Moving Forward in Reverse (6 page)

It was sometime after breakfast but before my morning training
with Kathy and Helen that Dr. Molin came into my room

‘Hey, Doc!’ I called out in greeting. Just as my reputation among
the staff had progressed, my relationship with Dr. Molin had developed into a
sort of brotherhood. We spoke regularly and freely, and I greatly appreciated
his candor. When turbulence was ahead, I could always count on Doc Molin to
keep me abreast of it. That morning would prove no different.

‘What’s happenin’?’ he replied, walking to my bedside and cuffing
me not-so-gently on the shoulder. I grinned and rolled my shoulder into his
clout to reduce the impact.

‘Eh, you know, just the usual excitement: changing channels,
turning pages, eating hospital food. What else is new?’

Chuckling, he reached for my left arm and held it in his hand.
Slowly, he rotated my arm as far as my shoulder and elbow sockets would allow,
studying the ace bandage wrapped around its end. After a moment of silent
contemplation, he set my arm back on the bed and said, ‘Well, how about we take
these bandages off? Is that new enough for you?’

‘What, you mean remove them for good?’ I had been through a few
bandage-changings since entering Rehab and for the most part they’d become old
news – just another facet of the routine.

He nodded.

‘Go for it! I could use a good scratch under there.’ He smirked,
but as he began removing first the white tape securing the ace bandage, then
the bandage itself, and finally the gauze underneath, the smile slowly faded.
We were both quiet as Dr. Molin exposed the ends of my arms. What kept him
silent, I could only guess; for me, it was fear.

This was it: the last time my arms would be bandaged. Before, each
time they’d been removed for cleaning and inspection, it had been like watching
a car wreck unfold. Dreading to look because I didn’t want the images of my
crippled, unhealed arms in my mind but unable to turn away. Like a child
watching a horror movie or a patient receiving a shot, I had peered at what was
happening through narrowed eyes with my head twisted to one side:
Maybe if I
just don’t look directly at it the shock won’t hurt so badly.

But it had hurt. Seeing my arms – what was left of my mauled and
mutilated arms – had shaken me into disbelief. Somehow, even though I’d known
half of each forearm and both of my hands were gone, not seeing it in its
entirety had been a sort of security blanket. It was as if nothing was set in
stone just yet; I still had to heal and maybe once the healing was done they
would look better, less like discolored stumps and more like arms.

Each time my arms had been re-bandaged, I’d sighed with quiet
relief. I could file the images of what I’d seen in a box labeled ‘Deal With
Later’ and tuck it back into the recesses of my mind. But this time I’d be left
with my fully-exposed, marred arms; left to see them for what they were. No
more palliative fantasies about miraculous healing or the prospects of change.
This was reality: finite and irrevocable.

Dr. Molin uncovered the left arm first; perhaps as an act of
grace. Underneath the tape, bandage, and gauze was a cleanly severed limb. They
had amputated my left arm in the middle of my forearm and done a nice job as
far as I could tell because the end was smooth and well-mended. I lifted it
towards my face and forced my unwilling eyes to focus on its image. My skin was
back to its normal beige tone (no longer bluish-black or nauseating yellow) and
the sutures were gone, leaving a smooth, white seam in their place.

He clumped the gauze and bandage together and dropped it at the
end of my bed as he walked to my other side. My right arm was a half inch
shorter than my left and not sewn together as tightly. I swallowed the bile
rising in my throat as I studied the excess skin puckering at the end of my
arm. Lifting the right as I had the left, I brought the wound to eye height and
stared at it, studying the ridges and crinkled skin of scar tissue that
bisected the end into top and bottom. My mind revolted at the sight. I could
feel my subconscious trying to block out the image.

Hideous.

‘Everything’s healed nicely,’ Dr. Molin said, his voice calling to
me from somewhere far off. I closed my eyes briefly and let my right arm fall
back to the sheets.

‘It looks like they considered the possibility of myoelectric
hands during the amputations because of the amount of muscle tissue left
intact,’ he went on. I listened without really hearing at first. His voice came
to me like an echo in the shock of my grief.

As if sensing my distance, he added in a firm, definitive tone,
‘That’s good news, Scott.’ I looked at him and nodded. He wanted to instill
hope for the future in me, but I was still grappling with the consequences of
the past. Besides, I didn’t even know what my-o-whatever hands were.

‘Have you heard of myoelectric hands?’ I blinked, a little taken
aback by his semblant ability to read my mind.

‘No. Are they like the hooks?’ I asked, grimacing. There were no
words for the dread that encompassed me at the thought of those Captain
Hook-inspired contraptions.

‘Much, much better.’ He grinned. ‘Myoelectric prostheses use
electromyography signals to control the motion of the prosthesis.
Whenever  you open or close your hand, for instance –’ he demonstrated by
opening and closing each of his as I tried not to let my mind follow the dark
hole watching him use his hands wanted to lead me down – ‘electrical signals
are sent through the contracted muscles of your forearms. Typically, those
signals travel down your forearm to your hands to tell them what to do.’ He ran
a hand along the length of his forearm as if tracing the path of the signals he
was talking about.

‘The myos have specially designed sensors which can read those
signals off the surface of your skin and translate them to the electric hands.
No straps or cables. And the best part is you’d have hands instead of hooks.’
He paused and looked at me for a while.
An alternative to the hooks?
I
didn’t care if I only got three of five fingers, it’d still be better than
none.

‘The downside is just one of those things costs about as much as a
new car.’ I winced.
A new car? Each?
And I’d need two. How could I
afford that? ‘You should look into how much your insurance is willing to cover
and consider it. Not everyone has this option, you know.’

I nodded. I did know: It was a gift from the surgeons who’d saved
my life and I wanted to accept it. My brother Rick worked as an insurance
agent.
I could ask him to look into making the cost of the myos acceptable
to my insurance company
, I thought. A flicker of hope was beginning to take
shape and it scared the living daylights out of me. If this went South. . .

I pursed my lips. I couldn’t afford to be crushed. Not again.

‘In the meantime, the prosthetist will be by in two days to cast
you for the hooks.’

Out blew out my little flame of optimism.

Gathering up the bandages, he said, ‘Stay strong, man,’ and left
me to my thoughts.

~~~

Two days came much too soon. I spent the morning of the casting
lost in my own dour mind. I didn’t want the hooks, yet, or the reality they
signified. Even with the potential of the myos down the road, I couldn’t come
to terms with the fact that I needed prosthetics. In the same way that seeing
my arms un-bandaged forced me to confront the fact that three-quarters of an
arm was all I had left, donning prosthetics would mean facing the true
consequences of my amputations. I would be one of “those” people you saw on the
street: part human, part robot. The kind of people you gave a slightly
wider-than-necessary berth to as if amputation were a contagious disease; whom
you would lie to and say you hadn’t even noticed the prosthetic hand or missing
leg while inside you were cringing at the mere mention of such things. No one
liked to face reality when it came to prosthetics because the reality was it
could happen to anyone. It had happened to me.

The prosthetist was an older gentleman who had clearly moved past
the emotional side of his job long before meeting me. He was very
matter-of-fact and did little talking other than explaining how to place my
arms for the casting.

I was thankful for his silence, as I’m sure he was aware. While he
positioned my arms and wrapped them to just above my elbow in the plaster
casting material, I stared dejectedly out the window. I wanted no part in this
process, necessary as it might be. I preferred the image of the outside world –
the world unaffected by my paltry existence – and thought of nothing; felt
nothing.

The entire process took less than thirty minutes. By the time the
plaster had dried enough for the prosthetist to use a Dremel tool to slice each
molded cast from my arm, I had managed to detach myself from the present just
as cleanly. I watched him pack his things and heard him say his good-bye, but I
wasn’t cognizant enough to register any of it until long after he had slipped
from my room.

I would recover from that withdrawal. Life would go on and I would
persist in my recovery, strengthening what I could and learning to cope with
what I couldn’t. For the brief respite between casting and fitting, thoughts of
the hooks would again fade to the background where I’d allow myself to box them
up and think exclusively of simpler things. Unfortunately, like all reprieves
this one, too, came to an end. It was a meager week later when I was forced to
confront the things I’d been avoiding in an onslaught of trepidation.

He came shortly after the breakfast dishes had been cleared while
I was resting contentedly with my USA Today spread on the bed table before me.
I hadn’t been expecting him, so I turned to the motion of someone at the door
with a welcoming smile spreading across my mouth. After breakfast was always my
first training session with Kathy.

You’re early,
I’d been about to quip.
Go away until I’ve finished digesting.

When my eyes lighted on the same elderly prosthetist who had done
the casting, though, the words froze on my tongue.

‘Good morning, Scott,’ he called in greeting, his voice breathy
and bland. I tried to swallow the loathing that was overtaking my mood. It was
unfair to hate the messenger, I knew, but I had to direct my abhorrence
somewhere. And this particular messenger came baring the future bane of my
existence.

I eyed the mechanical contraptions he toted as he walked to the
right side of my bed and muttered a half-hearted greeting in reply. He laid the
hooks at my feet and I fought the urge to kick them from the bed. Instead, I
stared them down, studying the cylindrical tube which would be my new forearm
and the shining, claw-like hooks which would be my new hands. My heart sank
like a leaden weight, plummeting to the pit of my stomach faster than a hawk in
dive.

‘Mind if I move the table away?’ the prosthetist asked, still with
that banally pleasant tone. I nodded once and gestured with my right arm in a
sweeping motion as I turned away from the hooks at my feet.

He swung the table to the side, wheeling it far enough from the
bed for him to move between it and the side rail.

‘Do you have a T-shirt with you?’ he asked next. I motioned to the
closet to my left. As he made his way across the room, all I could think was
how I didn’t want to be there – didn’t want him to be there.
Please, just go
away.

When he returned to my bed he was holding the freshly washed,
royal blue Nike tee I’d been wearing the day I began feeling sick. I could
barely remember the Scott who had worn that shirt anymore; the Scott who had
led such a hopeful, happy life; the Scott who had no reason to fear the
prostheses currently at my feet. What I wouldn’t give to have some of his
blissful ignorance with me now.

But I was older and wiser than he had been. Circumstances had
rendered me a new man and this Scott couldn’t hide from the consequences of the
hooks.

‘Go ahead and remove the hospital gown above your waist and put
this on for me, Scott.’ I nodded glumly and followed his instructions, shrugging
my arms out of the gown and letting the top portion of it fall to my lap. He
held the shirt out for me to take.

When I didn’t reach for the tee as he’d expected, he saw his error
and a pink blush rose up his throat. He brought the shirt to me and laid it
face down on my lap. It was the first time I had tried to dress without
assistance, but I wasn’t about to share that fact with him.

I carefully slid my arms into the sleeves, lifted the shirt up to
my head as I sat up and let it fall over my face. On any other day this feat
would have been met with a surge of pride. Today, I simply looked to him with a
blank expression, waiting apathetically to see what would come next.

He walked back to my right side and grabbed one of the prostheses
by the wrist. Two loops of white straps were strung between the limbs, lacing
through a metal ring at the center. He placed the straps over my shoulders and
across my back so they formed an X with the metal ring situated between my
shoulder blades just below the base of my neck.