Saying Goodbye

I'm done.

I think that's what it comes down to at this point.

Yes, I've still got a final stretch of recovery to go. My leg is, at present, trapped in a splint. Walking has become rather interesting (being forced to hold the leg rigid has resulted in a funny rolling gait), stairs more so. But…well, I'm done. That's what it comes down to.

For the past two days, my leg has ben just that: my leg. No jutting metal frame to get in the way of things. No metal pegs sticking out of the skin. No metal rings preventing the back of my calves from resting directly on the surfaces of the footstool in front of the Recovery Chair or the sheets on my bed.

Was there any difficult transition in going from leg plus frame to just leg? Not really. It just…happened, I suppose. One moment I was in the operating room being put to sleep, the next thing I knew I was in a recovery room, waking up, and the frame was no more.

I think I've reached the point where my ramblings on frame removal will quickly deteriorate into nonsense if I don't go to the beginning.

So here goes.

Thursday, May 2, 2013

On Thursday, I said good-bye to the frame. For months, I knew roughly the manner in which I wanted to bid the piece of metal farewell. First, I wanted to try to go the day (or at least most of it) in shorts, as a sort of social experiment, if you will. Second, in an effort to mirror the pre-frame walk around the lake, I wanted to take a walk with the frame the evening before that imminent removal.

I was at least somewhat successful on both counts.

Despite knowing in the back of my mind that I wanted to try the shorts experiment, it wasn't until the evening of May 1st that I actually bothered to check that my frame-approved pair of cargo pants would be clean (lately, my former couch-buddy Sunny the Golden Retriever has taken to having mental breakdowns when the drier's running, making clean anything rather questionable). They were. Since outdoor temperatures were hovering in the realm of too-cold-to-be-comfortable, after getting up I made sure that the pants were, you know, fully pants; however, upon arriving at school, I zipped the lower legs clean off and had a pair of shorts.

I have never been an avid wearer of shorts. I like the feel of long pants, the way the fabric swooshes around the solid vertical cylinder which is my leg. I'm incredibly not-fond of the way the hem can rub against the skin near your knee. But at the same time…

But at the same time I just wanted to know what it would be like, wandering around for a full day with nothing hiding the frame. No fabric, no stockingnet, no nothing.

It was, well, not much. In case you're wondering, people really don't tend to look down at people's legs all that often and the frame was barely noticed. Maybe I got one or two comments—and there were a couple giddy moments where I got to tell people that the thing was actually coming off tomorrow!—but for the most part my quote-on-quote friend, those several pounds of metal holding my bones together, passed unnoticed through the hallways of my school. I also managed to learn that Taylor Spatial Frames and shorts do not mix well—there are pleasant sensations in this world, and then there is the sensation of bare frame cuddling up against bare skin.

The whole shorts experiment was really not all too exciting. On the bus from the Upper School campus to the Middle School and track, I managed to wrestle the pants back into being pants before standing around outside for several hours, doing my best to be helpful.

And through it all, I was unbelievably on edge. I have had eight surgeries in my life, including Friday's. There are some things which become less scary the more you experience them (standardized tests). Then there are some things which don't (needles and anesthesia and getting sliced open and…).

So, long story short, I was nervous.

I was nervous through track and when I got home and tried to get some work done (enough work that there would be nothing left to do Saturday or Sunday) and up until my father summoned me for the promised walk. All through the week, I'd been running checks on the weather, making sure that Mother Nature would not conspire against my attempt at fitting the end of the frame with some nice dramatic resonance. For a while, it had been forecasted to snow Wednesday evening and into Thursday. We even got the winter storm warning to prove it.

It didn't snow. The weather cooperated and in the end, the walk got to happen. Granted, the walk was considerably scaled down from what my original intentions had been—at first, I'd been planning on going all the way around the lake, just like earlier. Then my mother found out and reminded us that last time I'd gone all the lake, I'd wound up with blisters on my feet which ultimately led to several bonus days of hospitalization. So we went for a walk which was a fraction of that distance, though still on the lake. And the lake was calm, the ice had actually managed to melt, nobody else was on the path and for a little bit, I was almost able to forget about the fact that I'd be having surgery number eight at 7:30 AM the next morning.

It was calm, in other words.

And the calm was good.

Friday, May 3, 2013

My parents woke me up at 5:45 Friday morning to drive to the hospital. Not surprisingly, traffic was minimal on the interstates from Minneapolis to St. Paul. I can't say I was particularly paying attention. It wasn't even like I was nervous—more accurately, I simply hadn't been awake long enough to process much of anything. Also, there was the slight matter of my not having eaten anything since dinner the previous night.

In the waiting room, my mother took pictures of the frame, for memory's sake.

We were then called back to a pre-operative waiting area and put in our own private room. I was instructed to clean myself up. I did so. More pictures were taken. At some point, the OR nurse came in to talk to me, and the anesthesiologist (my anesthesiologist from December), and Dr. Sundberg himself.

If you recall, my main concern with Friday was how I'd be put to sleep. Apparently Dr. Sundberg had only booked the OR for half an hour. Now, this would be fine, except that my preferred manner for being put to sleep (pill, followed by hand-numbing device, followed by IV) required fifteen minutes for the pill to take effect.

In the end, the course of action was to use nitrous oxide so I wouldn't care quite so much what was happening down near my hand, then put the IV in, then sleep.

In the pre-op room, the anesthesiologist used a tourniquet to find some veins on my arm. Apparently there were some good ones on my hand, because when I was wheeled back to the operating room to be put to sleep and after the nurse had slipped the mask over my mouth and after they had waited a few seconds for my circulatory system to carry the nitrous oxide throughout the body, more specifically to the brain, he started prodding my hand.

For some reason I cannot explain, I had decided to shut my eyes. Perhaps I thought that shutting my eyes would make the whole thing less real, but really all I managed to do was heighten the laughing gas experience. The nurses warned me it might start feeling like I was floating.

And—it did. It really did. The experience was overwhelming and terrifying and even though I was mostly focused by how reality seemed to be thrumming, I could feel the pressure at the back of my hand. At one point I cried out in pain. At another point I pushed the mask away form my mouth. It was all too much.

When the IV was in, I opened my eyes and realized how much calmer everything was. I can recall thinking that I was making intelligent sounds, but based on how messed up my perception of the world was, I probably was making no sense at all.

Then the actual anesthesia went into my veins and that was the end of that.