Moving Forward in Reverse (7 page)

I allowed him to move me with gentle nudges as he needed while I
stared fixedly at the wall before me. As he held each cylinder up for me to
slide my arms into, I felt like a wild Maverick horse being saddled for the
first time. There was a part of me which wanted to rebel against this; to jerk
my arms and shoulders from his grasp and rip the thick straps from my body. I
wanted to lash out at him verbally, yelling for him to get the hell out of my
room and take his damn hooks with him. But a deeper, darker part of me held
fast in the face of my fury. It gradually swelled within me like a black hole,
swallowing other emotions until all that remained of me was a mindless
automaton. The tighter he strapped me in, the more the fight drained out of me
and the greater my numb acceptance of my fate became.

Next, he turned to the wire cables which ran along my shoulders
and down the outside of each new arm. Each cable was threaded through a series
of loops leading from the back of my shoulder to the back of my upper arm near
my triceps. It tracked along my arm to the outside of the prosthetic forearm,
ending at a lever at the base of the hook itself. With my arm resting
comfortably at my side, elbow slightly bent, he adjusted the cables until they
were almost taught.

‘All right,’ he said when he had finished tinkering. I gazed
blankly at the hooks in my lap. ‘So these are called body powered prosthetic
hooks because you use the motion of your shoulder to operate them. If you put
tension on the cable the hook will open.’ He reached over and took hold of the
right prosthetic just above the wrist, forcing me to extend my arm out in front
of me to demonstrate how the motion of my shoulder caused the cable to pull the
hook open, separating it into two antennae-like apparatuses. ‘Release the
tension –’ he had me draw my arm back towards my body so my shoulder relaxed –
‘and the hook closes.’

I watched it all occur with my mind shut off. I couldn’t focus on,
nor care about what he was saying. As emotionally and mentally enervated as I
was, it was all I could do to keep my eyes open for the duration of the
session.

Still holding my left arm in his hand, he continued, ‘So the force
of your shoulder opens them and these rubber bands here keep them closed when
there is no pull on the cable.’ He pointed to a rubber band wrapped around the
base of the hook just above the joint where they opened and closed.

‘You can see there are two separate hooks on each prosthesis which
allows you to grab and hold anything a hand can hold. You can also move the
hooks around and lock them into various positions with this switch here.’ He
pointed to a small knob of the kind you slide to turn a flashlight on or off.
Again he pulled my arm to put tension on the cable and open the hook, this time
sliding the lever to lock the hooks in the open position before allowing me to
return my arm to my side. In a similar fashion, he slid the latch open, let the
hooks close, then rotated them at the wrist so they curved to the side rather
than down and locked them in place.

‘And then to take them off, first open your arms to the side to
relieve the tension on the straps. Then bring your arms up and forward to draw
the straps over your head. Once you’re out of the harness, you can secure one
prosthesis against your lap with the wrist of the other and pull your arm out
of the cylinder.’ He smiled. ‘Easy!’

I nodded. Operating these was going to be anything but easy.

‘Do you have any questions for me, Scott?’ he asked after a pause.

‘No,’ I replied softly.

‘All right, then. I’ll leave you to experiment. It will take some
time, but many patients have had great success with these.’

I nodded again.

‘Okay. Take care, then.’

When he had disappeared down the hall, I pulled the hooks off one
at a time and fumbled them onto my bed table. Part of my interest and love for
soccer was my ability to read a situation and evaluate it from various
perspectives. It was far too easy to read the limitations the hooks would
impose on my life.

Now that I had seen them up-close, I realized with two separate
hooks attached to the end of each prosthetic they more closely resembled the
hands of a tyrannosaurus minus the thumbs than those of Captain Hook. Or the
antennae of an insect when the hooks were curved towards the ground.

Whatever imagery they induced, the fact was they were hooks, not
hands. They simply could not function to the full capacity of human hands. And
I could only imagine how far the limitations would prove to reach.

Would I be able to write? Clearly I’d be relegated to a finger
typist – or rather, a hook typist. What about driving? My manual car would most
likely have to go. Tying shoes was certain to be trying if not impossible. And
that was just the beginning. What negative impact would these bring to my
coaching career?

I’d promised the team I’d see them soon, but who was I kidding? I
was handless and practically footless; I could barely sit up without support,
let alone stand on a field. What kind of a coach couldn’t even stand through an
entire training session? I couldn’t dribble a ball and yet they were supposed
to look to me to teach them. Now that was unfair – unfair to them. I had no
future in soccer.
I should just tell Marilyn Skrivseth (our Athletic
Director) to find someone
else
– or step down and let my assistant
coach take over as the head coach.

As I was in the midst of this downward spiral, Kathy came spinning
into the room. When she stopped at the foot of my bed and realized her antics
hadn’t raised a smile from me, her mouth turned down and eyebrows furrowed in
concern. Her eyes fell on the hooks lying on the table beside my bed and she
nodded quietly.

‘So the prosthetics arrived today.’ She sat on the end of my bed.
‘And you’re not too excited about them.’

‘Not exactly excitement-inspiring.’

‘No,’ she said softly and rested a hand on my shin. ‘I guess not.
But, Scott, think about how much more you’ll be able to do with them that you
can’t do without them.’

‘I know, but they’re also very limited. How can I possibly do all
the things I used to do with these?’ I spat the last word and gestured
aggressively towards the hooks on the table.

‘Have you wondered at all why you feel so negatively towards the
hooks?’ I opened my mouth to cite their limitations for her, but she raised a
hand and cut me off before I could speak. ‘No, I don’t mean why you hate their
limitations. This is the first time I’ve seen you fighting against forward
progress. What is it about the hooks that are making you balk?’

I stared at her. My anger deflated like a popped balloon, leaving
me with emptiness and the truth.

How have you come to know me so well?
I wondered as I looked at
Kathy in defeated acceptance. She was right: I had never turned away from the
potential for progress before – especially not when that progress was a clear
step up in my ability to care for myself. But these hooks were different. They
were brazen and revolting.

I exhaled a long, deep sigh and tried to smile weakly at her. ‘I
guess it’s that when I wear those hooks – or even think about wearing them – it
makes me feel truly handicapped. I mean, thus far my frustration has been about
being dependent on others. Now all I can see is the hooks where my hands used
to be.’ They would be right there, in my line of sight every minute of every
day.

‘Mm-hm. Well maybe what we need is a bit of a distraction to help
you focus on what the hooks can do
for
you rather than against
you.’
The jovial Kathy was creeping back and I watched a delightful smile play about
her lips as she said, ‘Don’t move. I’ll be right back!’ She gave a little
ballerina-esque leap to her feet and twirled dizzyingly out my door.

I smiled. I couldn’t help it. When in the presence of Kathy,
smiling was what you did. Even if I didn’t feel fully energized, she had begun
to shift my way of thinking and I could feel a lessening of the tension in my
shoulders.

When she returned a hop, skip, and sashay later, Kathy presented
me with a board about the size of two meal trays. It was adorned with various
latches of the kind you would encounter in daily life. There were buttons and
zippers, snaps and clasps. She set the base of the board on my bedside table
and leaned it back against her chest to keep it upright while she reached
around to hook two sections of a bra strap together; the bra strap that was on
the board, that is.

‘Let’s make this realistic,’ she said as she clasped the
undergarment. ‘Now unhook the strap.’ I raised my eyebrows inquisitively at her
and she chuckled with devilish laughter.

‘Hey, you never know when you’ll get the opportunity.’ I stared;
no worthy responses coming to mind. After momentary amazement, I just smiled
stiffly and turned to face the new challenge presented to me.

Who
was
this woman?

An extended hospital stay does wear on a person. During the weekends,
when Kathy wasn’t around to pick me up, the reality of losing my hands and the
monotony of rehab would drag me down. Resigned and without bothering to hope
for more, I did the one thing I could think to do: I trudged on as I’d done
before.

By the time dinner came knocking, I had satiated myself on
self-pity. I forced myself to accept the spaghetti and meatballs in spite of
the part of me refusing to care if I lived or died. Amber seemed pleased as she
brought the tray of food to my bedside table and it occurred to me that there
may have been some conversation about me among the nurses. I wondered if I’d
been placed on a ‘Watch Closely’ or ‘Potentially Suicidal’ list.

She carefully replaced the hooks on the table with my dinner and
asked cautiously, ‘Would you like me to help you eat?’

‘No,’ I spat in retort, then immediately regretted my harshness.
My anger wasn’t meant for her. I amended, ‘Thank you, but no, I need to start
using those damn things sometime.’ I gestured with my head towards the prosthetics
in her hand.

‘Okay,’ she said and gently placed the hooks at my side. After
making sure the table was within easy reach, she said, ‘I’ll leave you to it,
then. Don’t hesitate to use the call button.’

‘I will. Thanks, Amber.’

I wasn’t happy about it, but these hooks were now a part of my
life. I couldn’t hide forever. So when she had left, I grimly set about the
task of donning the two things I currently hated most in the world.

I struggled into the harness and then the cylindrical forearms
with blatant animosity. More than once during the process I had to stop and
take a moment to calm myself down, lest I do something to the heinous things I
might regret. When I had finally managed to slide both arms into the defiling
contraptions and tested that the cables were working properly, I snagged the
bedside table with the left hook and wheeled it over my lap.

The savory scent of tomato sauce and meat wafted up to me and I
became potently aware of just how hungry I was.
A little added incentive for
you,
I sneered at the defiant side of me which wanted to fling the whole
tray across the room and hammer the bedrails with the hooks until they broke
into a thousand ineffectual pieces. I worked to block out that inner voice with
technical thoughts of how exactly one was meant to eat with hooks.

I studied the right hook and laid it beside the fork on my tray,
considering. It had been so long, I couldn’t even picture how you held a fork
with fingers. After having eaten so many dishes, the act of spooning a mouthful
of spaghetti had become second nature. But my second nature was no longer of
any use to me.

Delicately, I flexed my shoulder to open the hook. With the fork
braced by the left hook so it wouldn’t slip away, I slid the stem between the
right two hooks then relaxed my shoulder and watched as the hook closed around
the utensil. Exhaling the breath I had been holding, I lifted the fork off the
tray and watched as the hook held fast.

Okay, not so bad. . . Yet.

With the fork hovering above my bowl of spaghetti, I realized
simply holding the utensil was just the beginning of what needed to be done. I
would have to calculate the appropriate angles of my shoulder, elbow, hook, and
fork to get the food from the bowl and into my mouth. The mere thought of all
that must now go into doing such an elementary task was debilitating. If my
stomach hadn’t been so adamant about my need for food, I may have relinquished
control to my mutinous side and thrown the tray in surrender.

Like learning to drive on the wrong side of the road, I had to
re-orient myself in regards to the fork and bowl. After many false starts and a
new understanding of how my shoulder now played a leading role in the eating
process, I finally managed to get one meager scoop of noodles into my mouth. It
became a constant battle to keep from accidentally pulling the hooks open
mid-scoop and depositing what should have been
in
my belly on top of it.
Never had eating been such a taxing endeavor; like playing multiple,
simultaneous games of chess. With every misstep it became harder to hold back
the thwarting rage. Each time, spaghetti landed where it wasn’t supposed to be
or I was forced to retrieve my fallen fork, I had to take a moment to quiet the
aggravated rant coursing through my mind.

By the time my mom came in for her usual evening visit to chat and
competitively watch Wheel of Fortune together, a throbbing ache had rooted
itself in my skull. I tried to greet her, but accidentally turned my shoulders
too much and dropped the spaghetti-laden fork onto the tray. Frustrated beyond
measure, I gritted my teeth and navigated through the process of retrieving the
fork and starting again.

‘Have a seat, Mom,’ I said distractedly, my focus back on the
spaghetti. Carefully, I opened and closed the hooks around the fork and began
scooping up noodles once more. I could feel my mom watching tensely from my
side and sensed her poised on the end of her chair, ready to leap into the
fray.

One inch at a time, I raised the forkful of pasta towards my
mouth, stretched my neck out like a turtle to make the journey shorter, and
wrapped my lips securely around the end of the utensil. Successfully chewing a
bite of spaghetti, I leaned back and turned to my mom.

‘So the – uh – hooks came today, huh?’ she asked after a
flabbergasted pause. I watched as her eyes travelled to the red smears and
spaghetti strands clinging to the top half of my t-shirt, up to the right hook
with the fork in its clutches, and back to my face. The expression of pain in
her eyes caused the food I’d been swallowing to stick in my throat.

‘Mm-hm.’

‘How are they?’ I could tell she was trying desperately to be
casual in her questions, but the tension in her body laced her words with
strain.

‘About what you’d expect,’ I said, turning back to my meal. I
dipped the fork into the pasta and started to lift my arm towards my mouth, but
my mind was pre-occupied by thoughts of my mom and I miscalculated my angles.
The fork went vertical before reaching my mouth and pasta slopped down the hook
and arm.

‘Oh!’ Mom exclaimed from beside me. Through my peripheral vision I
saw her reach out towards me.

‘Don’t!’ I barked and she froze halfway out of her chair. I had
become confused and the spill was the result. It wasn’t the first nor the last
time missteps would render me covered in sauce.

‘I’ll get it,’ I added when I saw her cower at my sharp tone. I
remedied my angles and tilted my hook and the fork back towards the bowl,
ignoring the noodles which slid along and off my arm in the process. This time
I was able to bring the fork in the right direction, but halfway to my mouth I
misused my shoulder and the damn hook opened. Noodles and fork tumbled onto my
lap, adding red spots to the stains already setting in my shirt.

‘Rrrg!’ I growled at the maddening mistakes I kept making. My mom
stood from her chair to retrieve the fork. I snapped at her before she could
reach me.

‘Let me feed myself, damn it!’ A whimper escaped her throat and
she turned towards the window.

Damn it all!
Hating myself for hurting her more, I started, ‘Aw, Mom –’

But she shook her head in dismissal.

‘Why couldn’t it have happened to me instead?’ she moaned.

I went still. Where had that come from?
She wishes she could
take my place?
It couldn’t be. No one would wish for this. But that’s what
she had said. I watched the quaking in her rounded shoulders and felt sorrow
that stretched far deeper than the self-pity I’d been swimming in all day.

I wanted to say something – anything – to help her stop crying,
but what words could fix this? Never – not at any point along this torturous
journey had I wished what happened to me upon anyone else. And never had I
thought that someone I cared so deeply about, whom clearly cared a great deal
for me, would wish to take my place. It was the last thing I would want.

Does she feel responsible?
I wondered. The mere thought agonized me to the
core. This was no one’s fault. A fluke, a random occurrence when all the stars
had happened to line up against me. I thought everyone had reconciled with that
fact at least as much as I had. But clearly not because my mom was sobbing
silently by the window.

I watched her in my own helpless misery. I wanted to reach out to
her, but I was still a hostage of this bed. I wanted to console her with words,
but none seemed worthy. So I let my arms fall to my sides in defeat, resigned
now to be the audience to my mother’s suffering as she had been witness to
mine.

There is still so much healing left to be done.