One day I was in Las Vegas, having fun with Vicki and her Manilow friends, and the next I was back home in the hospital.
It was 2004, a week after Labor Day. I was on vacation and went to Vegas with Vicki and crew for a quick five days. We would see Manilow, who was doing a Vegas residency, three times during our stay. It was my first time to Sin City and it was fun.
I went, even though I had another kidney stone begging to come out. Our plans for the trip were already set- I had my plane ticket, hotel reservation and concert tickets and would not be able to get refunds.
I talked to Dr. Rose and he encouraged me to go west. "We can put a stent in so you are comfortable during your trip," he reassured." "We can take care of both the stent and the stone when you get back- that's if you don't pass the stone first."
No big deal. Stents can stay in the body for a while before there is a risk of infection. So, after the stent procedure, I was ready to go.
I drank gallons of water in Vegas in between shows, the casinos and sightseeing. It was 110 degrees there..."dry heat" they call it, whereas when I left home it was a beautiful 76 degrees. By the time I got adjusted to the weather we were ready to leave.
The day after I got back to much cooler Pennsylvania I had am appointment to see Dr. Rose. I felt much better. I did pass the stone during my vacation, so I was to see him in his office to remove the stent from my left side.
Getting out of the car it began to rain. Sprinkles but it looked more threatening to the west. I hurried sliding across my transfer board, which had become wet and slippery from the steadier rain. I lost my balance and fell to the concrete.
I immediately crushed my right femur, the upper thigh bone, the strongest bone in the body. I screamed with the most intense pain I have ever felt in my life, certainly since thirty years ago when I fractured so easily. I lay on the ground, my mind racing. This pain was so familiar yet so foreign as well since this fracture was so devastating.
Mom got help and instead of seeing Dr. Rose I was headed to the hospital, which happened to be adjacent to the medical building. Several nurses came running out. They decided, instead of calling an ambulance, to carry me to the Emergency Room.
It seemed like forever until we burst into the ER and they laid me on a stretcher. More staff gathered in the cubicle. They told me it would hurt when they removed my jeans and socks. I didn't want to look at my right leg. I just wanted them to give me something for the pain.
Cast it and let me go home, like the old days. But it wasn't that simple this time.
They wheeled me to x-ray. More stabbing pain being lifted on the x-ray table and back. Sure enough, my femur was shattered. I could've told them that.
Surprisingly they didn't cast it. Instead, they called Dr. Shift, who was my new Orthopedic doctor since Dr. Nicholson retired, and asked him what to do. Dr Shift was one of the rare local doctors who had seen and treated patients in the past with O.I. I was his only case now.
They admitted me upstairs to a room while Dr. Shift came over from his office appointments to read the x-rays. It was then decided I would need surgery to fix the leg. Sadly, the Operating Room was booked for the next two days. Thursday morning would be mine.
Meanwhile they wanted to set my leg in traction. I refused. So, for the next few days I lay in bed with a fractured leg while my pain was controlled with meds.
They hooked me up with a Morphine drip contraption, where you push a button to get a drop of medicine. You can never get too much. It was set at a certain limit. I was feeling no pain, literally.
Mom felt guilty, as I knew she would, but it was an accident. If it was any one's fault it was mine, for not taking my time to transfer. I had done it a thousand times.
Mom was there all the time during visiting hours, always supporting me. I worried about her. She didn't need this kind of stress at her age. But that was Mom, always there from twenty-one months now to forty-seven years.
I was angry at myself for allowing this to happen. I had been down this road before, as I reassured Mom. I would be OK. But I really didn't believe that. My childhood fractures happened so long ago. It was like a different life, happening to a different person.
Pain meds or not it hurt like hell when they needed me to roll over for any reason. A bedpan, or to change the sheets, or whatever reason. The nurses were great but they were constantly in my room, taking my blood pressure and temperature, dispensing pills, you name it.
I didn't have a roommate so I was able to rest quietly atfer visiting hours were over. I couldn't sleep because I though of everything ahead: my work, the upcoming surgery, the rehabilitation. I missed my dog Louie at home. Word got to my siblings and they all stopped out to visit.
I thought of Jill and wondered what she was doing. I thought of my Manilow pals, my residents at work, my former residents at the Manor, how I got this far, Lori in New England. My mind couldn't stop thinking.
In time my eyes closed, What a long day. Maybe now I could get some sleep.
The next thing I knew I heard someone saying "I hope we can save him!" I was in a fog. Nothing made sense. I heard voices calling me. "Greg, wake up!"
I slowly opened my eyes and saw four nurses on either side of the bed, patting my face and hands, putting extra blankets on me.
"Hi," I groggily moaned, still not clear what was going on.
"Hi back," one nurse replied, still not smiling. "Stay awake, Greg. That's it .Open your eyes for me."
As each moment passed I was wider awake. I soon found out there was a problem with the Morphine drip. The machine either malfunctioned or I had pressed the button one too many times. I was overdosed and luckily someone found me, probably a night nurse who was on a regular schedule to take my vital signs.
After they calmed me down, and calmed themselves down, I was instructed to try and stay alert for a while. I prayed a lot. I was dead tired but there was no way I was going to shut my eyes now.
It wouldn't be over-dramatic to say I almost died that night.
Wednesday was spent resting and getting prepared for tomorrow's surgery. Dr. Shift explained the operation. I couldn't wait to get it over with so I could go home. That's all I thought about, going home.He said they were going to use something called a "spike cast" which I knew nothing about. I was too depressed, anxious and sleepy to care.
Mom said that Louie spent his night under my wheelchair in my bedroom. My supervisor from work stopped by and said not to worry about my duties. Someone sent flowers and it brightened the room.
I was ready for the surgery. I thought after they put me under I would wake up in Critical Care, refreshed, in less pain, and all casted up, on the road to recovery. I was wrong.
I woke up during the surgery. Only for a few seconds but that was enough.
I was sitting in some sort of trapeze-like chair. I screamed. Instantly I was out again.
I remembered that when I woke up. I thought it was a dream or a hallucination. It was neither. I knew it was real. Dr. Shift himself confirmed that when he visited me back in my room later that night.
"You felt it, didn't you?" he asked, almost in a whisper.
I had another bone to pick with Dr. Shift ( pardon the pun).I didn't know a "spike cast" meant plaster up to my chest. I couldn't sit up. For eight weeks. This was not good.
He said he would be around the next day to cut the cast down a bit, but it needed to be that way for the leg to be in position to heal. That's why they had me in the trapeze-like chair during surgery. Setting the bone.
Just like when I was a kid, I was happy to finally go home. The deal was to set up a hospital bed in the living room. My bedroom was much too small, and an ambulance crew would have more room for a stretcher when they came to take me for doctor's appointments. The first was approximately in a month.
Til then I healed. A visiting nurse stopped by every weekday to help Mom. She would give me a sponge bath every other day. Changing the sheets was still an ordeal. I would slide down the bed and the visiting nurse and Mon would have to scoot me back up in position.
I could sit up a little since Dr. Shift altered the cast. That way, food like soup wasn't all over myself or the bed.
I was still on huge amounts of painkillers. Percocet was the drug of choice and it worked well, several times a day. But then I would have to deal with the consequences of constipation and all those other wonderful side effects. It was that or continue to be in pain, so I choose being loopy.
I also wore a Morphine patch several times daily. That really helped. I didn't care about getiting"hooked"- not yet, and neither did the care team as the fractured femur was still healing.
It wasn't the most private thing having a hospital bed in one's living room, but we made due. Sometimes neighbors or friends would just walk right in during a private moment, like using a urinal, but all seemed to understand that the house had turned into a temporary MASH unit.
Poor Louie didn't know me at first. He jumped on the sofa, which was near the hospital bed, and stared at me. I wanted to hug the little fella like always. I missed the days of coming home from work, riding down on the Para transit van's hydraulic lift, and tossing an empty water bottle to Lou. For some reason he got a kick out of that. He always let it bounce once in the driveway, then he would pick it up and turn for the house, leaving me behind.
Every day he and Mom would wait for me on the front porch. When they saw the van pull up it was the same routine for thirteen years- throw the plastic bottle, make the grab, and into the house. Lou played with it for a few minutes, crunching it up, but God help me if I forgot the bottle. If looks could kill.
I lay there, alone at night after Mom turned in, thinking. It seemed like I would never be myself again. I worked so hard to get to where I was. I listened to my transistor radio, like the old days, and some nights I would cry. I would never let Mom see that. I had to keep my hopes up high. Without hope there is nothing.
The weeks dragged into months. Appointments came and went. Before Christmas I got the best present of al- my cast was removed. A good three months after the accident.
I felt like a baby chick just hatched from the shell. Weak, fragile, uncertain. This time the ambulance guys took me back to my own bed. It was so nice to be back in my own bed! The hospital bed, thank God, was gone.
Now came my own personal rehab. I had been through this before. The real issue was transferring on my own. I had to get over being afraid, since it was due to a transfer that I fell. I couldn't stay in bed forever. So that first morning it literally took me a long time to slide from my bed into my wheelchair. It only took seconds before. Now it was painstakingly slow and deliberate.
I finally made it and let out a big sigh of relief. I was able to be independent again. Mom was a blessing, as always, but I missed my independence for three months. Simple things like wheeling into the kitchen or the bathroom or outside to get the mail. You never know how much you miss your freedom until it's gone.
I relearned how to transfer to the toilet ( no more bedpans). I learned again how to transfer to my shower chair ( no more sponge baths). It was nice to get dressed again and out of pajamas. It was nice to feel like me again.
There was one more thing to do; get off the painkillers. Easier said than done.
I decided I had enough of the Percocet so I stopped taking it. That was OK with Dr. Shift, who no longer wanted to prescribe it unless I really needed it. I had enough of the wicked side effects. So I went cold turkey and felt fine.
The Morphine patches were another story. The doc weaned me down from fifty percent strength to twenty-five and so forth. Still, I had nights where I went through withdraw. Nights I couldn't sleep and watched info commercials all night. Nights I shook and broke out in cold sweats, wondering if I was going to die. But I beat it in time.
In early February I was just about myself. I got the green light from the doctor to return to work.I was never so happy, after five months of being inactive. I was only too glad to leave the countless crossword and word-find puzzles behind to keep me occupied.
Only on my first day back, along with an office party to greet me, I got a major surprise waiting for me.
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