Pregnancy was less intimidating the second time around, but no less entertaining. In the four years since the accident, both Dave and I had secured stable jobs that we liked, and externally our life was reasonably normal. We’d also found a way to hire a live-in nanny-housekeeper, who was a real sweetheart.
“Michelle, I’m ready,” I’d call out every morning. Then I’d sit in my wheelchair and wait for her to come around the corner and into our bedroom with her usual smile.
“How are you feeling today?” she always asked.
“Darn good” was my standard answer, and the one I gave her one day during my third trimester.
She sighed and put her hand on the edge of the dresser as she knelt to help me put on my legs. “My, my,” she said, with a little giggle, “I can finally tell you’re pregnant. Your ankles are starting to swell.”
“Uh, Michelle . . . these legs are fake. I don’t think they can swell.”
She looked confused for a second, then flushed, and then we burst out laughing.
As Brian’s due date approached, it got hard to sleep. Every morning I whispered to myself, “Today would be a good day to have a baby.”
Monday, March 26, started like all the rest. We got up, made breakfast, fed Tiffany, and went to work.
I parked in my reserved spot, grabbed hold of my legs, and swung them out of the car. I slung my briefcase over my shoulder, grabbed the railing, pulled myself up the three steps that led to the west entrance of the Hillcrest hospital, and plodded down the long, deserted hallway. My thump-thud toy-soldier walk was slow and laborious, and I stayed close to the right wall, just in case I started to lose my balance. I stopped several times to catch my breath before I finally reached my office and fell into my chair. I shuffled piles of paper around on my desk, trying to triage what needed doing and what I could ignore.
I lumbered over to the main reading room, sat at the ICU board, and prepared to read the morning films on the hospital’s sickest patients, those in the intensive care units. Many of my colleagues considered this a mundane chore, but it was a morning ritual I’d come to appreciate because of its routineness. After a few days, the sickest patients became familiar, and as I watched their ups and downs, I hoped each morning to see them improve and move on out to the regular floors. I was saddened on the mornings when I saw a chest X-ray hanging upside down—a sign from the overnight house staff that the patient hadn’t made it.
I switched on the alternator lights, looked at the first set of films, and, somewhat short of breath, started dictating. I can do this. Don’t quit yet. Remember what Barbara said: “Don’t let people think you’re lazy or a slacker.” Now of all times, I’ve got to pull my weight, got to be a good example. I’m a woman, I’m disabled, and I’m pregnant . . .
By 5:00 p.m., I was ready to call it a day. I trudged back to my office and plopped down with a big sigh. The piles of paperwork hadn’t disappeared. In fact, there were more than when I’d started that morning. It was as if they’d been mating and reproducing right on my desk. They’d just have to wait.
“Good night, Lee,” I said to Dr. Talner, my friend and colleague, as I locked my door and started down the hall to my car.
By 6:00 p.m., I was home and getting ready to make dinner when I felt the first convincing contraction. I took a deep breath and waited. Another. And then another.
“Dave, what are you doing?” I asked as I continued tearing up lettuce with my one hand.
“Nothing,” he said.
“You should make yourself a drink.”
“Why should I make myself a drink?”
“Well, I’m starting to have contractions.”
“What? The last thing I need is a drink! How far apart are they?”
Within minutes, it was clear that we needed to get going.
“Go ask Michelle to feed Tiffany. I’m going to go pack my bag,” I said.
As we waited for the elevator near the front desk of the radiology department, I waved at the evening desk clerk and, with a sheepish grin, told him we were going upstairs to have a baby. And that’s exactly what happened. Brian was born at 9:15 p.m., not four hours after I’d left work. Just before midnight, Dave kissed me good night; hoisted my legs, with the pants still on, over his head; and draped them around his shoulders to make the walk down the same long, deserted hallway I’d traveled early that morning.
Guess I showed them. I’m not a slacker.
The year was 1984. There was no pregnancy leave policy in my department, so my pregnancy and postpartum leave were without precedent. Eager to return to the place I felt most useful, I took only one month away from the office, but not away from work. As a faculty member in the chest section for almost three years, I’d been given my first big lecture assignment, speaking at the Radiology Residents Review Course on mediastinal anatomy and diseases. This was to take place about six weeks after I gave birth to Brian. We thought it reasonable that I take four weeks’ maternity leave, time I could use to practice my talk for the radiology resident review course. I took rehearsing for this talk seriously. I look back on that interlude as the basis for my career as a teacher, which eventually included many teaching awards.
My two physician role models for teaching and lecturing were my father, who was a pathologist at Loma Linda University School of Medicine, and my radiology residency program director, Ike Sanders. As a child in the ’60s, I watched my father put the slides in a Kodak carousel, set up his projector in his and my mom’s bedroom, and project the slides on the white, sliding closet door. He practiced his lectures until they were perfect. He left nothing to chance. My radiology mentor, Dr. Sanders, taught me to “tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them.” He also insisted that every talk be timed so it didn’t go over the allotted interval.
UCSD was one of the first radiology departments to create a review course to help prepare radiology residents for the American Board of Radiology oral exam. In fact, I’d been one of about five hundred anxious senior residents attending the course the second year it was offered. Residents from all over the country squeezed shoulder to shoulder at long tables in a darkened hall from 7:00 a.m. until sometimes 8:00 p.m. for six days. Hundreds of X-ray images flashed on enormous screens in the front of the hall while we scribbled copious notes in the dark, hoping that we could regurgitate the pearls being presented by the time we arrived in Louisville a few weeks later. But it was more than just test taking that weighed on us. This was information that would translate into patient care for the rest of our professional lives. I had been in awe of the UCSD professors’ well-prepared and pertinent lectures. It was a dream come true to be one of them now.
My lack of extremities seemed less important as I settled into my role as a radiologist, however, my missing limbs became more obvious as our family life evolved.
Giggles first, then shrieks of laughter emanated from our bedroom. It was wrassle time, my favorite time of the day. Coming home after a long day at work and pulling off my fake legs, I entered the oasis of our home. No matter how tired I was, seeing my children run toward me energized me for at least three more hours every evening.
Wheeling myself to the edge of our king-size bed, I butt-walked onto it as the kids ran around the corner and flung themselves onto the mattress. Rolling over, I grabbed them with my arm, pulled them up tightly onto my chest, and squeezed them with my short amputated legs. Then I rolled back and forth until we were laughing so hard we couldn’t breathe. It annoyed the heck out of them until they were about three or four years old and could break free from my bear hug of a grip on them.
As they got older and could walk and run, the next game evolved: butt-walk races.
“Who wants to race?” I called out.
In less than a minute, both kids were on the floor with me, butts on an imaginary line, feet out straight.
“Get ready. Get set. Go!” I barked.
Off we went on a race that Mom always won. A race that gav
e the disadvantage to the people who had intact legs. We all sat on the floor with our legs extending in front of us. We made forward progress by lifting each butt cheek up and moving ahead a few inches at a time.
“It’s not fair, Mom!” one of them said.
“My ankles get in the way,” the other said.
“Waa, waa, waa” was always my response. “Aren’t you jealous? See how lucky I am not to have legs?”
I never tired of playing this game, mainly because I always won. In fact, I’ve played it with lots of other people’s kids over the years. It’s the one thing many of them remind me of as they get older—how much fun they had butt-walk racing.
The kids may have lost that game, but it didn’t take long for Tiffany and Brian to discover that they could take advantage of my disability.
“Enough!” I yelled for the umpteenth time. It had been a long afternoon, and the kids were at each other again. Teasing had turned into screaming and finally blows. I had to stop it before someone got hurt. But shouting “enough” had, if anything, only accelerated the feud. I jabbed the joystick on my wheelchair forward, trying to get close enough to administer a good smack to each child. Smart kids that they were, they took one look at me barreling toward them, spun around, and bounded up the stairs to a landing halfway up.
“Just you wait until your dad gets home,” I sputtered.
“You can’t get me, you can’t get me” was their singsong taunt as they stared down at me.
“We’ll see about that.”
Totally frustrated, I turned my wheelchair and went back to the kitchen while they remained in the safety of the stairway landing. When Dave got home, I was waiting for him at the back door. Still annoyed, I told him about the afternoon debacle.
He barely put down his briefcase before calling out, “Tiffany. Brian. Get down here right now!”
They crept down the stairs and faced him.
“Tell me what happened today,” he said.
Their mumbled answers were unsatisfactory. His reach was better than mine, and he spanked both of them.
“From now on, when your mom tells you to do something, you do it. If I ever come home again and hear that you ran away from her, I’ll spank you twice as hard. Do you understand me?”
And so, for the rest of their childhood, if Mom needed to punish them, they made sure they stood right in front of me to get whatever was coming. They were probably the only children in the world who stood still to be spanked. While I know that spanking is frowned upon now, this incident reflects one of Dave’s ironclad rules: it is crucial that parents support each other and present a unified front to their children. Parents are a team; they protect each other.
Dave took care of the financial affairs in our family, mainly because I was terrible at it and partly so I wouldn’t have to worry about them. As soon as he arrived home each evening, he slit open the mail with a kitchen knife and methodically threw out the envelopes or placed the bills in their return envelopes awaiting the check for payment. He did this every single day at the same time, and I learned not to interrupt the process.
The necessity of building a wheelchair-accessible house had been a huge financial burden, in particular because of the sky-high interest rates in the early ’80s. Our original construction loan had been 23.5 percent. When the house was done, Dave had refinanced a “take-out” loan that was a thirty-year mortgage on the house. We had to borrow $5,000 from each set of parents to have enough money in our bank account to qualify for the mortgage, which we got at about 18 percent. He refinanced our mortgage four times over the next three or four years to get the interest rate down to something manageable. Years later, he told me that he would often park on the street across from our house and sit there for a while, wondering how long we’d be able to live there because he didn’t know if we had enough money to keep things going. He said he’d seriously considered taking a moonlighting job or taking out a type of loan from the Navy, known as a dead-horse loan, where they would advance you six months’ salary.
“Have you seen the last bank statement?” Dave asked one evening after supper.
“No,” I snapped at him. “I have no idea where you put it.”
“Well, I need to balance the checkbook tonight, and I can’t find anything in all these shit piles. It’d be really helpful if you’d at least try to stay organized,” he said.
“Stop yelling at me,” I barked, and it went downhill from there.
After five minutes of yelling at each other, I started crying. Dave kept ranting.
Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer. I turned around in my electric wheelchair, accelerated, and ran right into him. He managed to move just enough that I didn’t knock him down.
I couldn’t believe what I’d just done. I was mortified. In all the years since the accident, Dave had never lifted a finger against me. Sure, there’d been lots of yelling, but he’d never hit me or abandoned me. Even when he was “seeing red,” he always helped me put my legs on, pushed my wheelchair, helped me do whatever needed doing. I couldn’t believe I was the one to have finally cracked.
In spite of appearances, we were like most couples in a lot of ways. We struggled and fought over all the same things “normal” couples fight over: money and sex and kids.
“It’s been weeks since we’ve had sex” was the way it would usually start.
“What do you mean?” I’d retort, my heart beating rapidly because I didn’t want to have this conversation. “What about last weekend?”
“What about it? I had to beg you to do it. I’m tired of always being the one to ask. Why can’t you start it for once?”
I knew what he was saying was probably true, but I didn’t want to admit it. I was constantly exhausted, and at times sex was just another chore, not the romantic interlude it had always been before children, jobs, and running a household.
It was probably the typical midthirties-married-couple dilemma, but at that time in my life, I felt an underlying current of fear. My body wasn’t what it used to be, and I wondered if I would be able to continue to attract Dave. The combination of those fears and his frustration usually ended with my crying and telling him it wasn’t his fault. Within the next few nights, I’d put on my sexiest lingerie, hoping that would be a signal that I’d heard him, that I understood, and that, deep down, I was still his Olsie and he was still the only man I wanted.
Our sex life wasn’t of interest to only Dave and me.
“Mom,” Tiffany said one day, “one of my friends asked me how you and Dad have sex.”
“Yeah? And what did you tell her?”
She shrugged her shoulders and said, “‘The same way as your parents, I guess.’”
Sex is something every kid wants to know and talk about until the subject comes around to their own parents. In my mind, I pictured Tiffany cocking her head and sarcastically adding, “I’ve never asked” or “I’m not watching.”
If it was hard for our kids’ friends to believe we had sex, it was even harder for some of their parents to imagine that I could exist at all.
One afternoon, the elementary school principal sought me out as I was picking up Tiffany and Brian from school.
“You aren’t going to believe what happened yesterday,” she said.
With a huge grin on her face, she continued, “RJ’s mom marched into the office, demanding to see me immediately. She said, ‘Tiffany Hodgens is going around telling lies. You need to make her stop! She’s upset RJ so much that he can’t sleep at night.’ I innocently asked her what she could possibly be talking about.” She flashed an impish smile and said, “I knew what was coming but couldn’t help myself.”
“So, what did she say?” I asked.
“She said, ‘She’s going around telling everyone that her mom doesn’t have legs and an arm. You know that’s impossible! You need to stop her from telling these outlandish stories.’ I looked at her and asked, ‘Have you ever met Tiffany’s mom?’ She said no, so I said, ‘Well, maybe
we should introduce you to her. Her name is Linda. She lost both her legs and her right arm before Tiffany and Brian were born. She’s a doctor at UCSD. I’m sure you’ve seen her around; you just didn’t realize it because when she’s out and about, even though she walks with a cane and has only one arm, she looks and acts pretty much like you and me.’”
CHAPTER 10:
Get Out and Go!
“Hey, Linda, when you gonna get your butt back outdoors and go camping? You raising city slickers or real kids?” Carla taunted on the other end of the phone line. I was thrilled to hear her voice.
If anyone knew what it was like to be a city slicker, it was Carla. Seventeen years earlier, I’d been the one to introduce her—buttoned-up and always color coordinated—to the great outdoors when I’d invited her to climb Mount Whitney with me one summer when I was in med school. She’d quickly traded her penny loafers for hiking boots and has since climbed Kilimanjaro, Denali, and the tallest mountains in all fifty US states.
“How about canoeing the south end of Yellowstone Lake with us this summer? It’s off limits to boats with motors, and there aren’t any trails, either, so we’ll probably have the place to ourselves!”
Her enthusiasm was contagious. Until I got off the phone. For minutes after I hung up, I sat motionless in the silence of the kitchen, staring off into space.
Many things disappeared from my life after the accident: playing the piano and pipe organ, riding my racing bike, swimming, and skiing. But what I missed most was being in the mountains. No more hiking or wilderness camping. Never again twirling around on the top of a mountain with my arms stretched to heaven. No more unlacing my hiking boots, pulling off heavy wool socks, and squealing as I gingerly dipped my feet in the icy snowmelt of a rocky mountain stream.
In the stillness, I was afraid. Truly afraid of being out there and knowing I couldn’t experience it the way I wanted to—I, whose teenage dream was to spend her honeymoon backpacking all 211 miles of the John Muir Trail.
Gone Page 15
