A note: I started drafting this entry before my most recent surgery, with the intent to post at some point before Christmas Eve. Obviously, that didn't happen…as it turns out, there's rather a lot of information I want to cover, which makes these silly things take a while to write. Coupled with a startling lack of downtime the first part of winter break and my good intentions to keep up with this blog remained just that: intentions, not acted upon. I still intend to finish out the backstory aspect of Leg+Frame, though, mostly because, while the frame itself is disappointingly boring so far, there are still some interesting leg-related occurrences on the horizon, such as my returning to more normal activities like academic pursuits and track.
So, then, backstory round three:
A FIST ATTEMPT AT STRAIGHT LEGS
The first surgery was relatively straightforward to deal with, aside from the cast and spending the night in the hospital with a roommate whose mother listened to the television at full volume quite literally all night and living with the wheelchair for a limited time.
Though round one was relatively simple, round two was less so.
I can't remember the exact chain of events leading up to my return to the operating room a year and a half later in November 2004. I'm sure there was the normal string of doctor's appointments and x-rays and discussions between my parents and Dr. Abel. As for me, the path which leads to my return trip to the operating room consists of two major memories.
One. Fall day. I'm at a soccer field, dressed in uniform. For a few years between lower and middle school, I played for a recreational soccer team, mostly sticking to defense, except for one rainy stint as offense in which I stubbornly kept running towards my team's goal and a briefer, sunnier stint in the goal in which I actually managed to block a shot. This was when running was not a forbidden activity, of course. But, returning to the larger narrative at hand, during a break in one game I was talking to my father about the upcoming procedure. He mentioned Dr. Abel's mentioning that there had been some medical advances which made him feel comfortable in performing the operation.
These advances were related to the plates which were going into my knees.
Dr. Sundberg, my orthopedic surgeon here in Minnesota, said that if I was still growing (which, based on the height measurement from my pre-op appointment, I still might be, albeit very, very slowly (or there could have been a fluke of measurement)), he would put a plate in my knee to straighten my leg. The funny thing is, I've done that already. It worked on the left leg—that one's straight, the weight-bearing axis goes exactly where it ought to go. With the right leg, well…I'll get to that in a later post.
The other memory I have leading up to the procedure is of walking with my mother either into or out of KCRC. She was telling me about how this surgery wasn't like the last one. The last one, all they had to cut through was skin. This time, they'd need to cut through muscle. It was much more serious.
As my mother was telling me about how this surgery was going to be more serious, I felt a little nervous. But not very. I had no clue what, exactly, all this meant in practical terms. Yes, they would be cutting through muscle. But would it hurt more? Would it take longer to recover? Would I be stuck in the wheelchair for a greater expanse of time?
Still, when it came time to drive to the hospital, I wasn't quite as relaxed as I had been a year and a half earlier. Not scared, per se, but not the calmest, either. I had a better idea of what I was in for, the scent of the anesthesia, the vomiting, the feeling of being frozen as I waited to regain my limbs in the recovery room.
It did not help matters when we had to wait for what felt like hours for a hospital bed to be available for me so the surgery could get underway.
During that waiting period, Dr. Abel came back to have one final conversation with me and my parents about the procedure. He'd been thinking about the surgery, he said, and wanted to change some things. I can't remember the full list of what was changed, but I can recall that list being an impressive one (to me).
There is another noteworthy detail from that conversation. Now, for comfort, I'd brought a stuffed hippopotamus with me to the hospital. Prior to this conversation with Dr. Abel, the hippo was unnamed.
Dr. Abel walks into the room for the pre-op conversation and more or less the first thing he says is, "Nice rhinoceros."
The name stuck: Rhino the Hippopotamus, who has now become the good-luck charm I've brought to all subsequent surgeries, including the placing of the frame a week ago.
Very shortly thereafter, I was wheeled back to the operating room.
With the first surgery, I couldn't remember anything about actually being put to sleep. Not so with round two. I can very clearly remember being wheeled back to the operating room, passing other operating rooms and seeing the tiny windows on their doors and thinking, 'There are people getting cut up in there' and also thinking, 'I am never, never going to be a surgeon.' I can remember being wheeled into my operating room and having the operating room staff joking about Dr. Abel's knowledge of large African mammals. While joking, they were projecting my x-rays up on computer monitors. The atmosphere may have been friendly but the purpose was serious.
Then somebody moved me from the transport bed to the operating room table beneath operating room lights (perhaps the most imposing kind of lights there are), slipped a gas mask over my face and the smell of anesthesia (just like airplane gas) arrived. I didn't immediately fall asleep, which worried me, but before too long, I was out and the operation itself began.
No comments:
Post a Comment