Bags of Time

Among the books given to me is a slim volume of poetry I can dip into as the mood strikes, The Rain in Portugal by Billy Collins. I enjoy poetry by an eclectic bunch of writers from Robert Browning to Wilfred Owen to Billy Collins and then I get sideswiped by a completely different voice like Wendell Berry, and my sister turned me on to Seamus Heaney. Anyway I was wandering through Google wondering and I came across another of Collins’ shaggy dog stories which struck a chord. The first dog poem of his I read was called Another Reason Why I Don’t Keep A Gun In The House and it made me laugh out loud in a bookstore so I felt obliged to buy the book.  I like to think that all the irritants listed here by the poet are spared my boy, seen here being walked by my wife on a visit to my rehab in the background. 

Anyway here’s Collins’ dog poem: 

The Revenant

I am the dog you put to sleep,

as you like to call the needle of oblivion,

come back to tell you this simple thing:

I never like you -- not even one bit.

When I licked your face,

I thought of biting off your nose.

When I watched you toweling yourself dry,

I wanted to leap up and unman you with one snap.

I resented the way you moved,

your lack of animal grace,

the way you would sit in a chair to eat,

a napkin in your lap, knife in your hand.

I would have run away,

but I was too weak, a trick you taught me

while I was learning to sit and heel,

and -- greatest of insults -- shake hands without a hand.

I admit the sight of the leash

would excite me

but only because it meant I was about

to smell things you had never touched.

You do not want to believe this,

but I have no reason to lie.
I hated the car, the rubber toys,

disliked your friends and, worse, your relatives.

The jingling of my tags drove me mad.

You always scratched me in the wrong place.

All I ever wanted from you

was food and fresh water in my metal bowls.

While you slept, I watched you breathe

as the moon rose in the sky.

It took all of my strength

not to raise my head and howl.

Now I am free of the collar,

the yellow raincoat, the monogrammed sweater,

the absurdity of your lawn,

and that is all you need to know about this place

except what you already supposed

and are glad it did not happen sooner --

that everyone here can read and write,

the dogs in poetry, the cats and the others in prose.

I would then thank you all for listening so politely and patiently. And I would profusely thank Billy Collins for the poems I love, but could not possibly have written.

Ambling

I walked yesterday. I climbed stairs yesterday. Yesterday I was a bipedal human being. To say I walked as you walk would be a distortion, dare I say a lie.  But I chased a walker frame down the corridor. Yanuel held my gait belt from behind and towed my emergency docking station behind us for those moments when Major Tom needed a rest and plunked his ass down in the midst of his exertions. Space exploration was never as tough as discovering the limits of your atrophied leg muscles.  I walked. “Walker, left foot, right foot (weight on hands), lock leg. Walker, left foot...” Stop hunching your shoulders Yanuel said gently, a tone far removed from the absent Eddy’s stertorian bark. Put weight on your left heel. You can do that now it’s weight bearing. 

When the surgeon checked my X-rays and said fifty percent weight bearing on Wednesday a new world of mobility opened up. No longer hopping, no longer toe tapping with my left, I could walk. I went back to bed utterly worn out by nine hours in the chair and worried to think a nine hour day destroyed me. Yes I walk, yes I’m up and about, but no it’s not like you the able bodied. It’s a facsimile. This was how I stumbled October 12th with two hands on my gait belt and two experienced therapists Elias (left) and Eddy (pink) poised to catch my lumpish body from my failing legs. 

Yesterday Yanuel put his hand on my gait belt as required by protocol but I walked, not smoothly, not fast but unaided. I was in a hot sweat after twenty minutes march from one gym down the corridor to the other. I met Donald along the way walking to the tune of his own drummer, white hair in his seventies and well back from near death like me. He said his neuro therapist told him to use word association to remember names. Michael Row Your Boat was his way of remembering mine. Donald Duck I said to him. Screw you he rasped I’m going to have to think of something else he said for word association.  He took off down the corridor far outpacing me. As he prepared to turn into the gym he called back “See how it’s done?”  “Quack” I replied. The therapists collapsed with laughter. Fuck you Mickey he called over his shoulder. October 4th learning to stay upright in the chair gait belt at the ready in case of slippage. 

Donald grinned at me as I stumbled into the gym and sank gratefully into my waiting chair behind me. Good job he said and I knew he meant it. We’ve been through hell and we know what it’s like.  But hell was far from over. Yanuel handed me over to Tahina. Steps she said.  I have spent weeks watching patients enviously as they climb the three steps of the hydraulic staircase in the middle of the gym. I’ve seen them stumble as they concentrate, I’ve seen them get stuck turning at the top. I’ve envied them.  My turn one day I said. 

Continuing the sack of potatoes theme here we have Major  Tom space walking back towards his wheeled seat docked alongside the mountain. But no, Tahina said, back up and around I went up and down five times. Good leg leads UP to heaven she said, bad leg leads DOWN to hell she added. And that’s how I did it. Not gracefully or with confidence but hauling myself like the cripple I am with strong shoulders and arms. I walked stairs.

The car next time. Walking and walking and pivoting and getting up and sitting down and building stamina and not falling. It’s my job. I am a lucky sack of potatoes. Spare me a thought as you get up, walk, stumble and keep going and get irritated as my friend Webb did when he forgot something on the far side of the supermarket and he had to walk back. Once he and I strolled together.  We shall again. 

Look at him go.  I should be so lucky.  I will be so lucky again one day. 

Stepping Out

I am closing in on the end of my time in rehab.  Next week I should have my departure date which I am guessing will be around November 12th. Yesterday I was in the surgeon’s office where Doctor Quinnan studied my X-rays and pronounced my bones are regenerating and healing nicely. 

He said I can have fifty percent weight bearing on my left foot which means I can walk properly now with a walker supporting my left leg using my considerable upper body strength. No more hopping thank God. Now I learn how to manage increasing the strength in my legs which have been inert for months and then I learn how to handle myself, my wheelchair, and my walker in banal daily activities.  A great deal of handling going on here. 

I spent all day in the wheelchair and got back to my room grumpy ready for a nap. I was exhausted which in turn forced me to ask myself how will I cope with daily demands if this is all the stamina I have?  However the sensible voice in my head told me to take it one day at a time. Yesterday was also my birthday and I was flooded with cards and electronic messages. It was delightful and moving to turn 61. Many of you have appeared not in person but as personalities in my life through this crisis and it is one of the great good things near death has brought me. I try not to think too hard about how important this page is to so many of you because if I do I start down that route I will suffer analysis paralysis. 

I have to say I really like Publix bakery and they make a mean chocolate cake but I felt like carrot cake for some reason so my wife, and Publix, came through. Apparently the nurse’s station agreed it was delicious as they weighed in and polished it off. I am lucky to be served by a bunch of really nice people in this place. I am astounded by the joy and compassion displayed by the staff everyday. I feel cocooned by them.

I was hoping to drive Sosa crazy with a Rubik’s cube I was sent. I scrambled my brains on it  for a while and then offered it to him. He went mildly nuts wandering the halls fiddling with it between rooms and came back a couple of hours later defeated. Keep it I said, until you get it done. He flashed a glare at me and went outside to smoke and calm his nerves.

My wife brought me birthday greetings from her class. Apparently she “sure does miss me” so I wonder how much time the students can score deviating her mind from the class subject matter in hand to pondering my situation. We used that technique when I was a student: get the teacher off course wasting time on a favorite subject of hers to avoid giving the rest of us a test...glad to be of service students! 

The details of what I work on next in therapy, when I leave this place, how I cope in Key West and what work will feel like when I go back part time December 1st...all of that is uncertain. But I am not concerning myself with all the uncertainty at this point.  I am here, I am alive, and I am learning and all that feels great. As you all have shown me in this process, it will all come out in the end. Thanks for following along. 

A PS to Andrew from Seattle who sent a card recalling our chance meeting in the Dry Tortugas years ago. It was lovely to hear from you and yes I still recall that time fondly as does Layne. Thank you for the card. Much appreciated. 

Laughter

I was given a compendium of funny stories from the Reader’s Digest and if you are as old as I you will remember the words “Laughter-The Best Medecine.”  I have found lots to laugh at in rehab but lately I have found myself the old timer in the gyms. People who were here previously are gone and I see new faces and a new set of challenges to start conversations. Sitting at the table yesterday I saw one dude I knew and we fell to talking.  The guy on my right I didn’t know but he seemed affable enough. 

In rehab conversation follows predictable paths. Where are you from what are you in for, asked with circumspection or hinted at as not everyone wants to reveal all.  Yesterday the guy said he was in rehab following a kidney transplant. Whoa! Weird! Apparently a nerve to his leg got severed and he needs to learn to walk again. Not very funny so far, right?  So I asked does a transplant hurt? ( I like to know this stuff and rehab generally is a great opportunity to ask). No he said.  Not being able to piss hurt like a...and dialysis sucked. The transplant didn’t. They have all those drugs. Oh yes I said remembering my own surgeries. I love Dilaudid, fantastic stuff. Yeah he said until it blocks your gut. 

Now it is said, and I know this from experience that if you put two sailors in a bar sooner or later the conversation turns to toilets. In my new experience here I have found patients in rehab frequently weave the same course. The kidney transplant and I both got the dreaded Ileus (“ill-eh-ooss”) when the painkillers after surgery paralyze the bowel. We compared notes on our blocked bowels shaking our heads sadly.  My sister in law the doctor I said,  recommended prune juice. I tried it and at two in the morning the dam burst and I went into details which got all three of us laughing our heads off. Trust me, part of the relief from misery is knowing it is shared. Floating helpless in a bed of diarrhea is only part of the joke. 

That’s nothing the kidney transplant said. I got a rubber hose up my butt and a second guy in the corridor pumping a water barrel. Every time my nurse yelled “now!” I got hosed. By now all three of us were thumping the table with tears running down our faces. Did it work?  I gasped straining to catch my breath. Not entirely he said and I shall spare you the details. We frantically sucked air trying to compose ourselves. What a shitty day the transplant patient said shaking his head at the memory then he realized what he had said which set us all off again. 

You’ve had enough fun Elias said as he broke up the trio by pulling my chair back and wheeling me off to the rowing machine. Later I was sitting opposite a grumpy looking guy lifting his weights.  You’re the one from Key West he said. Yes I said wondering what rumor  the  mill had started. You’re all weird down there he said. Guilty as charged I replied but the great thing is if I’m weird I’m as nothing compared to the guy roller skating down the street behind me in a pink tutu and fairy wings. He looked about ready to choke. There’s always a bright side I said. And he stayed grumpy even though I never mentioned fecal matter once.  Some people are just like that.

Reaching Out

Try this experiment. Put a cup of something you like to drink on one side of a table. Walk to the other side and pull up a chair. Sit at the table and push the chair as close to the table as it will go. Now reach for the cup. 

Welcome to the world of rehab where broken people get put back together. As we wait to restore function we try to move among the places and objects familiar to all of us, rendered unfamiliar by some shortcoming. If you offer someone in a wheelchair an object for pity’s sake make sure it’s within reach.  The obligation on the person in the chair is to be patient. Especially when training the able bodied. 

For me to be able to define what it means to be in a wheelchair is a bit of a stretch as only two months out of my last sixty years have been viewed from this different perspective. Every indication is that within a few months I will be able to ditch the chair entirely and resume perambulation. Lucky me as not everyone gets to ditch the chair. I come to the chair with less experience than many but with the wide eyed gaze of one who actually lives the limitations. This photo below is from the bad old days, a month ago when my leg was held in a brace that I likened to a sheep carcass gripping my limb.  I would never allow myself to go out of my room in bare feet today. Live and learn.

People used to be described as being “confined to a wheelchair.” Such language is  now considered archaic and we lucky people simply “use” wheelchairs. Nevertheless it is confining. If I drop something on the floor my only hope of picking it up is by use of my grabbers. 

If I lean forward I risk going arse over tip and landing on my head. So it is that I have got pretty good at grabbing stuff with my claw extension. The other big issue that arises in this context is offering help. It took a while for me to establish that if I want help I’ll ask. I know I’m slow but it’s good for me to try and then to succeed. When I can’t reach I pull out my grabber and as soon as the stick appears the offers of help flood in. If I drop something I will need help, otherwise I’ll let you know. 

It’s a social minefield. To me in my room with my habits the process is obvious but for someone towering over me on their feet it’s anything but. When I get back to my room after physical therapy I like to sit in my chair before going back to bed. I tidy up rolling around with my grabber picking up and sorting stuff out.  I go through my mail which thanks to you all is abundant and much appreciated: 

I check the next day’s menu and I skip salads as I don’t much like them here to be honest - I’ve developed a taste for exotic dressings. The rest of the grub is okay for one such as me who grew up in institutions. 

When it’s time to lie down I have to make sure my bed is flat and low and three of the four side gates are up to prevent me accidentally falling out. Of all the things I dread  an unintended return to ICU is high on my list. So with my bed ready, the blanket is easily accessible by the head of the bed and my all important table nearby I line the chair up, put my plank across and slide into the bed. I wiggle like a maniac and get my shorts off, pull myself to the head of the bed and rest.  If I forget to take my shorts off the crisis arises when I need to pee and they are slow to get down when you are rolling from side to side. Then I use my grabber to push the wheelchair away and then I reach out from the prone position and pull the table in. Finally I cover myself with my blanket. All this to get into bed unassisted. In this picture below the bed needs to be flat. The blanket is in position. The plank is ready but my table needs to be near the bed head. The sheet needs to be laid out lengthwise as I can’t reach forward to pull it up from the foot of the bed. I’m telling you it’s a production. 

The table on rollers is critical. It contains my snacks, drinking water, napkins, books, and above all my urinals and hand soap on a separate area. If I forget the bottles I can’t pee and I’ll have to call for help. Sometimes they get left behind in the bathroom and it’s a race against time if the nurse’s aide will reach me before I have to let go. Wetting the bed this far along really aggravates me. If I forget anything in the sequence before I get in bed I’m screwed. Getting out of bed is impossible as the chair is now out of reach. If I leave the chair alongside I can’t reach the table. If I put the table next to the window the space is too narrow to swivel it. On and on. 

My wife to her credit is a fast learner and has been looking at my room through my eyes. Automatically she stands in front of me as I transfer from chair to bed to catch me in a fall. She knows where to put chair and table when I’m in bed and so forth. When she spends the night I am more relaxed as she will be right there if I forgot something. But that’s how you live everyday when you don’t have the full use of your legs. Every step considered and planned for. My friend Webb the sailor would understand because that’s how you cope single handing a sailboat. So now: when you hand me a cup of tea where do you put it? Within reach is the correct answer.

My Buddy

I would never have believed it but my wife insists it’s true. She says as soon as she pulled into the rehab hospital’s parking  lot Rusty started to whimper and wag his tail. He hadn’t been up in two weeks but on this his third visit he hadn’t forgotten where exactly I am incarcerated. 

My wife takes him for walks and he comes running back to me and reaches up over the bed rail to tell me all about it. 

He bothers no one, never tries to run out of the room and makes not a sound. Most of the staff love him. 

We move his bed around as he chooses. 

He loves grass and my great regret is we lack thick lawns in most areas of the Keys. Up here he takes advantage. 

Layne’s sister is in town for a visit.