Nightmares And Dreams

Have you ever had a dream where you imagine yourself peeing and you wake up bursting to go so you leap out of bed...Yeah well that’s where the dream turns to a nightmare when you’re a lump in bed and you fumble for the piss bottle and it drops to the floor and as you reach for the spare that delightful feeling of warm wet invades the bed.  Oh joy. A sixty year old man wet himself. So you call for help which is not forthcoming and distract yourself with Facebook trying to lie in the drier parts of the mushy bed. 

I found a cheerful message from Giovanna which I shall have to translate for you. It could have been taken the wrong way for my situation this morning but as always she made me feel good out of nowhere. “I needed a smile so I thought of you.”  Between my wife and all my other cheerleaders what more could I want in life? 

Reno June 1981 shortly after we met in the California desert...I threw her stuff on the Vespa and off we went looking for adventure. We found it all right and we still laugh about those years. So as I lay in bed feeling sorry for myself those memories kept me smiling, thanks to Giovanna after all these years. Luckily I married a sensible adventurer, one who complements me rather than piling on the madness. She keeps my dreams as dreams never allowing them to become nightmares. And she’s coming to see me tonight so my cup overfloweth as it were. 

And at this point the wound is dry and well covered so the moon suit can be left aside. Earlier in the week Michael drove up from Key West just to chat and he is excellent company. His partner was hospitalized a while back so he understands the stresses of what we are going through, that and his sense of humor make him an ideal sick room companion.  

And yesterday Denise came down from Palm Beach on her way to spend Goombay in Key West. I met Denise at Long Key State Beach in 1981 a month before I met Giovanna. I stayed with her in Delray Beach before the Vespa and I took off for Guadalajara. It was my introduction to sunny sandy Florida, living in a group of young counter culture rebels. Fantastic. Gave me a taste for it I never quite lost even after 20 years in California. 

Why Guadalajara next?  I met a Mexican woman in Paris that Spring and after we had breakfast and took pictures at the Sacre Coeur (as you do) she invited me to her place in Central Mexico. Showing up travel worn on a scooter was a shock to their middle class system and it didn’t go so well. So often travel and home are such different realities. But with Denise it has been different; she has authentic curiosity and a true love of people and travel. So here she was brimming with life in my stuffy hospital room. Plus she brought a friend, Thelma a Cuban doctor in exile. 

It turns out Thelma’s son worked in the same hospital in Havana where Jorge worked before he emigrated. Jorge is the sweetest guy you would ever want to meet. Thus when he gives me my daily stomach shot, an anti coagulant, I feel nothing at all as his hands are as light as a butterfly’s wings. A really nice guy, a former anesthesiologist now working as a nurse. One of many such demoted Cuban doctors in our facility. The American dream has its struggles as Ariel a former surgeon said to me as he wiped my butt.

PT & OT

Physical and Occupational therapy is killing me.  I have plenty to say as always. I just need to sleep...When I have the energy I will fill in the words.  Just know I am not dead but working hard to restore myself. 

Elias loves sitting me on the loo:

It’s quarter to nine and Loren will be coming for me soon. 

Eddy pushed hard for me to walk and keep my left foot off the ground.  NO WEIGHT BEARING. 

I can dress myself. Much to Michael Robinson’s amusement. He came from Key West just to chat. Love him of course. 

Check out this slick tool Elias gave me to slide on socks: 

Voilà. Ready for more damned therapy. 

Managing My Stuff

Now that my infected wound is healing I can look back on last week and like rolling your tongue in the gap created by a recently missing tooth, I can think back over my feelings about learning I was infectious. I can think about it over and over, rolling my tongue and feeling the jagged gums and the edges of the hole formerly filled with ivory. It doesn’t do much good but it makes me understand, by force, how anxious I suddenly became. It was thanks to Johann my anxiety fell away. 

Johann is a physician assistant and wound care specialist and he speaks perfect English with a slight German accent. He grew up in Mexico. Intrigued? Me too. He combines elements of human warmth and decency with elements of science and learning to produce the perfect bedside manner. I am on call twenty four hours for you he says but once he has inspected your wound or looked over your chart you don’t need to be bothering him. He arranged my wound care treatment and I am on the path to healing. He monitors the nurses, goes over treatment, smiles shakes my hand and magically I am well. I rest easy. 

I was scared rigid when they said I had MRSA. The medical professionals shrugged it off but I knew the bacterium could do terrible things. And then Ketty, my superb nurse’s aide asked me if I was scared as I lay dying in the road? She knew I wasn’t. So why you scared now she asked with perfect Creole logic flashing her brown eyes at me like a Valkyrie...Because I said.  Because I have time to think? Because I don’t want to be eaten alive by flesh eating bacteria? Because I don’t know why.  You silly she said as she fluffed up my fresh sheets and I wanted to bury my face in her bosom for reassurance. I said nothing as she counseled fortitude. Behave she said smiling and ending the counseling session. 

Time proved Ketty -and Johann- correct. My expectation of a trouble free linear recovery got back on track. And Johann and I have a background in common it turns out weirdly enough. It turns out his Dad was a German engineer who got offered a job with a German company in Mexico. He married a Mexican in the decade he lived in Mexico, but as Johann put it with a wry smile the Mexican way of doing things got to him and he went back to Germany eventually, to the land of on time orderliness.  Johann split his time in two cultures in the same way I grew up with an apparently well ordered British father and an expressive Italian mother. And I suppose in the same way I couldn’t find comfort in one or the other neither could he so we ended up in the land of immigrants, each contributing in our way to mixing up our cultural histories. 

Physical therapy continues apace. I struggle to deal with ten percent weight bearing on my left leg which is attached to the most broken side of my pelvis. My broken right leg remains paradoxically the leg I have to put all my weight on. It’s hard heaving myself upright into the walker, holding my left leg light and flopping on hands and right leg. The more tired I get the less successful I am! But you have to persevere and I’m getting better. 

So much so I sat on a toilet in a test run yesterday, for the first time in six weeks I was on the throne. Felt awesome. And I kept practicing pivoting. Standing on my right leg, taking weight on my hands and swiveling to face a new direction.  Give me time and I will have it down. Just give me time and practice. And give me Johann’s  calm reassurance.

Toilet Training

I got a new wheelchair today which is the equivalent in here to getting a new car out there. Or a new pair of shoes if permabulation is the way you get around. A new wheelchair is a thing of wonder. It’s comfortable light and narrow so it fits everywhere, I can roll it and I can deal with the footrests relatively easily. I love it. 

Here I am smiling because Eddy and Elias are going to show me how to pivot and sit on the toilet. At this stage it’s practice runs but give me a few days and I’ll have it mastered I hope. I am still struggling to walk in the walker without putting weight on my left leg; if I had use of both legs I’d be laughing. 

I got a care package from Sheila in Key West who baked her backside off and made pounds of delicious sweet crumbly cookies. It was a hell of a gift and she made so many I have plenty to use, as she suggested, as bribes. It is a great morale booster. That and the cards and letters.  Glen in Colorado sent me a hand written note on paper and I enjoyed it as much as he anticipated I would. Fran sent me a follow up card and note for display! 

Having to be in isolation is a drag but I am still doing therapy. I put clean clothes on, wash my hands and make sure the dressing on the wound is sealed and I am good to go. And I do. In my new narrow chair I can use the rickshaw with both hands at once. That’s a first: 

You roll up between the handles and push them down while controlling their return. Over and over again. Which gives me strength to hold on to the walker frame as I practice walking on one leg. I sleep at night I exercise by day. I am tired. It feels like a job and I feel lucky to have it. Every day it gets a little easier to imagine a normal life again. Thank God for that. Thank you all for your encouragement, it means the world to me.

A Street Encounter

I met Candace as she meandered past my room on the main drag through the rehab. Because she’s a patient I’ve changed her name and I couldn’t photograph her but our conversation went as written. The main drag, our street:

I was in my room with the door open. Staff comes by and stops by my open doorway, for to come in requires suiting up, and they check up on me. Nurses and aides assigned to other units like to check on my progress and ask after my buddy Mersa, and they know I cheer up when a bright smile and sparkling eyes stops by.  But my net caught an entirely different fish as I sat in isolation lamenting my dearth of visitors. Ketty reluctantly modeling the MRSA protective togs:

A wheelchair came by and she paused outside my door so I said hello and we fell to talking. People like talking about themselves but in here it’s a good tactic too because you never know what agony they have been through unless they tell you. And spilling your fate first can leave you with egg on your face if you ignore protocol and go first and brash. Candace is such a diminutive figure in her outsize colorful bed jacket and tiny stick limbs all surmounted by the usual fluff of curly white lambs wool. Her story is one of iron will. 

The conversation began with an exchange of lamentations, difficulty sleeping, annoyances with the wheelchair, stuff that is the staple of people inside. I can’t walk I tell her with a laugh but it’s coming back. Her feet are in bright yellow physical therapy type socks with rubber strips. She was in an induced coma for two days. Ooh I ask how was it? Did you bypass heaven? No she says sadly I can’t remember a thing. I slept. She has dialysis because her kidneys don’t work so well. But then she has to control how much insulin her nurses give her as they have a tendency to overdo it and that would knock her out.

But it doesn’t end there. Pieces of her foot have had to be amputated. I’ve heard it’s hard to balance with toes missing? She agrees heartily. Very difficult. So she takes her constitutional in a wheelchair. Her husband went home to catch the evening service. I mumble something about Jesus promising not to overload us with burdens we cannot bear. She fired back the full chapter and verse and with an angelic smile and a promise to talk again she rolls slowly, steadily away. Leaving me wondering why the fuss about my pelvis. 

Wound Care

My friend Webb Chiles is sailing down Chesapeake Bay on his world girdling 24 foot Gannet, I am in bed this Sunday morning with a view of the back courtyard bathed in Miami sunshine.  My wife who understands my needs even from afar sent me unsolicited pictures of her life outside, “in the world” doing banalities like walking Rusty and doing Spring Cleaning which I love as I enjoy an uncluttered home. 

Rusty keeps an eye on proceedings from the shade of our utility trailer. 

I awoke from a nap this morning clawing my way out of a suffocation nightmare. The details escape me fortunately as there is nothing so dull as recounting dreams but it reminded me of my mental stress since the accident six weeks ago.  At first I couldn’t sleep because I kept replaying my agony as I fell asleep. Now I can sleep but while awake I have discovered phobias that previously never bothered me...

When watching Netflix I cannot stand seeing death scenes. The sounds of bones crunching set my teeth on edge and I squirm in bed. The sounds of vehicle accidents leave me breathless. All too often I cover my telephone screen and look away. I never had these sensibilities before. I suppose they were inevitable now I have long numb gashes in my legs and across my pelvic area.  I have been broken after 60 years and the pain of being crunched does not need to be brought back to mind. 

I had nightmares about a return to the hospital last week when they told me one of my pelvic incisions had developed the fearsome MRSA bacterium. There was for a day a tussle over treatment but in the end Doxycycline won out and it is beating back the infection. A cream treatment is granulating the necrosis and the wound isn’t oozing particularly badly. Check it out, as this is no holds barred recovery and rehab remember? You’re in this journey with me. 

That’s where they sliced me open six weeks ago to insert a screw to hold the left side of my pelvis together. There are several more cuts where they bolted all sorts of ironmongery into me. The big screw at the top is where the incision got infected. 

I have lots of lumps and numbness I don’t particularly want to explore on my thigh where I broke the femur in two places but my pain comes from the injured leg roughed up during physical therapy. Pain decreases and mobility increases. Lucky me. Wound care happens once a day, the gauze is removed and the wound washed and treated with cream to break up the necrosis, the black dead tissue. Then Serret, the nurse with the gentlest hands covers it up. I enjoy the nurses with the gentlest dispositions and we end up chatting.  

He came to the US in 2006 after a career as a doctor in Cuba. There are nurses and aides all over the place who had full medical careers in Cuba and gave them up to cross the water. I’ve started to recognize their talent in the way they accomplish menial tasks they are allowed to do here. We talked emigration for a while. 

Wound re-covered for 24 hours. No oozing no danger. MRSA be gone. Time for a nap and then some Facebook to take my mind off it. Recovery seemed so uncertain last week dealing with this. This week is better.  Now I wait for Webb to land and send me dispatches from the edge of his experiences.