by Don Piper
Unfortunately for me, that part of the technique didn’t work—the bones healed, but they attached themselves to each other. Consequently, I have no pronation or supination in my left arm—my arm does not straighten out at the elbow, and I can’t turn palms up or palms down. When I extend my arm, my hand is always in a hand-shaking position. My hand cannot twist either right or left. I know all this seems barbaric, and at the time it felt like it. But like the Ilizarov, it works.
Yes, the Ilizarov device worked—and it was also the most painful process I endured as part of my recovery.
The stainless steel Ilizarov on my leg weighed about thirty pounds, and the external fixator on my arm probably weighed another twenty. Whether I was in my wheelchair (about eight months), on my rolling walker (three more months), or eventually my crutches (four more months), I carried that extra weight around for nearly a year.
Can you imagine the strange stares I received everywhere I went? People gasped and gawked at a man in a wheelchair with steel rods sticking out all over his body.
Virtually every time I made my routine visit to Dr. Greider’s office in my wheelchair, the reaction of the other patients was universal. Though each wore casts or braces or walked on crutches, all of them would stare at me and my rods and halos. Then without fail, someone would say somewhat sardonically, “Wow, and I thought I was bad off.” Occasionally, someone would even add, “After seeing you, I feel better.” For a long time, I became the standard by which painful injury was judged.
I’ve often kidded others that because of all this “metalwork,” if archaeologists discover my body years from now, they’ll think they’ve found a new species! My anatomy has been completely rearranged.
Never again will I take simple physical ability for granted. During my recovery, even the tiniest movement was a miracle. Every time I relearned how to do something, it felt like an achievement.
Only later did I understand how hard Dr. Greider had worked to find a way to save my left leg and arm. I’ll always be grateful that he didn’t just give up on me.
My right knee was crushed, and I wore a cast on it for quite some time. They put a small, mesh basket around the kneecap so it would heal. My right arm was the only limb that didn’t break.
Even with the success of the Ilizarov frame, however, the pain didn’t leave—not for one minute.
I wonder how many times I asked, “How long?” I wanted to know how long I’d have to endure the device, how long before I’d know if it worked, how long before I’d walk again.
No one would—or could—give me an answer, but I kept asking anyway.
“A few months,” was the usual answer.
“How few?” I persisted.
One of the doctors finally said, “Many months. Maybe longer.”
“You mean possibly a few years?”
“Yes, perhaps years.”
“And there’s no guarantee that I’m going to be able to keep these limbs?”
“There’s no guarantee. An infection could come on suddenly, and we’d be forced to remove your leg.”
“You mean I could endure this for months and still end up with no leg?”
He nodded.
Obviously, that wasn’t what I wanted to hear. Even though Eva had told me the same thing, denial must have set in. I kept seeking a guarantee that I would fully recover.
I wanted answers, but perhaps even more than that, I wanted assurance that I would be well. I wanted to be normal again. I wanted to be able to walk out of the hospital on my own two legs and go back to my former way of life. No one was willing—or able—to give me those assurances.
Many months passed, but one day I did walk back into that hospital and hug all those nurses.
During the months after I received the Ilizarov frame, I had other problems. I developed infections—several times. Each time, I faced the reality that it might rage through my body and I would wake up without my leg.
I also had infections after they released me. Three times I had to be rehospitalized, put in isolation, and receive massive amounts of antibiotics to cure the infections.
Even then, many nights I prayed, God, take me back to heaven. I don’t know why you brought me back to earth. Please don’t leave me here.
God’s answer to that prayer was still “no.”
I still don’t know all the reasons, but in the months and years ahead, I slowly understood at least some of the reasons I had returned to earth.
The healing process had begun. As I lay in that hospital bed day after day, I slowly acknowledged that God had sent me back to earth. I couldn’t figure out why I had to endure the physical suffering, but I kept thinking of the words of David Gentiles. He and others had cried out in prayer for me to live. Because God had answered them, there had to be a purpose in my staying alive.
Through days of intense agony, I would remember David’s words. Sometimes the sense that God had a purpose in my being alive was all that kept me going.
I was in Hermann ICU for twelve days. Then I stayed four to five days in Hermann Hospital before they transferred me down the street to St. Luke’s Hospital. Both hospitals are part of the world’s largest medical center. I remained in St. Luke’s for 105 days. Once I was home, I lay in bed for thirteen months and endured thirty-four surgeries. Without question, I am still alive because people prayed for me, beginning with Dick Onerecker and other people around the country, many of whom I’ve never met.
That’s perhaps the biggest miracle: People prayed and God honored their prayers.
As I look back, I see how many people God used to save me. Dick Onerecker saved my life by his continued praying. Dr. Greider saved my leg and my arm and got me through that initial surgery. Dr. Houchins saved my life after the surgery because of his bulldog determination to keep me alive. The courageous nurses of the orthopedic floor of St. Luke’s Hospital cared for me day and night. Each of them played a vital role.
I attribute leaving ICU alive to the prayers of David Gentiles and the others. “We’re taking over from here. You don’t have to do a thing to survive. We’re going to pray you through this.”
I knew I wasn’t going to die.
God’s people wouldn’t let me.
8
PAIN AND
ADJUSTMENTS
Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. Do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will uphold you with my victorious right hand.
ISAIAH 41:10
Even though they didn’t realize it, visitors made my situation worse. They cared for me and wanted to express that concern. Because they cared, they did the most natural thing in the world—they visited my hospital room. That was the problem.
The constant flow in and out of my room exhausted me. I couldn’t just lie there and allow them to sit with me or talk at me. Maybe I needed to function in my role as pastor or felt some kind of obligation to entertain them. I didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings by asking him or her to leave or not to come.
Many days, I smiled and chatted with them when all I really wanted to do was collapse. Sometimes the intense pain made it almost impossible for me to be a good host, but I still tried to be gracious. I kept reminding myself that they cared and had made an effort to see me.
Between friends, relatives, and church members, I felt as if a line stretched from the front door of the hospital to my room. Eva came in one afternoon and realized how much the visitors disturbed me. She chided me for allowing it.
I think she figured out that I wouldn’t tell anyone not to come back, so she asked the nursing staff to cut back on the number of visitors they allowed. It didn’t stop everyone from coming, but it did cut down the traffic in and out of the room.
Besides the pain and the flow of people in and out of my room, I lived in depression. A large part of it may have been the natural result of the trauma to my body and some of it may have been my reaction to the many drugs. I believe, however, that because I faced an unknown outc
ome and the pain never let up, I kept feeling I had little future to look forward to. Most of the time I didn’t want to live.
Why was I brought back from a perfect heaven to live a pain-filled life on earth? No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t enjoy living again; I wanted to go back to heaven.
Pain has become a way of life for me since the accident, as I am sure it has for many. It’s curious that we can learn to live with such conditions. Even now, on rare occasions when I am lying in bed after a good night’s sleep, I will suddenly notice that I don’t hurt anywhere. Only then am I reminded that I live in continuous pain the other twenty-three hours and fifty-five minutes of each day.
It took a while for me to realize how profoundly my condition affected my emotions.
I prayed and others prayed with me, but a sense of despair began to set in. “Is it worth all this?” I asked several times every day.
The doctors and nurses kept trying to push medications on me for my depression, but I refused. I’m not sure why. Perhaps because I had so much medicine in me, I didn’t want any more. Besides, I didn’t think more medicine would do any good.
I wanted to be free from my miserable existence and die. Obviously, I felt wholly unequipped to deal with that turn of events. I now know that I was a textbook depression case.
Soon everyone else knew it too.
“Would you like to talk to a psychiatrist?” my doctor asked.
“No,” I said.
A few days later, one of the nurses asked, “Would you like me to call in a therapist? Someone you could talk to?”
My answer was the same.
Because I didn’t want to talk to anyone, what I called “stealth shrinks” began to creep into my room.
“I see you’ve been in a very severe accident,” one undercover psychiatrist said after reading my chart. He tried to get me to talk about how I felt.
“I don’t want to talk about the accident,” I said. The truth is, I couldn’t. How could I possibly explain to anyone what had happened to me during the ninety minutes I was gone from this earth? How could I find words to express the inexpressible? I didn’t know how to explain that I had literally gone to heaven. I was sure that if I started talking that way, he’d know I was crazy. He’d think something had gone dreadfully wrong with my mind, that I had hallucinated, or that I needed stronger drugs to take away my delusions. How could I put into words that I had had the most joyful, powerful experience of my life? How could I sound rational by saying I preferred to die? I knew what was waiting, but he didn’t.
I had no intention of talking to a psychiatrist (or anyone else) about what had happened to me. I saw that experience as something too intimate, too intense to share. As close as Eva and I are, I couldn’t even tell her at that time.
Going to heaven had been too sacred, too special. I felt that talking about my ninety minutes in heaven would defile those precious moments. I never doubted or questioned whether my trip to heaven had been real. That never troubled me. Everything had been so vivid and real, I couldn’t possibly deny it. No, the problem was I didn’t want to share that powerful experience with anyone.
That didn’t stop the psychiatrists from coming into my room and trying to help me. After a few times, they didn’t tell me they were psychiatrists. It’s humorous now, but the hospital psychiatrists were determined to help me. After I refused to talk to them, they would sneak into my room and observe me. Sometimes they came in while a nurse was working on me. Other times they came in and studied my chart and said nothing, and I assumed they expected me to start a conversation.
Often they’d walk in and say something like, “I’m Dr. Jones,” but nothing else. The doctor might check my pulse and ask, “How’s your stomach?” He’d examine my chart and ask pertinent questions. Eventually, he’d give himself away with a simple question such as “How do you feel today?”
“About the same.”
“How do you really feel about all of this?” No matter how they varied the routine, they always asked how I really felt.
“You’re a psychiatrist, aren’t you?” I’d ask.
“Well, uh, actually, yes.”
“Okay, what do you want to know? You want to know if I’m depressed? The answer is I’m very depressed. And I don’t want to talk about it.”
The conversations went on, but I’ve blotted most of them from my mind. Even though I knew Dr. Jones and the others were trying to help me, I didn’t believe there was any hope. I hated being depressed, but I didn’t know what to do about it.
The longer I lay in bed, the more convinced I became that I had nothing to look forward to. Heaven had been perfect—so beautiful and joyful. I wanted to be released from pain and go back.
“Why would anyone want to stay here after experiencing heaven?” I asked God. “Please, please take me back.”
I didn’t die, and I didn’t get over my depression.
I didn’t just refuse to talk to psychiatrists; I didn’t want to talk to anyone about anything. I didn’t want to see anyone. I would have been fine if no one visited me—or so I told myself.
In my depression, I just wanted to be left alone so I could die alone, without anyone trying to resuscitate me.
I also had enough pride as a professional and as a pastor that I didn’t want anyone to see how bad off I was. I don’t mean just the physical problems; I didn’t want them to know about my low emotional state either.
When people did get into the room to see me, of course, their words and gazes made me feel as if they were saying, “You’re the most pitiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
I guess I was.
And so the depression continued. It would be a long time before God would give me another miracle.
I was the father of three children, the husband of a wonderful wife, and until the accident, a man with a great future. I was thirty-eight years old when the accident happened and until then, the picture of health and in great physical shape. Within days after my accident, I knew I would never be that virile, healthy man again. Now I was utterly helpless. I couldn’t do anything for myself, not even lift my hand. Deep inside, I feared I would be helpless for the rest of my life.
As an example of my helplessness, I had not had a bowel movement for the first twelve days in the hospital. Knowing my system would turn septic, they gave me an enema, but that didn’t do much good.
I say “not much good” because I would pass a tiny amount and the nurse or nursing assistant would smile with delight.
One day I managed to squeeze out a tiny bit. “Oh, that’s so good. We’re so happy for you. Let’s wait. Maybe there’ll be more.”
In my depression, I’d think, This is the most pitiful experience in my life. I’m like a baby and everybody gets excited over a tiny bowel movement.
I don’t remember what I said to the nursing assistant, but I’m sure I wasn’t pleasant.
She left the room. That was one of those rare times when no one was visiting. I was totally alone and glad for the peace and quiet.
Within minutes after the nurse left, the enema took effect.
I exploded. I had the biggest bowel movement I’ve ever had in my life. The odor overwhelmed me.
In my panic, I clawed through the sheet and my fingers finally found the call button. Seconds later, the young nursing assistant raced into the room.
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to do this,” I said. “I’ll help you clean it up.” The words had no sooner left my mouth before I realized I couldn’t help her. I felt terrible, helpless, and loathsome.
I started to cry.
“No, no, no, don’t worry about a thing. We’re just so happy that you did it. This is good because it means your system is beginning to work again.”
In humiliation, I could only lie there and watch the poor young woman change everything. It must have taken her at least half an hour to clean up and then at least twice that long for the odor to vanish.
My embarrassment didn’t leave me, even th
ough my mind tried to tell me differently. I had barely taken in any food for twelve days and this was a real breakthrough. I, however, could only think that this was one of the most embarrassing events in my life.
As awful as it seemed to me, more embarrassing, helpless experiences caught up with me. I had to have a urinal; I couldn’t wipe myself; I couldn’t shave. I couldn’t even wash my hair. They had to bring special devices to lay my head in and pour water over my hair and then drain it down a tube to a garbage can. In yet another act of incredible kindness, Carol Benefield, who had cut my hair for years, came to trim my hair several times while I was confined to my bed. For these sixty-mile round-trips, Carol would accept no money whatsoever.
Friends, family, and medical personnel found ways of providing for all of my physical needs, but I could only think of myself as being completely, utterly helpless. My right arm, the one that hadn’t been broken, had so many IVs in it that they had a piece of wood taped to me so I couldn’t bend the arm.
I had IVs everywhere. They ran into my chest and entered the tops of my feet. They lined up in a major tube that went directly to my heart through my chest. Many of my veins collapsed. I was so completely incapacitated they had to lift me off the bed with chains to change my bedding or do anything else that required moving me.
I was losing weight at an alarming rate, which scared the doctors. I just couldn’t eat anything and atrophy had set in. During the nearly four months I stayed in the hospital, I lost about sixty pounds. Before the accident I had weighed 210, and I got down to less than 150. The only way they could determine my weight was to put me in a sling like a baby to lift me up off the bed and weigh me. They tried to coax me into eating and tempted me by preparing my favorite foods, but nothing tasted good. Just the smell of food nauseated me. I had no appetite. I tried to eat, I really did, but I couldn’t handle more than a few bites.
I assumed that depression stopped me from eating, although I don’t know if that was the cause. I do know that when I tried, I couldn’t force myself to chew anything. I didn’t even want to swallow.
