Beautiful Leg(s)

This morning I was sitting at the dining room window watching the world go by, wishing I could go by too, and all of a sudden I started giggling. My mind had wandered back to my childhood and how the doctors had worked up the schedule for the exact time to stop the growth in my left leg so that my right leg could catch up to the left and - viola! - I would have two legs the exact same length. It didn’t quite work, but it did vastly improve the difference between my legs.

At one point as the doctor was measuring the growth in my left leg he looked up at me and said, “ You have a beautiful leg here. If you hadn’t gotten polio you would have had gorgeous legs and from my calculations on your growth I would estimate that if we weren’t going to stop the growth there would have been a good chance that you would be close to 6’. My sister is 5’ 10” so I think he may have been pretty close.

As I was musing on that memory this morning it suddenly hit me that I had always unconsciously thought of myself as a woman with 1 (one) beautiful leg. That tickled me so much that I pulled out the photo albums of my younger years and what I found made me laugh outright. In every swimsuit picture of me, as far as up into my 40’s, I have turned myself a bit so only the left leg is showing. To be honest, I didn’t even realize I was doing the left leg pose, but I think it is hilarious. When I’m gone all my descendents will think I had gorgeous legs and there won’t be any evidence to the contrary. Good thinking!

Then we come to the right leg. It was a bit shorter, had a fused ankle, and the knee turned into the left too much to make the doctors happy. That knee is what eventually took me out and down for the count. I went to sit on the commode and I heard a funny pop and that was the end of life as I had enjoyed it. It wasn’t a very glamorous place to have your life drastically changed, but I guess it could have happened in a less convenient environment, at least I had somewhere to sit when my knee blew.

All this leads up to the fact that with this newest episode in the history of my right leg I am now working to create a very ugly scar on a leg that wasn’t exactly beautiful in the first place. The other day I told the doctor I was glad that I was no longer young and bikini clad because strutting my stuff with a leg that is going to have a scar as large and ugly as the one I am working on would put a definite hamper on my “beach sex appeal”.

But after looking at the albums and seeing how I automatically shielded my right leg from the camera I think I could still get away with convincing everyone I had beautiful leg(s) ... as long as they were gazing at a photo op!

I found that so funny I laughed out loud. Do you think this long convalescence has affected my mind??

PENNIE

Summer's End

I just dropped in for a bit of a visit. I can’t stay long, my body screams at the way I have to sit at this computer, but I really miss all of you. It’s lonely here stuck in my chair with my leg elevated, the family peeking in to wave goodbye as they hightail hither and yon living the last days of summer vacation. School starts next week and the last few days of freedom call for sun filled days at the beach, visits to the mall for cool shirts even though they have to be ’uniform code’, hair cuts to trim off the salt water damage, and frantic visits with friends that will be going to high schools that are on the opposite side of town.

I’m tired of talking about my leg, but I will say that the Apligraf was a fantastic success. I have wonderful islands of skin growing all over the wound and several large islands are so close to touching that there is almost a bridge of new skin across the middle of the wound. The staff was amazed. They say that most people have a set back of some sort.... I’ve had none. My wound is so large they warned me to expect problem places, but as of this writing everything is going along beautifully. Surely, your good thoughts and prayers have done that for me.

The ’hot and tight’ was causing severe pain to my fused ankle so they relented and gave me ’hot and looser’. It’s odd what the ’tight’ did to my ankle. It feels as if my ankle that isn’t an ankle is sprained. I must have a whole pocket of arthritis around the staple that is holding my ankle hostage. At any rate, loosing the ’tight’ has made it tolerable. I really have nothing to complain about. Many of the patients that I have become acquainted with are really struggling with the healing process, but my body seems to be in accord with my brain ... let’s hurry up and get this over with. Enough about me!

My granddaughter has blossomed in the summer sun. She has become the prototypical picture of the Southern California beach girl. She has shot up to 5’7”, and she has developed curves that many women would die for. She would kill me if she knew I told this but we have had to buy her three different bra sizes this summer. She’s worried about that. She thinks it’s time for the growing to stop. I just laugh and tell her that women pay doctor’s big money to get what she has gotten naturally. She doesn’t think I am particularly funny, but I tell her that she’ll appreciate that more when she is certain that her body has stopped the growing thing. This will be her freshman year in high school and she can hardly wait for school to start. I heard a group of her friends tell her that the girls at school were going to hate her because she was too pretty. “You have long blonde hair, long legs, beautiful big blue eyes, you’re thin, and you’ve got great boobs”.... Remember that was a quote! Her grandmother worries about all those attributes blossoming in one summer. I’ve watched the boys knocking on the door asking if Anna was home, I’ve answered the phone and had deep male voices asking if they could speak to Anna, and I watched her father get upset with the way a man watched her as she walked away. Life is going to be very interesting, if not anxiety ridden, for my son. It makes me glad that I had a boy!

My grandson escorted his girlfriend to the Aquarium so she could submit an application and because he was there and thought it would be funny, he filled one out too. But life pulled one of its funny little quirks and he is the one that got called to go to work. His poor girlfriend feels slighted, and he was flabbergasted. Because he wanted to see what it was all about he went to the interview and he came home grinning from ear to ear. He loved what he heard. He took the job and is having a wonderful time. Isn’t life ironic? As a small boy he loved the Aquarium, especially the jellyfish. Once when I took him there he was so enthusiastic and awe filled one of the oceanographers took him back into the lab so he could see the entire baby jellyfish display and how the tanks were maintained. He found it so thrilling that he thought he might want to be an oceanographer some day. At any rate he is having a great time making money and learning about all the fish. He’ll be a senior this year. He isn’t quite certain what he wants to do for ’rest of his life’, but his job certainly has peaked an old interest. It’ll be fun watching what happens.

My son says he is counting the years. Only four to go and his youngest will be out of high school and he will be free to roam as he pleases. He says the kids can live with him as long as they wish, but he can hardly wait until they are both of age so he can venture out and do some of the things he has kept on hold while he was raising them. I wonder? Will one of those things be a new daughter-in-law? His mother thinks that would be really nice.

My friend Scott has to have surgery again. The hardware that they put in his elbow has somehow damaged some nerves. He is unable to move several of his fingers and he still, after all this time, is experiencing great amounts of pain. So next month they are going to go back in and repair the damage the repair caused. My leg needs to get on the fast healing track. Scott is my chauffer for my twice-weekly visits to the wound specialist. I’m not allowed to drive yet and that is a fricken long drive back and forth. Don’t think I could afford a taxi, and the leg and wheelchair wouldn’t be fun to have to take on the bus. Even though it’s a doctor’s visit Scott and I have fun having lunch together and yakking about things no one but the two of us thinks is funny or important.

John? John is John ... he pushes his rollator all over tarnation, eats loads of chocolate, swings in his hammock, and gloats because he has mobility and I don’t. But I’m gonna get revenge. I have raved about all the books I have read this summer. He thinks I am piling them up for his perusal, but ‘pay back is a bitch‘. I’m gonna hide them and make him beg. He’ll do it too. He loves to read as much as I do.

Bless you all and thank you for your thoughts and prayers. I really believe that is why my leg is healing so beautifully.

PENNIE

My Brain's in Pain

Penny, so glad you are coming along and my not need a graft-BUT is you do there is a product that was used on a friend's wound that wouldn't heal. It is called something like epilgraf or apelgraf--it is made from newborn foreskins. It was just amazing--she had her wound for over a year and had all sorts of treatments for it and nothing worked till that. Tiny little dots are taken from the foreskin and placed in the wound and it starts healing all around. IF you need a graft ask about it!! Barb
Comment from bvaneps834 - 7/14/06 1:26 AM

Barb left the above comment on the first entry I did about the wound on my leg. John and I talked about it for days, marveling at the amazing healing processes that are available and wondering just how the skin transfer was accomplished. Of course we laughed and shuddered a bit too.

I am here to tell you that I now have attained full knowledge, and wished I hadn’t!!!!

My leg has been so painful and uncomfortable, coupled with the fact that sitting here trying to get into a position where I can see the computer and use the keyboard both at the same time is tantamount to twisting my body into a contortionists exhibition. Those “disgusting developments” paired with the horribly hot summer and myriad layers of heat producing dressings on my leg have nudged me into a catatonic state. There’s also the twice weekly 45 minute trips to the doctor’s office, and the clothes I cant wear because my leg has to be free for the daily dressing change, and the hurt feelings of the beagle because he can’t go to the doctor with Scott and I, and the sleepless nights because the rest of my body is upset that I have to sit with my legs elevated for 80% of the time, and the places I wanted to go and the things I wanted to do this summer, and, and, and, ... other then that I’m doing just fine.

Now that I’ve told you why I haven’t written for the past few weeks I’ll tell you about the procedure that Barb talked about in the comment she left me.

The process she mentioned is called ’Apligraf’. It is the skin that a newborn has no use for after he has had a circumcision. My wound is very large and there are places that are very deep. The healing process can be expedited with the use of Apligraf. And since it has already been six weeks or more since I damaged my leg I am all for expedition of the healing. In other words, I want this fricken thing healed and the sooner the better. Besides I am going to have one of the ugliest scars this side of Bakersfield and I want the bragging rights that gives me.

When the doctor took the small piece of skin out of the container and placed it on my leg she said, “It looks exactly like skin doesn’t it?” And it did. The amazing thing about it was that the piece she placed on my leg was relatively small but she was able to stretch and mold it into a much bigger and broader area. Then she took tape and taped that donor skin to the healthy skin surrounding my wound. If the donor skin moves the process will be damaged. The doctor explained to me that the donor skin deposits the growth properties that it contains into my wound and my body takes that donation and promptly begins to create new skin. The donor skin does it’s job and then it eventually dissapates. It was fascinating to watch. It is not so fascinating having to live with it.

Four layers of dressing, including what they call fluff directly over the wound site, pulled snugly around my leg from the knee to the toes is very uncomfortable. It is hot, tight, and very similar to a cast, except it is hot and tight. And just in case you didn’t get the full meaning of my words I’ll repeat them ... hot and tight. I keep telling myself that every day is one less day that I will have to deal with this hot and tight un-cast cast like thing on my leg. "Get through today and that’ll be one less day that you have to deal with it" used to be how I convinced myself to get through the things they did to me when I was younger. But either I am smarter, or maybe not quite as smart, as I was then, because that little bit of psychology isn’t working as well as it once did. Now I find myself popping a pain pill in my mouth and hoping the day and the ’hot and tight‘ will disappear. Aw well, I was told that some people with ulcers on their legs have to wear this ’hot and tight’ all the time so who am I to complain about a few weeks. But forgive me if every once in a while I yell, because I personally think this thing is MISERABLE. Maybe it’s time to pop another pill.

One nice thing that has come out of this disaster is I have read 20 books. That part of my recovery has been wonderful. I have read some great, some not so great, some funny, some sad, and some absolutely soenthralling that I read them straight through. I’ve read so many books that I think I have outworn my glasses. The lens popped out of one side the other day. Thank goodness I knew where the tiny screwdriver was hidden ... at Scott’s house! He ran right over and fixed my lens with the handy dandy miniature screwdriver that was in the right hand corner of the left-hand kitchen drawer.

And what has John been doing all this time I have been suffering. Well, he grabs his rollator and scoots out the patio door and does this

Anybody want to take on a contract to dis-assemble a rollator?

A Time for Tears

I sit at the dining room window every day at 5:30 in the evening and cry the pain into a manageable presence. Every day he causally walks up to the window and says “Hi Pennie, is he home?”

He is one of my grandson’s best friends. The first time that he saw that I had been crying I was extremely embarrassed. I felt like I had been caught in an act of weakness. I tried to explain my tears. He stood there and listened to my words and I could see in his eyes that he was a bit lost and uncomfortable. But young people are resilient and as he struggled to find the right thing to say in an unexpected situation I managed to smile and tell him that my grandson was in his bedroom. As he walked away he stopped for a bit and turned around with a scowl on his face and said, “Don’t feel bad about crying. It makes me want to cry just looking at it.” And for some silly reason that made both of us laugh.

I have no idea why I chose 5:00 p.m. as the time to wash and change the dressing on my leg. What I do know is, washing that 26” x 18” wound with a terry cloth washrag and soap and then spraying it for 5 minutes with the shower nozzle is one of the most painful things that I have ever had to do. And after I have gritted my teeth and done what needs to be done all I want to do is scream, throw things, or a tantrum, and yell for the world to hear that I HURT. Instead I go to the dining room window, where I have set up the myriad layers of dressings and sit with my leg straight out in front of me and I cry until I have the pain back in control. Basically it’s a trade-off. Crying is better then throwing things or becoming a ranting harridan. And crying at the dining room window would normally be a place of privacy, that is until he started coming over exactly at 5:30 every day.

When I asked him why he has started coming over at the same time every day he shook his head and said he had no idea.

But I know ... his 5:30 arrival tickles me so much that the tears always turn into laughter and the laughter gives me the courage to face another day at 5:00 pm.

If the Creek Don't Rise and My Body Cooperates

I can’t get to the computer very often or very easily. We have a kidney shaped computer table and although it is an efficient set-up to play from when my body is in relatively efficient working condition, it is anything BUT, in my present situation. “Swelling is the enemy” is the chant that I hear every time I go to the ’wound specialist‘. “Keep your leg elevated at all times.” It’s a mantra that all the doctors’ staff repeats constantly. If John thought my fall looked similar to a porn star you should see what I have to do to sit at this kidney shaped computer table. If I didn’t look like someone that hasn’t had enough sleep, or someone that is dealing with too much pain, or someone that is a bit wobbly from pain medication, and if my leg wasn’t wrapped with so many ‘wound wrappings’ that it looks as if I might be part mummy I just might be a wee bit sexy sitting here with my legs spread at different angles, pillows propped all around me, my ’as little material as possible’ summer dress falling off one shoulder and billowing in the breeze caused by the fan that sits on the other side of the room .... At least I keep trying to convince myself of that. I’ll almost believe anything if it will help fight off the ‘depression of suppression’ of activity that this latest happenstance has handed me. On top of all that we are in the middle of a never ending heat wave that has left me with ‘SWEAT’ dripping off my chin. It’s so hot that I no longer perspire like a lady, I am just plain sweating.

Writing that last paragraph brought back a memory. I was seventeen years old and was recuperating from what turned out to be the last of the series of operations I had as a child. My mother had bought me a beautiful red nightgown. It was short so it wouldn’t interfere with the huge cast I had up to my thigh. It was so beautiful with it’s lace and ruffles that I had decided to wear it when an ’older’ boy that I had a crush on had called to say that he was going to drop over to visit with me. It was a very hot afternoon and the low cut neckline and small spaghetti straps of the beautiful red nightgown were perfect. The boy arrived and came over and sat beside my bed and held my hand as we talked about what was going on outside of my small confined world. I hadn’t known that he felt the same way about me that I felt about him, but he must have because he sat there for the longest time holding my hand and smiling. My mother popped into the room once or twice to see if we wanted something to drink or eat. The first time she came in she stood behind the boy and made awkward hand signals that I couldn’t understand, but mother’s are mother’s and I didn’t give it a whole lot of thought after she shrugged her shoulders and left the room, after all my crush was acting like he had a crush too.

After the boy left my mother came in the room and asked if I had enjoyed myself. And as I was regaling her with how much fun I had had during his visit she laughed and said, “I think he really enjoyed himself too. You are sitting right in front of that stream of sunshine coming in the window and it almost made your nightgown diaphanous. I didn’t want to embarrass the two of you, but I did try to signal to you to turn your back a bit.” Her hand signals! She was trying to tell me that I appeared almost nude in my beautiful red nightgown! OMG I was so embarrassed, but not enough to say “No” when he called and asked me for a date when I was up and running again. We dated a long time and not once did either one of us ever mention that he had seen me almost nude from the waist up, but then again when we’d park in our special place by the beach he did spend a lot of time trying to get me that way again!

And then I grew up and met John ... do boys ever really change.

Last week Scott and I were sitting in the room waiting for the wound doctor when I heard 3 staff members in the hall say my last name, then walk into a room and shut the door. I turned to Scott and said, “It’s ominous when you hear your named used just before they close the door. I wonder what they have in store for me.” Not too much longer one of the women walked into my room and said, with glee, “I get you!”

“Why does that make you so happy?”

“Because we don’t get to see haematomas as large and deep as this one. Three of us vied with one another to get the chance to work on this wound.”

“Oh, so it’s not my bubbling personality. It’s because I’m the educational specimen of the day?”

“Yup!,” she said as she came at me with surgical scissors and tweezers.

“We’re going to start debridement today,” she said as she took the tweezers and pried up an edge of the black tortoise shell like cover that had developed from the huge sack-like thing of blood that had been on my leg. I held my breath and she held the tweezers and scissors, lifting and snipping. Soon the other two women ‘just happened?” to walk into my room. So now I had all three women with scissors and tweezers anxiously waiting for their turn to snip at my ‘learning tool‘ injury. At one point I said, “ You three are actually having a good time, aren’t you?” And they all laughed and agreed then tempered it with, “Aw no Sandra, we’re just excited because we’re getting the chance to put into use something we have learned, but rarely get to use.”

“Would you stop if I screamed?”

“Many of our patients do, but this has to be done. We cant stop.”

“Then I wont scream,” I said.

When it was all over and they each had had their turn at doing something that they don’t usually get the chance to do they all turned to me, smiled, and said, “You are a wonderful patient.”

“Am I a wonderful patient because I brought you something very unusual to work on or because I didn’t scream?”

In unison they said, “BOTH!!!!,” and we all laughed.

Debridement is the removal of the layers of ‘things’ unwanted that sits in the wound. I tell you I am learning a whole bunch of things that I never wanted to know in the first place. It is very painful, but I am determined to do everything that it takes to get this leg back into use. This is the pits!!

The doctor says that if all goes well and my body reacts correctly I may get out of this without having to have a skin graft, but even then it will take at least 3 months for it to heal. Lordy, I do not want to have a skin graft. So I do everything they tell me too, including sticking this painful leg in the shower once a day for 5 minutes. Of course everyone in the family wants to be warned before I take the bandages off, the poor babies get sick if they have to look at my “disgusting” leg. Sometimes I deliberately knock on bedroom doors and force them to take a gander. Hey, why should I have to suffer alone!

God Bless, Pennie

Porno Star?

John had asked my permission to write an entry in my journal to explain my absence. I thought it was a very sweet gesture on his part, and those aren’t as forthcoming as you would expect, so I sweetly kissed him on the cheek and told him “certainly”. I struggled over to the computer this morning expecting to read a loving; pathos filled description of my plight. Imagine my surprise, indignation, and infuriation when I found myself ungraciously described as ‘a splayed out porno star’.

Before I take umbrage with John’s words I have to say from the bottom of my heart, if that is what porno stars have to do with their legs and hips I have nothing but sympathy for those poor people. I had one leg stretched out behind me with my foot and toes braced halfway up a wall and the other leg bent at the knee and tucked under my hips while being stretched so far in the opposite direction that it forced my head and shoulders down a step and as close as is humanly possible underneath my butt as if I was searching for my missing leg. Come to think of it, it does sound a bit like a porno position doesn’t it?

This one experience has given me so many stories to share that I could sit here for the next month and write about the ER helper(?) that yelled “We got a woman with a blister on her leg here” and promptly forgot I existed, or about my son almost getting arrested because he was indignant that I wasn’t getting proper and immediate help, or about the ER doctor, when he did come to my beside, tearing his hair out and repeating over and over “In thirty-five years as an ER doctor I’ve never seen anything like this.” Or me asking my son to find a towel and then sticking it in mouth so I wouldn’t scream and my son yanking it out and screaming at me to scream, or the policewoman that was called to escort my son out of the ER having nothing but sympathy and concern for me and my son and telling him to ignore the ’bitch’ that called her to arrest him, or my grandson that stood like a man and helped spell my son of the horrible responsibilities that had fallen on his napping shoulders, or the wonderful, intelligent, caring, and soft spoken ER RN who whispered and suggested and assisted the doctor in finding a way to deal with something that just kept growing until I, at one point, after I had been shot full of morphine, asked if it was an unidentified living presence that had invaded my body and was slowing going to crawl up and consume me until I was so large and extended that I was going to burst, or the nurse bringing me morphine and me arguing that I hated morphine and didn’t want it and my son saying “take the damn morphine and flow with it” after I had gouged bleeding holes in his arm and hand from the intensity of the pain, or me 4 hours later getting across to the room that the pain was very similar to giving birth, it grew to a huge mountain, slid down, sat for a few minutes, and grew and grew again until I felt that I was on the verge of losing my sanity, or the RN’s that instantly understood the comparison of birth pain and the one that I heard whisper to the doctor “she’s having spasms why don’t you try giving her some xxxxx” and the minute it hit my system having the blessed relief of pain reduction, or being so out of it on the morphine I asked my son to please erase all of the names that my granddaughter had written on the walls, I HATE MORPHINE!!!!! My son took me to the ER at 4:00 p.m. in the afternoon; he didn’t get home until after 11:00 p.m.

I have to take my sons word for the things that they did to me during those horrible pain filled hours. The next thing I remember is being awakened in a hospital bed and told that I had lost too much blood and my blood pressure was too low for me to be allowed to go home. I know that they kept offering to fill me with morphine so I secretly yanked the needle out of my arm and got yelled at because “now we can’t give you any more morphine” and me smiling and answering “and that’s why I pulled it out”. The stories I could write about my roommate could fill a month’s worth of entries by itself and how as I was quietly trying to sneak away she caught me and threw her arms around me and started crying, “I’ve got to have your phone number. You are the most inspiring person I have met in years!” How the heck I could have inspired her filled with pain pills and nurses urging me to help myself to the morphine cabinet is beyond me, but I must have some hidden charisma that drugs release.

And how when I finally got to see my own beloved physician she shook her head in disgust and anger and said, “what are you doing out of the hospital? And instantly called, of all things, the ‘wound specialist’ and described my condition. Faster then you can say supercalifragilisticexpialidocious I amassed two more specialists. I’m telling you the past six months have added so many new doctors to my telephone index that I hardly have room for my friend’s numbers.

I obviously cant drive, John voluntarily gave up his drivers license and I have a book load of doctors appointments that have to be kept so Scott, whose arm has healed enough to drive my car, has been driving me back and forth to my many appointments. Most of the doctors and their staff think he is my husband and when I tell them that we're not married they just shake their heads and say, “but you two act married”. I just reply, “That’s because we’re sick of seeing each other.”

In the meantime it looks as if I am going to have to have the ’wound’ cut fully open, the blood released, the skin removed, and a fricken sick leg for a good many months. “Jumping Jehosifats” as my father used to say this has been one of the worst spells that I have ever gone through. I wonder if Scott and I will even be talking to one another when it’s all over.

Thank you so much for the love and concern that you have shown. We have such a caring community.

Pennie

CATASTROPHE

This is John.

Owing to an unforeseen household mishap, Pennie is currently hospitalized.

Late Saturday afternoon while I was in the bathtub and her son, Dave was taking a nap ... Pennie attempted to negotiate a flight of stairs on her own. The results. I’m sad to report, were catastrophic.

She dramatically tumbled down the stairs and landed with a resounding thud on the sunroom floor.

Not only that, but her wheelchair landed on top of her.

Christ on a Kaiser roll!

The poor woman was splayed out graphically like a porno star ... and a bruise about the size of a silver dollar immediately developed on the shin of her right leg.

Within minutes, however, the welt had grown and Pennie found herself in excruciating pain.

So she was unceremoniously hustled to the Emergency Room.

By the time the Medicos attended to her, the swelling had grown from her knee to her ankle and Pen was screaming ... demanding that they amputate the leg.

It was a very sizable and painful blood clot, it turned out.

They filled Pennie with morphine, shot her leg up with lidocaine, made a surgical incision on her shin and pierced the clot with a pair of scissors.

The results were definitely not for the squeamish. Blood was soon shooting out all over the joint, in projectile gushes, splattering the walls and floors.

“Twenty five years of medical practice and I’ve never seen anything like this,” exclaimed the E.R. doctor at one point.

Pen lost so much blood, it turned out, that she will remain in the hospital for another day or two.

P.S. She is now resting comfortably ... which is more than I can say for the dog and me.

We need her back ... like pronto.