ICU Revisited

Walking into Jackson South hospital pushing my walker in front of me took me back to that mid September day I first left my room after almost two weeks in intensive care. My therapist Sean stuffed me in a wheelchair and set me free: 

Yesterday afternoon I returned for the first time and saw Sean down the corridor. I waved. He was the one who got me out of bed and scared the bejeezus out of me. 

He waved back. He knew everything. “I’ve been following you on Instagram,” he said. And he has. He asked after Rusty’s paw and made sure he was home safe with friends for the night while we are in Miami.

I was fighting back tears for the picture.  You were right I told him. I can walk. I didn’t believe it at the time as I lay in bed only able to use my right arm.

Before Sean the doctors and nurses had their way with me. One nurse pushed up my shorts to look at my thigh. The most natural thing in the world in a hospital. She wanted toook at the scar where they drilled into my leg to put a pin to put my badly broken femur in traction. 

“Do you remember when I put the weight on and the said the pain went away?”  Oh yes I remembered the agony stopping suddenly. I also remembered the drill cutting into my skin. We laughed. The atmosphere in critical care is so relaxed. Anything goes. I felt at home. I remembered Keila and sheremembered me. We tested up right there outside the elevators. ICU staff don’t often see the success stories. “This one lived!” She called out. He walks! I replied stumping along. 

And Adam fixing my leg inits cursed brace: 

It was really good to see them and they made me throw the walker away for the picture. I was hanging into Adam’s back.  

It was a long day, even for a passenger through the Keys trying not to drive my wife nuts back seat driving. She knew her way round having spent far too many days driving back and forth during my recovery. 

I was surprised to see the hospital appear above the suburbs. My wife pointed it out to me and I was fascinated to see it from the outside.  I arrived by helicopter and left at night by ambulance on a stretcher. 

It was pretty luxurious but of respect for my lack of stamina my wife insisted we do room service. Argentine sausage, Peruvian steak and a bottle of white. No Percocet for me! I struggled on through! 

And a lovely view from the Doubletree. 

And legendary cookies for dessert. The real reward will be 100% weight bearing on both legs from the surgeon’s x-rays today. Fingers crossed. 

The Scooting Life

Scooters in the US are a subset of the motorcycling life. And motorcyclists for the most part ignore or dislike scooters which are viewed as underpowered emasculated and not ridden by real men. I grew up riding in Italy where Vespas and motorcycles each play a role and the riders of one may also be riders of the other.  Because I am a contrarian I have taken to riding scooters in my old age. Also because arthritis in my left wrist makes using a clutch painful and modern scooters like cars tend to be automatics and the left hand is mostly idle. At my age I have nothing to prove but I take pleasure riding a small engined scooter too far and too often thus shocking passers by. Like my August trip to Niagara Falls in 32 hours on my Suzuki 200.

Wytheville, Virginia, August 19th, dawn. 

It was fun though no one believes me! Next year I plan a repeat trip perhaps to Alexandria Bay. My friend Val knows why, because she grew up there plus it’s 1500 miles from Key West and I’ve never been. All this by way of explanation. I’ve now downgraded even lower to a - wait for it!- mobility scooter. Sounds  like old man stuff indeed! 

Notice the walker hanging off the back to give me complete mobility and independence! I am a happy camper. Thank you Therese for gifting me a month’s rent. My friends are extraordinary.  This isn’t a substitute for exercise but with a top speed of a leisurely jog and a range of twelve to sixteen miles I am set. It has lights turn signals and an indoor horn. It is comfortable and it sets me free. Thank you Island Mobility on Stock Island. Craig was a pleasure to deal with. 

This machine is slick. It fits in my apartment better than my manual wheelchair. It rides bumps and lumps just fine, it fits on sidewalks and takes me into the aisles of Publix with the greatest of ease and no fuss. 

It’s easy to use, just turn it on and press F for forward and ...R for reverse! It’s the black bar visible in the photo above. It doesn’t beep in reverse (thank heavens)  and comes with a mirror. It’s exactly what I need until I get my driving privileges back. 

Work is three miles from home along North Roosevelt on a waterfront sidewalk ideal for the purpose. I know this isn’t sexy but it has changed my life. For some a leather jacket a Harley and a handgun are signs of masculinity. For me it’s having fun with what I’ve got and my first instinct was to be an explorer with a whole new perspective of my town. I am blessed with curiosity and a desire to experiment and this is just another way to do that. 

This is going to be a blast. I’m half pedestrian half electric cyborg. 

I’ve also got permission from my scooter buddies on Adventure Rider (advrider.com) to participate in scooter tag which is not normally allowed for mobility scooters... remember I was talking about how segmented riders tend to be? Well I have permission to participate owing to my extraordinary circumstances. 

Pretty cool huh? I have great friends all over the place. I may have weak legs but I’m a happy lucky man. Oh and Rusty got his stitches out from the visiting vet, Dr Edie. 

No strenuous walks till mid January when his tendon should have healed. Excellent news. We’re doing well, both of us. And my wife is managing. I did some shopping for her. And got it home in one piece. 

Getting there, but by bit. I always said I’d get whole again. And I will. Doubters are banished! 

Don Quixote And The Fire Alarm

Layne got home late from work as must happen when your job is educating adults. They have jobs and at least a few classes need to accommodate students with adult schedules. I sat in my wheelchair and recounted the day’s doings, lunch with Nick, a few stories I had heard, physical therapy and that sort of thing.  How was your day dear? asked the homebound man in the wheelchair. Rusty chewed his chew and waited, like me for dinner. 

It happened that garlic toast was on the menu to use up a baguette in danger of hardening beyond use. Well, it did that all right. In the pirouettes between pasta, water, oven and salad something went awry. Suddenly a voice screeched:”FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!” at the top of her tinny lungs. The garlic bread! Layne pulled the oven door open thus allowing one more copious gust of black smoke to issue forth like the dying grunt of the Titanic’s submerging boilers. The smoke, as though possessed of diabolical intelligence snaked across the white ceiling and wreathed itself round the screeching whistling smoke alarm. In vain I told the freaked out voice there was no “FIRE!” as she kept bellowing at the top of her lungs from the little white box. I rolled to the balcony and pulled the sliding doors open. Layne propped the front door open allowing cubic yards of freezing night air to sweep through the apartment like a cleansing breath of sanity. No dice. “FIRE!” The bitch in the box kept screeching.

You’d think living in a collection of rabbit hutches nearby residents might appear at our place, concerned for their safety or that of their property. With the door wide open and the cold north wind howling through our apartment you’d think someone would have noticed the stentorian bellowing of that single deadly word “FIRE!” over and over again accompanied by a piercing whistle announcing the imminent doom of all within hearing. Not one person appeared. That left my wife and her cripple in his wheelchair to handle the emergency. Great. Layne got a kitchen stool and took the box off the ceiling. I got the broom and waved it around over my head in circles not sure if I was trying to smother the deadly box in smoke-free air or expressing the inner Quixotic helplessness of the handicapped in an emergency. I wheeled back and forth riding my broken backed Rosinante waving my lance at the offending voice still screaming “FIRE!” at the top of her artificial lung. Layne couldn’t detach the box from the wires that powered it and I couldn’t articulate to her how to do it. Between us we deserved to be burned to a crisp for sheer incompetence and ineffectual bleating in the face of that voice which now sounded more like a command than a warning. “FIRE!”

With the back up battery removed I got to the fuse box almost set too high for a cripple to reach. I flipped switches, slowly at first but in an increasing frenzy. Finally she shut up. “F—-“ and as I slumped on my Rosinante I supplied the requisite Anglo-Saxon expletive to complete the phrase.

Dinner was a subdued affair. Rusty had restreated to the bed, easily able to resist joining in the fun and chaos at the front door. Layne and I ate pasta with untoasted bread glancing at each other as though we were the guilty survivors of some secret yet deeply immoral disaster. I announced I had better call my colleagues at work. Chelsea answered. Umm I said, have you got a call yet from a fire alarm company? No she said. Well I said if you do you can disregard. Oh she said clearly begging for details. I could hear the Fire Captain’s call so often over the radio announcing with a tired tone to his voice “Outdoor grill, Key West.”  I, answering the fire radio as “Key West” would grin as I acknowledged and made the appropriate notation in the fire call. “Ten Four Engine Nine. Ten Nineteen.” I pictured the homeowners prostrate with embarrassment as the firefighters clumped away from the source of the smoke. False alarm secure. “Okay” Chelsea said and I could hear them all laughing. “Burnt garlic bread, copy. We’ll handle it if they call for your address. We can spare Layne the embarrassment,”  and I thought to myself Don Quixote would be totally immune to embarrassment. I am not even up to his standards. So instead I poured myself a jigger of Ron Zacapa and called it a night.

Odd Man In

Robert came by with cheeseburgers and with that we opened the Outback bags and I tore into my share of meat and salad. People ask where locals eat in Key West and they think I’m being a smartass when I say “Outback.” That I am a smart backside doesn’t alter that fact that it’s true. The food is reliably and affordably good, the atmosphere is woody and bracingly busy, service is fast and efficient yet not intrusive.  It doesn’t mean I eat there every day but Outback is a great fallback position when seeking simple desirable food and you don’t cook. I love to wash dishes, truly, because I like order and efficiency, but cooking is not what you want me to be doing. I am impatient and tend to keep burners on “incinerate” until they accomplish the task. That or I cook on low and get bored and look for something to wash and put away. In fact I drive my wife mad seeking out things to clean when she’s doing intricate cooking that I am banned from the kitchen.  Rusty gets to hang with her but I have to retreat to the deck with a gin and tonic and ignore the smells.

Thanksgiving is the holiday we all love. Canadians love it so much they celebrate in October to avoid being frozen in situ by their igloo-building weather. My European family is fascinated by the national outpouring of emotional thanks. Typical juvenile North American public display of affection they sniff. But you know what? I detect an undercurrent of envy when they talk about an entire country taking the time to put down tools and give thanks. And they should be jealous. We can’t celebrate May First because that would be communist so we do Labor Day, and we can’t do time changes with the rest of the world and  thus cleverly give ourselves two weeks a year of extra daylight (of which I approve). But we do Thanksgiving. And we are the best at it. I love Thanksgiving. 

I have no interest in listing all those things for which I am grateful. I mean to say there are things and people that are obvious and therefore tedious to list.  If you ask me at table to say for what I am grateful I would much rather surprise you. If I replied that I am grateful to have been born into the top ten percent of the planet’s wealthiest would I offend you? That being the case you couldn’t say you knew me very well.  My wife and Rusty and surviving my accident are obvious enough aren’t they?  I am grateful for my accident.  Gasp.  Come on now, you know why. The ruin of my lower body has brought you all out of the woodwork. You had nothing to lose so you came out from behind the emotional barricades I had built around Key West Diary and told me you were worried about me.  Guess what? No chasms opened and swallowed me and I didn’t wake up with horns on my head. Instead I got tons of heartfelt messages of support from hundreds of people here and on Facebook. Wasn’t that a surprise? So if I say I’m grateful for you lot this Thursday you know what I mean and I don’t have to explain why I’m not listing all the usual suspects. I may have had a reawakening but I decline  to sink into boredom and normalcy. I reserve the right to be myself. 

I hope you have reasons to be grateful and if you are in one of those holes where it’s hard to think of anything good, you know you have my sympathy. I don’t suffer from depression and my health aside from this little problem, can only be described as robust.  The way old people used to nag on about good health being the only thing that matters has become paramount indeed in my 61st year! I expect I will have to work a few more years to sort out our share   of the bills and allow us to retire without worries. And I’m okay with that. My wife will retire in 2021 so I will get splendid care as I go to work and come home to a spotless house! If money has you feeling ungrateful this year I can tell you I have celebrated all my birthdays with the thought at the back of my mind that at least I didn’t go bankrupt that year. I have never had a facility with money, easy come easy go is my financial lifestyle. But I hope you like me have a treasure trove of memories. It’s what money and work are for. And doing some good when you can. 

Yes I’m lucky and I’m grateful for my good luck. I hope you can be thankful this year and if your Thanksgiving looks crappy you can easily use me. At least I’m not Conchscooter you can say to yourself as you spoon tinned cranberries into your gruel. 

Yeah. These few weeks have had their moments for sure. Happy Thanksgiving!

Water Into Wine

It wasn’t Cana, rather it was the Lower Keys, but it was a wedding to which I was invited and glad I was to go, not only to get out but also to make happy some friends who have been very, very good to my wife and caregiver in these difficult weeks past. However Paolo Veronese (“Paul from Verona”) and St John the Evangelist came to mind to one educated at Hogwarts such as myself. 

The weather as we shall see was less benign than that shown in the 1562 depiction of the seminal event in Jesus’ brief but drama filled life. He saved the day at Cana in the second chapter of St John’s gospel:

5 His mother said to the servers, "Do whatever he tells you."  6 Now there were six stone water jars there for Jewish ceremonial washings, each holding twenty to thirty gallons. 7 Jesus told them, "Fill the jars with water." So they filled them to the brim.  8 Then he told them, "Draw some out now and take it to the headwaiter." So they took it.  9 And when the headwaiter tasted the water that had become wine, without knowing where it came from (although the servers who had drawn the water knew), the headwaiter called the bridegroom  10 and said to him, "Everyone serves good wine first, and then when people have drunk freely, an inferior one; but you have kept the good wine until now."  11 Jesus did this as the beginning of his signs in Cana in Galilee and so revealed his glory, and his disciples began to believe in him.

I don’t think the Benedictine monks who educated me would have given me passing grades were my intent here to claim miraculous powers or to put myself on the Savior’s pedestal but as I arrived at the wedding and my wife parked the car on the cement strip reserved for the handicapped I could see the guests eyeing us up to make sure we qualified. I tried to take their glances with the serenity Jesus surely would have employed. Rusty could have come to add to the cheerful confusion but he doesn’t like crowds so his place on the back seat was replaced by my walker waiting to be deployed but first my wife struggled to get the chair out of the trunk. I pulled my legs out of the car and pivoted into my wheelchair.  Oh yes, I qualify for handicapped parking. 

I wheeled myself over to the reception area where we had to put on flower leis to denote membership in the wedding party. Alcohol was next but in an effort to be good I went non alcoholic which only choice was a glass of water. Jolly good. Very refreshing. The event was on the ground floor of the restaurant, and much of the ground was covered in sand with open air tables crammed into cement  in between the stilts which supported the main restaurant upstairs. The tables were those irritating high stool height which, even when you stand seem mountainously tall. In a wheelchair they were barely at eye level. 

My path through was on the scale of a tank division penetrating the Ardennes forest as guests chairs and belongings were swept aside for the mechanized advance to the bar at the back which gave the only solid surface access to the wedding area which was in a sand pit. They did the wedding itself in mime which was lucky as the soundtrack at the bar was rollicking reggae which I rather enjoyed. 

The weather looked non cooperating from a Floridian perspective with gray clouds and wind and threats of rain but if you were visiting from New England the 76 degree afternoon probably looked heavenly, snow and humidity free. 

Weddings are about one thing and even though it was done in mime from a distance I got the idea from the distant handicapped gallery. “...in sickness and in health...till death do us part.” The usual. Then the miracle happened. My wife brought me a glass of non alcoholic water and -lo and behold!-  it was wine. I threw caution to the wind and I supped. Food was uncovered and a plate of chicken wings traveled across inaccessible sand and appeared on my wheelchair accessible cement pad. I ate, loaves and fishes style, dunno where it came from. 

We were part of a small contingent of locals, the visible proof of the parents’ migration to lower latitudes and for that reason I was glad to be there. However it was awkward. Aside from the spaces which required flexibility the simple greeting “How are you?” generated momentary awkwardness as the stranger suddenly noticed I was in a chair and thus unlikely in their estimation to be doing great. I’m fine thanks. Even though you, you great strapping thing are looking down at me huddled between my wheels...it is possible to be handicapped and doing fine at the same time. But youth has its limitations. 

The photographer fell into conversation with me by accident.  Turns out his grandmother broke her pelvis in her 90s and she still likes to garden. We chatted about my experiences in the hospital and his grand mother’s trials. I told the usual jokes about rehab and recovery and I felt a slight bond until I overheard him repeating the story to his wife with wonder in  his voice as though no one in a chair should be capable of making light of his situation. People surprise me. It’s not all blood and guts as you recover sometimes you laugh. Being alive feels pretty good even through rehab.  I missed the comfort of familiarity. I missed Encompass Health.  There I’ve said it.  We were all in wheelchairs. 

The staff were massively helpful and got the empty chair back to the car while I tonked my way back through the Ardennes forest of high chairs using my walker. It caused some distraction as kind people leapt like scalded cats as they noticed the cripple approaching. 

I did my duty. I drank I ate I witnessed the public commitment.  I went out in public a cripple and survived the apartness. I do it again on Thursday at a gathering of people to feast. This has to get easier.