Getting Ready to Leave the Hospital

DAY 11

In the days after her surgery the staff started preparing Laura to go home from the hospital. Several therapy sessions prepared her for being mobile. Several of them covered her stump care. It was probably the toughest. The first session was on the eighth day after her surgery. Although the doctor had taken the cast off briefly two times in the last week Laura had not really looked at her leg. This time when they took the cast off her stump she had to look, they were going to teach her how to care for it. She gasped.

“It’s so short.” It ended less than half way to her knee. She had envisioned it being longer as if that made some significant difference in its function. It was rounded and evenly shaped. She lifted it. It was so light. The nurse that helped her on the mat and took off her cast stepped back. The woman who had taken her to the room to have her cast off stepped forward. Laura looked up at her with tears in her eyes.

“Hi Laura, I’m Betty. They asked me to stop by again and be here.”

At first Laura had not recognized her. “You took me to have the cast off.” She looked at the woman and one sentence from that day that seemed like an eternity ago came back. “You’re Jack’s mom.”

“Well in a way. I’m mom to a lot of them here.”

“I remember now, I wanted to ask you about something you said in the cast room but I was too busy. I was walking on the cast and you said, “I would have given anything to take one last walk on my leg, but it was shattered when I got to the hospital” or something like that. What did you mean?”

“That’s what I want to show you. It’s why I came in today.” She dropped her pants. She was wearing shorts under them. The Right AK prosthesis was obvious. “See, I too have a leg missing above the knee.” She steadied herself on a walker that she had placed next to her. “Let me show you. This isn’t going to be easy for you, but then, who ever told you life was to be easy?”

Laura choked out, “I guess nobody.”

“It isn’t going to be easy, but then unless you want to, you don’t have to stop living. I lost my right leg when I was about eighteen, that is just about forty years ago now. Me, my cycle and a truck tangled, my cycle and right leg took the worst of it. The cycle was totaled, same as my leg. I got to the hospital with a right leg hanging by a thin piece of skin. The knee and ankle were shattered. The tibia was busted in several places. It was so bad that even today they would have had to amputate.”