by Scott Martin
The Table was located in the Physical Therapy Room. Nestled among the treadmills and stationary bicycles, it seemed innocuous enough. It stood maybe four feet tall and had a brown padded leather top. A strap was buckled across its middle and at one end a metal plate protruded like a footboard. Hardly the type of thing you would expect to find among exercise equipment, but then, neither was the mini kitchen in the corner – although, I would undoubtedly need to relearn the nuances of preparing my own meals at some point.
Amy wheeled me alongside the table and walked around my chair to face me. ‘So this is the table,’ she said, one hand resting on the brown leather cushion. ‘We’re going to start using it twice a day to help you adapt to standing.’
‘Okay. . .’ I said, eyeing the contraption with wary curiosity.
‘It’s not as bad as it might seem. Promise. All you have to do is lie down with your feet against the plate. I’ll strap you in – just a security measure – then slowly rotate the table ninety degrees until you’re vertical and standing on the plate.’
‘Okay. . .’ How hard could it be? I grinned at her. ‘Let’s get this over with.’
As benign as she may have promised The Table to be, the thing still looked like a medieval torture table. Being near a mock-kitchen full of cooking knives didn’t help matters much. Despite my skepticism, I allowed her to help me onto The Table and lay still as I was strapped in. If I had had even the slightest inkling of the pain I was about to endure, I never would have been caught within an arm’s reach of that table.
Neither of us had known the excruciation in store for me, though, and as the table was slowly rotated to vertical, I lay placidly calm, about to unwittingly face the worst pain I had yet to undergo. As it crept to forty-five degrees past horizontal, my weight began to settle in my feet. The closer to vertical the table turned the more intensely aware of my mutilated feet I became. It began like the hyper-awareness you get of freshly scraped skin; crept into sizzling discomfort causing my instincts to shout, ‘Get away!’ as if I were standing on hot coals; then excelled into shooting pain so severe both of my calves seized up in revolt.
‘Ugh!’ I said as we approached seventy degrees.
‘Is something wrong, Scott?’ Amy asked, her voice high-pitched with concern.
‘Mmm…’ I moaned through gritted teeth. ‘Man, that hurts!’
‘It hurts? You might feel some discomfort, but it shouldn’t be unbearable.’ I didn’t want to tell her unbearable had already come and gone. I was soaring off the Wong-Baker Faces Pain Rating Scale and we hadn’t even reached vertical yet.
‘Should I stop?’
A breath hissed through my clenched teeth. I closed my eyes against the pain. Should she stop? Hell, yes, stop! Give me another central line; make me lift more weights – anything but this!
‘Uugghh!’ I groaned and pressed my head against the leather. ‘No.’ The word crept out of the side of my mouth as if hoping to avoid detection.
‘What? Scott? Scott, do you need me to stop?’ she asked, her voice creeping up another octave. I cringed and tried to breathe while suffocating amidst the agony.
‘No. Just. Keep. Going.’
‘Okay. . .’ she sounded about as convinced as I had earlier.
A moment later the table began rotating once more. With each degree adjustment, I was forced to bear more weight on my unhealed feet.
‘Shit!’ I hissed softly when the rotation finally ceased.
‘Scott?’.
I shook my head, still squeezing my eyes shut.
‘Mmmm – I’m okay,’ I lied and tried not to let the tears seep through my clamped lids. If this was what it took to get back to any semblance of my former life, I would do it. But I’d be damned if it wasn’t going to kill me first.
‘All right. . . We’re supposed to hold this for ten minutes, but we can start with five, if you’d prefer.’
Ten minutes?! Ten times sixty seconds of this?? I had to fight hard against the desperate tears and pleas for release bubbling up inside of me. After a few futile moments trying to regain my composure, I shook my head a fraction to the left then a fraction to the right.
‘Ten. . . Minutes. . . ‘s. . . f-fine.’ I can do this, I added to myself, but there was little vehemence behind the words. I could do a lot of things – survive the flesh-eating disease; recover from forty pounds of atrophy as a quadruple amputee; live through nearly bleeding to death; learn to eat with hooks - but this? This was a culmination of everything I had thus endured. This was the sum of each moment of discomfort and torture I had undergone in all of my thirty-five years. Nothing came close to this.
Bile rose in my throat and fire ignited itself beneath my feet. It felt as if they had amputated my feet only yesterday and I was standing on the raw, gaping wounds. Or as if they were slowly, gratingly severing my feet that very instant, the blade slicing through flesh and bone one gradual swipe at a time. I was aware of nothing beyond the excruciating pain in the soles of my body.
For ten torturous minutes I stood in that monotonous onslaught of apocalyptic pain. It seemed as if the clock had stopped rotating the moment I did. I didn’t dare ask Amy how long it had been for fear that only seconds had passed when I felt as if I had just dragged my bare feet through the Sahara and back.
When the time had at last drug by Amy rushed to the side of the table to lower me back to horizontal. As gravity gradually shifted its pull on me, I could feel sweat pouring off the sides of my face. My chest heaved and clothes clung to my body as if I had just finished playing a soccer match that went into extra time. Ten minutes of merely standing on my own two feet had become the equivalent of more than two hours of running.
Amy unstrapped me from The Table and helped roll me into my wheelchair. I tried to forget the torment, but the echo of anguish it left behind kept the memory fresh in my mind. I didn’t want to contemplate how far I’d fallen behind my old self, nor the glaring truth of my new limitations. My hands were only half the story, and after today, I was beginning to think they were the brighter half.
Amy brought me back to my room and helped me into bed. Wanting to be anywhere but alone with my thoughts, I closed my eyes in the hopes of falling into slumber. But doing so only opened the door for more remembering. Phantom pain made me hiss and bend my knees as if to jerk my feet away from the metal plate. How was I going to do that all again? I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.
Well, you’re going to have to because she’s coming to get you for round two in no time, I thought with bitter contempt.
My eyes shot open in panic. What had Amy said? ‘We’re going to start using it twice a day to help you adapt to standing.’ Twice a day. Twice today.
A part of me went numb at the thought. My mind began blockading itself behind brick walls; shutting itself off from the impending torture. I stared at the ceiling and felt my thoughts become laggard as if they were being blindly pulled through a dense fog. I would muster the will to return to the table again and again, but each time a larger part of me was left behind in the room.
~~~
After seven long days of using The Vertical Table twice a day, Amy deemed it too easy (where the hell she got that idea is beyond me) and coerced me into trying to walk with her assistance. I had told myself it was all or nothing for the duration of my recovery: If I didn’t give it everything I had there was no point in doing it at all. So despite my reservations and deep, deep, deep desire to spend no more time than necessary on my feet, by my own resolution I had to follow through.
After another grueling session on The Table, Amy propped her right shoulder under my left arm and, with her arm wrapped around my waist, hauled me from the sanctuary of my wheelchair. The pain was instant and unrelenting. From the moment my weight settled in my feet to my eventual cry for mercy and not-so-hasty retreat to the wheelchair, it was excruciating. Three waddling steps and I was ready to fall to my knees.
Like the pain, though, Amy was unrelenting. My pride and determination
forced me to meet her step for step in my recovery. After I managed to work my way up to walking one lap around the exercise mats, she brought me to the stairwell.
‘Up one level and back down,’ she said as we sat, momentarily at rest, on the landing for the Rehab floor. ‘What do you say?’
I stared up the single flight of stairs to the top floor, trying not to count how many steps it would take. I looked down and my eyes fell eight stories to the ground floor below. Everything sounded hollow inside the stairwell, even my thoughts. If only the pain would be so hollow.
All or nothing, man. All or nothing.
I looked up, stared at the first step before me and said, ‘I’ll walk up to the top. Then I’m walking all the way down to the bottom and back up to here.’
‘Um,’ Amy murmured behind me. I could almost feel her wanting to question me, but she was good at her job and knew better than to caution me against something. She said instead, ‘Let’s do it.’
With her shoulder for support, I embarked on the second most difficult thing I’d ever done in my life. First and foremost was – and I hoped always would be – the bike ride around Lake Winnebago. As a cocky undergrad at UW-Oshkosh I had spouted off that soccer players were in similar condition to professional cyclists amongst the wrong crowd. They challenged me to prove it by riding alongside said professional cyclists during a ninety mile training ride around the lake.
I finished the course with those guys. Ninety miles in less than four hours. Subsequently, my sport gained some respect, as did I for cycling. We shook hands afterwards then went to a bar near campus called Kelly’s for a few of their famous chili dogs and frosty mugs of beer. If only I had a tall, frothy beer waiting for me now.
As I trudged upwards one step at a time, Amy remained a silent bulwark against surrender. She helped me only as much as necessary and said nothing, not even when I groaned, moaned, or swore. At the start of our relationship as patient and therapist she had promised to never feed me a hyped ‘You can do it!’; as those stairs threatened to break me, I found myself surprisingly grateful for her silence. If she were to start cheering for me openly, I couldn’t be sure of my ability to maintain my resolve. Letting yourself down may be the worst part of defeat, but letting those who care about you down was definitely a close second.
As my gripes and grunts echoed off the concrete walls around us, I gritted my teeth and trudged on, descending into purgatory. This was a battle, I told myself. Me versus my handicap. Accomplishing these eighteen floors of stairs may not win the war, but at least for that brief moment, I would come out victorious. I needed all the victories I could get.
By the time we reached the ground floor, I realized fatigue may prove my greatest enemy in this feat. Not that the pain was a picnic – it was sheer, uninterrupted, excruciating agony every step of the way – but without the energy to fight through it, I was hopeless.
With soccer, my mind was constantly analyzing play so there was little opportunity for exhaustion to gain a foothold in my resolve. The stairs, however, like the bike ride around Lake Winnebago, were a combination of fatigue, pain, and mental endurance. There was nothing to distract me from what I was undergoing; no love for the game or thrill of play, only the dull, monotonous walls of the stairwell and the next step before me.
Failure is not an option, I told myself step after step. I would not relent. I would not let my handicap take this from me. Not now, not ever.
I beat back the pain and fended off the weaker part of me that wanted to quit. My life was on the line and I was in no mood to let anybody down.
When my right foot hit the landing of the eighth floor, followed sluggishly by my left, I nearly collapsed against Amy with relief. I was sweating raindrops, panting with the force of a pack of sled dogs, and exquisitely, unequivocally exhausted. My whole body was shaking, my thighs twitching spasmodically, calves shaking with such force it seemed to vibrate up the length of my spine.
‘All right! All right,’ Amy said as I leaned into her. ‘You did it, Scott! You actually did it.’ She helped me fall into the wheelchair and made quick work of getting me back to my room. After helping me crash into bed, she ran off to retrieve a pitcher of ice water. I drank like a man just returned from Hell, trying to drown his memories.
I ordered and ate two lunches that day (the kitchen made a good grilled cheese). Not chili dogs and beer, but it fit the bill. Almost before the last bite could make its way past my throat, I was lost in the bottomless sleep of the fatigued.
~~~
In the midst of all my harrowing progress with walking, I was also gaining ground in the recovery of my upper body, where the process was far more pleasurable. Zenon continued to be a regular visitor to my room and never came without a gift. On his first return after leaving me with his meter gizmo, he came bearing a mock-up of the myoelectric hands that I would be wearing for the rest of my life.
‘They’re not pretty,’ he said as he laid the not yet complete product across my lap, ‘but they’re functional.’
‘You’ve got that right. They’re far from pretty,’ I replied as I eyed the plastic and metal monstrosities. The forearms were made of banausic beige plastic and the hands were a set of skeletal, metal, Terminator-esque fingers.
Zenon shrugged. ‘They’ll have rubber gloves for the hands to make them look more human when they’re finished. And the receptors inside the arms won’t be taped on, either. Regardless, for our purposes today, these will do just fine. Let’s get started, yes?’ I nodded. They may not have resembled “the original equipment,” but even at this premature stage the myos would be preferable to using the hooks. At least I’d have fingers.
I watched as Zenon withdrew a long piece of cloth that looked like a two-foot version of the tube part of a sock from his bag.
‘This,’ he said as he motioned for me to give him my left arm, ‘is what we call a Pull Sock because you can use it to pull your arms on.’ He placed the sock over my proffered arm, drawing it up to the elbow then threading the other end into the left prosthesis and out through a hole just above the wrist. I followed the intricate motion of his fingers and shook my head slightly.
‘Problem number one: You’re not always going to be here to do this for me and I can’t do all that with this.’ I held up my right arm and waved the hand-less end in the air. He looked from me to my right arm to his hands as they finished drawing the surplus of the Pull Sock through the forearm of the myo.
‘We need to solve this before we go much further,’ I told him. He was staring at the myo in his hand like a mathematician confronted with a troublesome equation. I, too, looked at the myo, then at the pull sock drawn up around my arm and through the prosthesis. I figured I could feasibly pull the sock over my arm using my teeth, but there was no way my mouth could fit inside that arm, let alone thread a piece of cloth through a hole. What I needed were fingers.
I glanced at the myos. Fingers, I thought and contemplated the possibility of using one to don the other. But how could I do that without already wearing the first? I was back where I started. Was I going to have to spend the rest of my life wearing at least one arm? A life-long cast. The idea didn’t hold much appeal.
In theory, if I could just get one of the myos on well enough for it to be functional I might be able to fit the other securely then re-do the first arm. That had some potential to work. But I was still left with the problem of not having fingers dexterous enough nor an arm small enough to slide all the way into the second arm and thread the sock through the wrist. I would need something narrow and long to help me push the sock where it needed to go – something that could fit through the specially cut hole in the wrist and which I could hold and maneuver with my other hand.
‘A dowel!’ I exclaimed. ‘A quarter inch in diameter and one foot long dowel.’ Zenon looked at me, eyes narrowed and vision turned inward as he considered my suggestion. ‘If I could slide one arm in to use the hand of that myo, I could use the dowel to thread the pull sock throug
h the hole.’ Zenon remained silent. It could work – I was sure of it! After a pause he began to nod slowly and a sly smile spread across his face.
‘Yes. Yes, we could do that. Then you could use your teeth to pull the sock through and secure the arm into the myo.’ When I just looked at him, he added, ‘I’ll show you.’
He took my sock-covered left arm and slid the myo onto it, then pulled the free end of the sock sticking out of the prosthesis until I could feel it tugging on my arm. Gradually, he pulled it tighter and tighter until my arm was as far into the myo as it could fit. The sock slid off my skin and out through the hole.
I grinned and lifted my new arm. The fit was perfect. I used the skills I’d been practicing with his meter and watched the robotic hand open and close, open and close. It made a strange creaking sound, but what did that matter in the face of the alternatives?
Earlier, Zenon and I had discussed adding a slight inward angle to the right arm to better allow me to use silverware and tweaking the left arm to create a more useful angle for using a drinking glass. After helping me into the right arm, Zenon brought out a fork and glass and asked me to try lifting them for him.
I felt as if I were the driver to Zenon’s race car designer and it was time for a test drive. I could not have been more enthusiastic to comply. With a breath to calm my excitement, I reminded myself this was serious – somewhat serious – business and I needed to focus. Conditioned by the trials and tribulations of the hooks, I was prepared to struggle.
After Zenon wheeled the bedside table with the utensils over my lap, I thought of spaghetti and reached for the fork. My right hand opened wide enough to grab the business end of a baseball bat, but I wasn’t about to be discouraged. Thinking of the meter and a hand closing gradually, I watched as the myo followed my commands. It was surreal to see something so disconnected respond to my thoughts. I felt something like a mental ventriloquist, projecting my thoughts onto an otherwise inanimate object.
