Farewell to the leg

After many years of surgeries and pain, my husband's leg was amputated on Tuesday. He was ready for it; I'm not so sure I was, even though I brought the idea up to him after reading an article in Runner's World about an amputee. The leg he had was keeping him from doing things he wanted to do. The prosthetics they make now are so good that he will probably be able to do much more with one of them than with his real leg. So, after 32 years of trying to keep his mangled leg, he decided to get rid of it.

For him, the VA offered counseling. They made sure that he had time to back out of the surgery. They talked to him about what would be involved, what kind of leg he could expect, what he would be able to do. He met others who had been amputated and talked to them about what it was like.

For me, I searched the internet, trying to find out what it was like for the spouse of an amputee. All I could find were articles about how to help him through it. How to be supportive, how to talk to him when he's down, how able-bodied he'd be. Nothing at all about what it's like to live with someone who no longer has a leg. Nothing about what the rest of the family will experience. Nothing at all about what it's like to lie in bed next to a man with a stump. So, I thought I would write about it myself.

On Tuesday, we got to the VA at 6 am. He was taken back soon after, and at about 7:45, I was allowed to go back to see him and gather his belongings. Then I was led to the waiting room, where I waited, and waited, and waited. At 12:00 I called the recovery room and was told he'd be out of surgery soon. I went down the hall to the bathroom, not knowing that the surgeon had just finished and was coming to talk to me. Nobody in the waiting room, the people I'd spent all morning with, told him I'd be right back. Nor did they tell me that he'd been there.

Every hour, I called the recovery room. They kept telling me they were working on pain control, but they'd let me know as soon as I could see him. About 3:00, I kind of lost it. Everyone else had been able to go back to see their loved ones, but not me. Everyone else had had someone talk to them, but not me. I got upset that I hadn't even seen one of the doctors, that I didn't know what was going on, and that I couldn't get much information at all. They promised to have the doctor come talk to me as soon as he could.

At about 3:30, the doctor did come talk to me. He told me everything had gone well, except he was having trouble with pain. The amputation was exactly where they expected, which was really good news, since if it had to be any higher, it would have made any functional use of the leg nearly impossible. I felt kind of bad about how upset I'd been when I found out that he had tried to talk to me earlier.

When I finally got up to the room to see him, it was 5:00. I'd been sitting around the hospital for 11 hours. Hubby was amazingly happy, though. Every other surgery I've seen him for, he was groggy and grumpy. This time, he was wide awake and happy. He wanted to show me the leg immediately. I wanted to ignore the emptiness beneath the sheet as long as possible. He got me to look, though, and it wasn't so bad. The stump was wrapped with Ace bandages, so I could still pretend it was in disguise somehow.