My wife is slowly learning to live within her limitations. The limitations of being able to use only one arm. The limitations of being able to use only one leg. The limitations of being able to take Percoset only once every 6 hours.
She is now scooting around the house quite successfully on the office chair, which means she has some mobility. But she has to scoot backwards, pushing with her good leg, so the price of this mobility is that her good leg is now burning with the effort. She has to lift her body out of chairs and car seats using her good arm. By the time this is over, she’s going to look like a steroid freak on her right side and like limp spaghetti on the left.
Once my wife is sitting immobile in a chair, or lying in bed, she feels pretty good, almost perky. A friend came to visit and stayed a couple of nights, so we went out to eat. My wife wanted to go to Outback Steakhouse, but I vetoed that because she can’t cut up a steak using only one arm. She hadn’t thought of that, so we went out for nice mushy Italian food.
Yesterday, I put our daughter on a plane for Atlanta to visit a relative. The original plan was that we would drive up later, stay a couple of days, and we’d all drive back. We agonized over whether my wife could make the trip, but she feels pretty comfortable in a car, because of the support offered by the seat. So the plan is, we’ll drive up to Atlanta on Christmas day, despite my misgivings about her ability to use the facilities at rest stops along the way. If necessary, I’ll just wheel her in myself and hope the women inside are not armed.
A friend helped us find two bedside commodes, which are far superior to the stupid camp toilet I found at Wal-Mart. So she’s able to go to the bathroom whenever she needs to, without any help, even in the middle of the night. I returned the camp toilet to Wal-Mart today, assuring the suspicious lady at the Customer Service desk that it had not been used.
The commode collection.
So I’ve been doing a lot of running around, usually pushing a wheelchair, and all of the household chores are now my responsibility. So my aged creaky knees are inflamed, and I’m forbidden to touch the Percoset.
I have received permission to publish these pictures of my wife’s injuries. She has large ugly bruises on both arms, but strangely, the broken ankle hardly looks different than the good one. She keeps it in this AirBoot gizmo that comes with a little pump so you can inflate it or deflate it, immobilizing her ankle joint. I wonder if they make those things for knee joints?
The unbroken right arm.
The seriously broken left arm.
The AirBoot.
The inflator/deflator.
On Sunday, my wife and I managed to sleep away most of the morning. Her recent injury made it hard for her to get comfortable in bed, so there was a lot of fussing with pillows. Eventually, the Percoset kicked in and she slept well.
Because her ankle is broken, she can’t walk. Because her shoulder is broken, she can’t use crutches. Sooner or later, she was going to have to visit the bathroom, so she sent me off to her school to borrow a wheelchair from the clinic. By the time I got home with it, she was just about ready to burst.
So she painfully elevated herself from the bed, swung around and gingerly settled into it for the short ride. We approached the bathroom door and discovered something ugly about Florida building codes. It seems that normal household doors are 30 inches wide, which accommodates most sizes of people and a typical wheelchair, which is 26 inches wide. However, in Florida, bathroom doors need only be 24 inches wide. This makes them a tight squeeze for extra-large people and an impossible barricade for wheelchairs.
A normal door.
A narrow bathroom door.
We panicked, but eventually came up with a workable strategy. It seems that an ordinary desk chair with casters on the legs can fit through a 24-inch door. My wife sits in the chair, and I pull her through the bathroom door. She’s able to use the bathroom and then I pull her back out. Unfortunately, the lush pile carpeting that feels so delightful on bare feet drags at the chair casters in such a way that I must strain to move her. She helps by pushing with her good foot, but it’s still an effort. It’s too late for me to run for Governor in 2006, but just wait. I’m going to have those building codes changed, and I’m sure I’ll have a lot of support from the vast, wheelchair-bound elderly constituency in Florida.
The bathroom express.
We called the orthopedic surgeon first thing this morning and after waiting on hold, we were told his first appointment was tomorrow. My wife was outraged, demanding to know how they could send someone home from the emergency room with broken bones and expect them to wait 2 days for treatment. I printed out a list of orthopedic surgeons on her health plan, and she found one who agreed to see her today, at 11:00 in Orange City, which is about an hour’s drive. She told me this proudly, and I looked at the clock, noticing that it was 10:30, and we still had to swing by the hospital to pick up her X-rays. She said, “So we’ll be late. So what?” This is a fundamental difference between my wife and I, one that will never be resolved.
The orthopedic surgeon turned out to be a nice guy, who gave my wife one of those high-tech space boots that has Air Jordan pumps on either side. He told her sternly, “Don’t put any weight on it for at least 2 weeks and we’ll see how it’s doing. If you’re not careful, I’ll have to put plates and screws into it.” As for the shoulder, he told her that there’s no way to immobilize it. She has to keep it in a sling and it will either heal or it won’t. Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible keep from bumping it or jarring it unless she takes a lot more Percoset and just drools in bed for the next month.
He gave us a prescription for a wheelchair and a bedside commode (so that she won’t have to make the bathroom trip by herself if I’m not there). And more Percoset, of course.
The wheelchair prescription turned out to be something of a joke, though. He prescribed a very special kind of wheelchair, with a unique axle enabling it to be operated by someone with the use of only one arm. Do you know what car salesmen do when they’re so hideous and incompetent that they can’t even sell cars? They sell wheelchairs. I made a couple of calls and was told that those wheelchairs are very expensive, have to be specially-ordered, and will take 6 to 8 weeks to arrive. Which means that by the time we got it, my wife won’t need it.
I found a place that sells bedside commodes, but they want $95 for them, and insurance won’t pay for them. So I went to Wal-Mart and picked up a camping toilet for $22. Call me cheap if you must, but she’ll thank me when she has to use it.
