself up again. Maj. Ross grabbed another steel support rod and placed it alongside my right hip, taping it to the two sections of cast already on my body. His trusty tool for measuring joint angles ended up getting a lot of use as they aligned the two sections and added another two support rods on the front and back of the casts. Now the fun would commence as they padded the section around my hip and began to wrap the cast rolls around my waist, across my hip, and down around my thigh to complete the contraption. Another hour later, the cast was finished and drying. By this point, my left leg was about to collapse on itself and I was once again in tears, hoping it would all be over quickly.

A few very long minutes later, the cast had dried and I started to inch backward, expecting to get back on the standing board to be returned to my room. Much to my surprise, however, an extra-wide wheelchair was brought up behind me. Sitting down in the wheelchair took the help of five people, and when I was finally situated, I was in much the same position I'd originally expected to be in. The wheelchair had a reclining back, and the doctors insisted that I be put as close to flat as possible to elevate my casted leg. The next stop for the day was another x-ray to check the alignment of my hip in the cast, and I realized it would be quite easy for Tanya to reposition me in the cast as any movement of my foot would rotate my whole body. The doctors were pleased with the work, and I was taken to the cafeteria for a late lunch. Unfortunately, being in such a reclined position, I couldn't get close enough to the table to reach my food. I had to reposition to where the table was to one side of me, and even then it was quite difficult to eat. Half of my sandwich ended up on my shirt. It took several more days to master the art of eating from such an awkward position.

The most fortunate part of being in the cast was that I could finally raise the head of my bed so I could see my surroundings. From room 702, I had a view of a small wooded area and some of Houston's urban sprawl. With binoculars, I could see the traffic on highways in the distance and be thankful I wasn't driving in it. I also started going downstairs twice each day for thirty minutes on the standing board. Sadly, I learned what it must be like to drive a car with the driver's seat fully reclined. It was impossible to see what was in front of me, and within the first three days I'd bruised my foot on furniture and walls, and I'd bruised a few other people by running in to them. Moving from the bed to the wheelchair and back was also quite an ordeal, requiring me to lift myself up on the bars over the bed and slide sideways into the chair or back across to the bed. I'd also continued to suffer the indignity of using a bedpan and developed a new respect for the nurses and orderlies responsible for helping me with that ordeal every day.