Yesterday, the packet arrived from the hospital. A simple folder, containing all the information you need to know for your surgery (except for some of the essentials, such as how long the procedure will actually take, how long you will be off-kilter from the anesthesia, if you will experience pain, where precisely your family can find snacks while you're under the knife, etc.). If I need to know when to stop taking baby formula, that's listed. And, more importantly, when I'm supposed to actually arrive up at the hospital.
All I can say is, 6:15 AM is awfully, awfully early, especially for a Friday morning. Granted, under normal non-surgery conditions I would be up by 6:45, but it just seems so…early.
It is also happening incredibly soon. Less than a week and a half to go until I get to start a recovery much fuller than the recovery I've been in for the past few months, a recovery without the frame to serve as a very visible reminder that, hey, things really weren't so great leg-wise in the good old days of before Christmas 2012. And with that onset of life after frame come a few other new things. Some are pretty inconsequential (I'm switching to a new pair of shoes). Others…more so.
This blog has always intended to serve as a semi-complete recording of my time with the Taylor Spatial Frame, a relatively coherent account of life with frame to help others facing a future with pins poking through their legs. This blog is, in other words, about the frame and with the frame departing my body to start its second life, I think it makes sense to wind this story down. I've said so before.
For the first few months of wearing the frame, I was incredibly bored. I sat in my spot, either on the Recovery Couch (later commandeered by the golden retriever) or the Recovery Chair (later commandeered by my anti-boredom knitting project), staring at the wall or using the Internet to research movies and roller coasters or suffering through episode after episode of Top Gear. Then I returned to school and slowly but surely started losing boredom, until I finally did manage to turn everything around in a much more meaningful way, getting myself guaranteed almost-daily fresh air and company.
I still need to tell that story here.
But before getting to that, I have something to complete. In late November, I started an account of my life leading up to the frame. Several days later, I posted a continuation. A month passed, and part three finally arrived.
What I never did was finish telling the backstory behind Leg Plus Frame.
Here goes.
CONTINUED CORRECTIONS
I woke from the first attempt at straighter legs without a problem. Perhaps the actual waking up was a slow, gradual process; perhaps it came quick and easy. Regardless, it was unmemorable enough that I cannot recall those actual moments now, nor can I recall what the hospital room I stayed in that night was like, precisely.
I do recall that it was only after arriving in the hospital room that my mother told me that, as a sort of pleasant surprise, Dr. Abel had removed the screw he put in my ankle the last time. I can recall being somewhat excited by this.
I left the hospital the next day to return home.
Recovery that time was fairly normal. The ankle was sore for months afterward, but where Dr. Abel had broken the fibula felt fine. I got to be in a wheelchair, which was rather entertaining. One day, my family took a road trip to a botanical garden in Richmond. The gardens have a large tree house which is entirely accessible by ramps and I can remember my father running the wheelchair up and down the ramps and greatly enjoying it.
Another thing I remember is that I spent a solid amount of time in the basement. The way the house in Charlottesville was set up, the basement was essentially a full floor, completely finished, completely livable. My bedroom was on the main floor, but the television was in the basement, as was the door it was easiest for my mother to get me inside.
It was during the recovery for that surgery I saw the Spider-Man movies for the first time. I particularly remember seeing the second one in particular—I knew that there was a scene featuring Doctor Octavius in an operating room and I can remember being concerned that the movie might show a bit of surgery in progress. I was rather relieved when he started killing all the doctors in a safely PG-13 fashion before they had a chance to saw into him. My tolerance for gore is not the highest.
Beyond that, it was a slow transition back into normalcy. Recovering from surgery is not a particularly exciting occurrence, particularly if the surgery leaves no visible marks beyond a handful of scars which can be easily covered by clothing. Slowly, over time, you feel more comfortable putting weight on once-injured body parts. Your comfort increases, your movement increases, and before too long you're back to normal.
I stayed at normal for a little bit before heading back for another surgery on St. Patrick's Day 2006, a Friday. My mother had made green gift baskets for the holiday, but with the surgery later in the day, I didn't get to enjoy any of the candy before heading off to the University of Virginia Outpatient Surgery Center. The waiting rooms were clean and bright and before surgery my father played with the equipment in the room to relax me. The procedure was relatively simple—remove a bone growth from the base of the fourth finger on my right hand which had caused the finger to wind up shorter than the rest and was threatening to wear a tendon in the hand to the point of worry. I'd been through enough by then that the surgery didn't phase me in the least, but I still enjoyed laughing at/with my father.
I was going to start rehearsals for the middle school production of Macbeth the coming Monday. In order to convince me to take the anesthesia intravenously, my mother threatened me with missing play practice if I decided on taking anesthesia through the gas mask. It worked.
On the Monday, I showed up to play practice with my hand wrapped in bandages.
A year and a half passed. I encountered middle school. Physical education was a mandated class which went…interestingly. I did my best, faring best during grade-wide games where I could specialize, doing less well on days which involved running in a somewhat straight line. The mile run, which had become my enemy way back in second grade, continued to torment me.
In November 2007, I had another surgery. It is at this point where my memory of what the surgeries were for, exactly, becomes hazy. I believe there were leg-related incisions and I had a bone growth removed from one of my shoulders. I seem to recall that this surgery was out-patient.
What I can remember for certain was that it was the Monday of the final week before Thanksgiving Break. It was my seventh grade year, my first year of taking Latin. As is customary, I went around to all my teachers before the surgery, just letting them know that I was about to miss a ton of class. I asked my Latin teacher if we were doing anything that Monday before Thanksgiving, assuming the answer would be a comforting No.
There was a test that day.
As far as the surgery itself, it wasn't anything to write home about. I went to sleep and probably experienced several days of anesthesia aftertaste—it smells rather like airplane gasoline, and though I've never had airplane gasoline in my mouth I'd imagine the tastes are similar. I got better.
Several weeks later, I made up the Latin test. I was on my own, in the seventh grade science room, a sanitary bright tiled place. I kept wondering why the test couldn't be waived for me. It didn't go well.
I believe I did fairly well academically in seventh grade, though I can't say for certain. In the spring, I dislocated my kneecap—the right one, which is currently resting above a very obvious Taylor Spatial Frame. This did not require missing school. Then I got mononucleosis (I'm still not sure where from) and missed six weeks of school. The experience was strikingly similar to the months of January and February, 2013. I stayed at home, my time marked by when issues of Entertainment Weekly would come through the door—in those days, the magazine still published Stephen King's column, a cause for great excitement. I was bored and though I thought I might be able to get things done, I never managed to motivate myself into actual productivity.
Eventually, I got better from that, too.
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