The Stump

Four years ago, apparently what loomed large in my mind was the stump, what it would look like, what it would be like, and how I would deal with it.  Part of all marriages is physical attraction, and for most people, stumps are just not attractive.

I should probably mention that his leg was ugly to begin with.  The accident that ruined it happened long before I knew him, so I have always known him as a man with an ugly leg.  That never kept me from loving him, and I knew that the stump would not, either.  But still, my reaction to it worried me.  Would I gasp when I saw it and hurt his feelings?

In the early days, I did all I could to avoid it, to avoid seeing it or even thinking about it.  I had to help with bandage changes, and as long as I focused on the wound and not the limb, I could handle it. It made me laugh that after all my years of avoiding the medical field, I had become someone's personal nurse.  It has never been the gore that bothered me about medicine, it is the caring, and since I already did care, I could handle the duties.

It took me a while to actually look at the stump without focusing just on wound care.  When I did, my worst fears were confirmed.  It was ugly.  To me, it looked like a ham attached to my husband, but a ham that could move.  The way it moves offends my sensibilities, as if it is something from a horror movie.  The other end of Thing, perhaps.

At the same time, looking at it confirmed that I could handle it.  As ugly as it is, I have never looked at him and been horrified that he no longer has a leg.  He is still Doc, still my husband.

Anniversary

It was four years ago yesterday that my husband went in for surgery to have his leg removed.  There was nothing easy about the decision, but then, there had been nothing easy about keeping the leg that had been mangled in a motorcycle accident more than 30 years earlier.  The timing was horrible for me; I was in my last semester of getting my Masters in Architecture at the University of Florida, a grueling program that required long hours and complete dedication.  However, I could hardly ask my husband to wait after all the pain he had been in since the last failed knee surgery.

We went into it knowing that I would likely have to put off my graduation for another semester.  I informed my advisers that I might have a difficult time finishing on time, which was one of the hardest things I have ever done.  My whole life, I have been proud of always doing everything on time, or even early.  I hate the idea of being late, or spending more time finishing something than I have to.  However, I had experience with working on my degree during previous surgeries, and I knew that this would be the hardest one yet.

My husband went through counseling to ensure that he would be ready to take this step.  There have been a lot of negative news stories about the VA lately, but there are things they are very good at, and they have a lot of experience with losing limbs.  It is entirely possible that he did not listen as well as he could have to the counseling, but he was ready for this.  If only there had been some counseling for the rest of his family.  Perhaps I should have sought some out for me and the kids, but I really had very little time to even think about it.

The surgery itself went fairly smoothly.  The initial recovery went smoothly, although as I thought, it was impossible for me to keep up with my thesis work, and I did put off my graduation.

Now, four years later, it seems like we have littered those years with broken dreams.  I have a degree, but still no job as an architect; he has made little progress in his desire to run a marathon.

Still, I think we are better off for it all.  Those dreams may never come true, but we are infinitely adaptable in our dreams.  The dream that has come true is that he is able to go about his day in less pain.  His shoulders don't ache all the time, his back is not as constantly in spasm, and he has no more pain in that knee at all.

Changes for the Better

I just found out that there is a book with the same title as my blog, and I feel a little upset by this.  The book was published in 2013, after my first posts here, so I feel rather proprietary about my name, although I certainly can't claim enough of a readership to say it was stolen.

It may seem from my post yesterday that amputation was a bad choice for my husband.  The truth is, nothing could be further from the truth in many ways.  Before the amputation, his pain was so bad that he was living on pain pills, not just for his mangled leg, but also for his back which was broken when he was in the service.  He still experiences quite a bit of pain on a daily basis, but he has been able to successfully decrease the medication by at least 50%.  That's huge.

The reduced pain has had huge impacts on our lives.  He no longer has tantrums over everything that doesn't go his way.  He was often quick to blow his fuse before, and doesn't as often now.  In many ways, it's a huge relief to have him feeling so much better.

At the same time, it seems that some of his depression is tied to his lowered pain.  That sounds very odd, but the truth is, for many years he has carved out a niche for himself of being a heroic man in pain, and suddenly, the pain is less heroic.  My drama king doesn't know what to do with himself now that his starring role has changed.  These days when he complains of pain, I may well blow him off, because I know that his complaints are often more psychological than physical.

It may sound selfish, but knowing that makes things easier on me.  I don't have to rush in and try to sooth him when he complains.  I don't have the constant worry of his pain hanging over my head while I am trying to work.  I don't have to worry that he will overdose himself in an effort to relieve pain.  When he complains, it is a luxury for me to not worry.

The amputation wasn't the answer it was meant to be in many ways, but it has in the end improved our lives.

Almost Four Years Later

If anyone had told me that my life would still be this unsettled four years later, I am not sure I would have believed them.  It turns out that post-amputation life is never the same.  There are some things I may have been able to anticipate, and others that took me completely by surprise.
The first months actually went much more smoothly than I expected.  Not that they were easy, but he learned to walk with the prosthesis relatively quickly, and was proud of himself for that.  Learning to use it turned out to be the easy part.

I thought that once a prosthesis was fitted, that was it and wearing it was just a matter of getting up in the morning and putting it on.  There are people who wear their prostheses all the time.  It turns out that it isn't that simple.  Tissues swell and shrink; weight is lost and gained; a perfectly fitting prosthesis one day may not fit the next.  The bucket may crack, the battery may not charge correctly, and it may just be too hot to imagine wearing 7 lbs of metal and plastic on the end of your sweaty stump.  It seems that we spent more time getting the leg trimmed and reshaped and refitted than he spent wearing it.

As the months wore on and he was still unable to do much more than walk around the block or through the grocery store, he became depressed.  He tried to do less and less.  Every time he looked at the things he hadn't finished, instead of becoming energized to do more, he became dejected and did less.

Always one for big plans, he kept talking the big talk.  He was going to do a marathon.  He was going to do the Boston.  He was going to learn to swim with one leg and go diving again.  He was going to ride a bike.  In reality, he became more and more confined to his bed.  I became more and more frustrated.

It is possible that I said things I should not have said.  That I have yelled more than anyone should.  I have tried wheedling, cajoling, bribing him to do something.  I spent too much time sitting next to him in bed, getting depressed myself.

It would be nice if I could tell you some story of a huge turnaround, but the fact is, I can't.  I have started doing more things I enjoy, finding alternatives to the architecture career that hasn't materialized, and forcing myself to do things outside the house a little more.  In response, he is trying a little harder.  The depression has lifted a little bit, but it is still lurking.