Amazing, If True…

Tuesday, September 8th –  The day after Labor Day, and all is well! Very well, in fact: thanks to Dr. Klein’s  expert attentions twice a week for the past couple of months, I am rapidly returning to the level of flexibility I had reached a year ago.

Let me backtrack a bit. On August 16th — six months to the day after I had The Fall that changed my life so much — I was discharged from the Wound Care center at Mercy Hospital. Post-maggots, post-Wound-Vac, post-a-whole-lot-of-trouble — and not to forget post-Apligraf — my cell-phone-sized wound was totally healed over. Sam the Skin had completely melted into ME, and I have now got a lovely new baby skin covering what used to be a horrendous pit.

The Bad Part: There goes my social life! After five months of going to Mercy Hospital three times a week, gee, what in the world am I going to do for fun? I find myself really missing seeing Emily and the gang of physical therapists who did so much for me, so caringly. I did write  a long letter to the Head of the Rehab Department, telling her how incredibly fine her staff is, and naming them all. I’m hoping that will filter down to them somehow, because they really are exceptionally good at what they do, and good people, too. I could have had a lot worse social life for five months, believe me!

The Good Part: Well, it’s mighty good to be wearing only that Velcro contraption, the Circ-Aid, and a jersey footless tube-sock, during the day. I do not miss the heavy dressings, and neither does my leg. I can’t tell you how blissful it was, that first night, with just me and my skin inside my pajama leg!

I seem to have lost sensation in the area around the wound; but that isn’t to be wondered at, since a whole lot of nerves were severed. Maybe some of them will grow back. Meanwhile, the skin over and around the wound doesn’t feel like human skin to my fingertips. It feels kind of like thin plastic. I’m supposed to rub Vitamin E into it twice a day, gently, to help the skin thicken. It will be extremely fragile for up to two years (TWO YEARS!! Oy!) and even when it gets as strong as it’s ever going to get, it’ll be only 80% of its original strength. But that doesn’t really faze me.

Another Bad Part: I can’t put the Circ-Aid on by myself. If you knew me, you’d know this is nothing short of torture. I have a very, very hard time asking for help: fiercely independent, and proud of it. This means that I have to have the Beloved Spouse put it on for me each morning. Since the Beloved Spouse’s morning often doesn’t begin till noon (he’s not an early riser by choice, and I get up with the birds and the cats), I am often without my graded compression device till mid-day. Gotta do something about this.

Another Good Part: What I plan to do about it is: work with David Klein, and my old friend the Chiropractic Adjustment Machine (CAM), to restore more flexibility to my lower spine and my shoulders. With that, I should be able, in time, to reach my ankle from a sitting position and deal with all those Velcro straps by myself. I can already do the top ones, and the middle ones — I think I could fasten them and make a kind of tube, and just stick my foot through it. But those ankle straps are the deal-breakers.

Another part of this Good Part is that, according to the graph of my last re-exam a couple of weeks ago, I’ve gone way up again since my plummeting low in June. Between January and June, I lost so many of the areas I had recovered that I was about level with where I’d been a year ago. Now I’m on the way up again. It seems to be easier to get the bones back where they should be, once they’ve had a chance to be there before.

David is happy to have a clear goal towards which we can work. And I know it will be successful.

So things are good here… my body is happy to be recovering its balance … I don’t feel as if I’m going to topple every time I take a few steps. It really is amazing, the kind of healing this elderly body is able to achieve — with the help of Mr. Clean, La Jolla’s BEST chiropractor, and several wonderful physical therapists, especially Emily Cutting.

Thanks for reading — Betsy