broken leg – Memphis Flyer

I’m learning to walk again. It was odd at first. After more than two months of being unable to bear weight on my left foot after an April 13th fall, broken bones, and three subsequent surgeries, my brain had begun to rewire itself not to, under any circumstance, step on that foot — or else. Or else, what? I wasn’t sure of the medical specifics, other than it would undoubtedly hurt and it could hinder the healing. Incredibly cautious and afraid of the consequences, I have exercised great care in this endeavor and have become increasingly skilled at hopping on one foot while using a walker and balancing on the good foot while standing. Not skills I’d ever thought I’d master, but hey, my right leg is a lot stronger now. And I can challenge anyone to a standing-on-one-foot timed battle. Who’s up for it?

Since I was given the green light from the surgeon to bear weight — still with caution, and in an orthopedic boot — I’ve had to relearn, in a way, how to walk. At first, I was scared. Is my ankle going to collapse when I stand? Will the titanium plate snap out of place? Are fragments of my healing tibia and fibula going to crumble again beneath the weight of my body? And beyond that, it just felt downright weird to put that foot on the ground — tingly, as if it had just awoken from a monthslong slumber, burning a bit as the nerves reignited to do the job they’ve done for decades. Just like riding a bike, I suppose, but accompanied by some strange lighting strikes of pain and a brain that didn’t want to cooperate.

Last week, it started slowly, a step here and there as I remembered how to put one foot in front of the other, how to balance on two legs, expecting it to hurt. And it has. After the first full day of “walking” — some with a walker and some without, still in the boot and a little off-kilter — it felt like I’d traversed the expanse of Disney World, stood in long lines, and suffered the sorest feet (or foot) I’d ever felt. But the most I’d done was walk from the parking lot into the movie theater for a showing of Inside Out 2. (It was a great movie, by the way. I might have enjoyed it more than my niece and nephew. Among others, the part about losing joy as we grow up got me right in the feels.)

In this experience of learning to walk again, finding balance, and rewiring my brain to physically move forward once more, I’m struck with the notion that this applies to other parts of my life. Much has changed for me in the past year — in nearly equal parts good and bad — and even more in the last few months. In more than the literal sense, I’m learning to walk again — in the same environment with new characters, new challenges, new feelings I have to feel my way through. Sometimes it’s like looking at a dusty old box of pictures and letters with yellowing pages, so crisp as you pull at the folds. There’s not a lot of room for looking back though — wallowing in the holes left by a sister that’s moved far away, a dog that’s died, friendships that have grown apart. It stings and burns and pulls at the heart strings in a way that’s not conducive to the forward momentum needed to inspire those steps toward the future. And a voice inside quietly says, “Don’t look at them. It’s going to hurt.”

If you can rely on nothing else, you can on this: Change is a constant. We may want to cry and holler and resist when it comes, but it’s inevitable. In embracing mine, and in relearning to walk — literally and figuratively — I’ll try to muster the joy and gleeful vigor that’s seen in a baby taking its first steps. The whole world is new from an upright position, waddling unbalanced to and fro, tripping and falling down now and then. Both feet on the ground, wide eyes and a toothy grin, and so much — a lifetime — to look forward to.

I can’t even think about my bones. I’m not sure why, but envisioning the inside of my body — nerves, muscles, veins, and organs — gives me the ick. I’m the type to faint while a nurse gathers blood for a routine lab test. And I’ve learned my veins are small and hard to find, so even the pushing and prodding of my flesh as they attempt to plump up a good one to poke makes me woozy. Once I was watching a TV show where a character had undergone breast augmentation surgery and described the feeling as having salt rocks in her chest, and I went pale and tingly and had to splash cold water on my face and lie down on the bathroom floor. Until recently, although I’m probably the clumsiest person I know, I’d prided myself on never having broken a bone. All my structural pieces were intact and in working order, aside from some likely weak tendons from many ankle sprains through the years — most recently a gnarly sprain to the left ankle last May (and another the previous December). Walking is harder than one might think.

Today, there are seven prescription bottles on my nightstand, and I am writing this from bed with my left foot iced and elevated on a pile of pillows. Some of you may have noticed I’ve been absent from this space for a few weeks — and a shiny new table of contents with accompanying photos teasing the week’s feature stories took the place of my editorial. We already had plans to occasionally run an illustrated table of contents in lieu of an editor’s note on those pesky weeks when words escaped me, but wound up launching it unannounced. I was down for nearly a week in early April with a flu-like illness, and in my feverish haze was unable to conjure up a column. So the first of the designed table of contents pages was set forth into the world. When I started feeling better, I decided to get dressed and go visit a friend. I’d been cooped up for days, swapping out one pair of pajamas for another, and at that point needed desperately to speak to another human in person before turning into a goblin. I put on some makeup and real pants and my favorite clunky platform Doc Martens (middle-school Shara would think today Shara was so cool with those boots) and left the house — free at last!

As I mentioned above, walking is harder than one might think, especially for a person who is prone to rolling their ankle, and even more especially when that person is wearing heavy platform boots. All I know is I was walking down the sidewalk one second, and the next I was on the ground in pain. When I managed to get that super-cool boot off, my ankle shifted unnaturally and sort of dangled at the end of my leg like a pendulum on a grandfather clock. Needless to say, a trip to the emergency room was in order, and what followed was as close to me living my actual nightmares as I’ve yet to get in this life. (I had to think about my bones!)

Medical staff sedated me and attempted to perform a manual “reduction” on the dislocated ankle. A funny aside, one of the medications they gave me before the procedure was propofol, which, a nurse informed me while I was still somewhat alert, was the drug that killed pop star Michael Jackson. After a dose of morphine that didn’t quite do the trick, I saw them coming toward me with another needle and asked, “Is that the Michael Jackson drug?” Then proceeded to sing, “got to be startin’ somethin’ …” as I drifted off to dreamland (I have no recollection of this). The reduction — basically several medical professionals roughly tugging at my foot — was unsuccessful, there was mention of risk of necrosis, and I was rushed to the OR for surgery. I awoke with metal pins in both sides of my heel and two in my shin. The contraption — a multiplanar external fixator, to be exact — holding everything together was bulky, heavy, and increasingly uncomfortable, and I laid up for several days in the hospital awaiting the second surgery, in which I had a titanium plate installed to hold my “blasted” fibula in place. (The surgeon said the mess I made by simply falling looked like a “high-impact” injury. I never half-ass anything.) There’s a pin in there somewhere holding things in place that will have to be removed in a few weeks. So, yeah, a broken fibula and tibia, a dislocated ankle, 30 staples, bionic parts, and seven nights and eight days in the hospital. (I’ll spare you the gruesome photo of my mangled Frankenstein leg.) The past couple of weeks since surgery have been both physically and mentally taxing, as I consider myself an incredibly independent (and stubborn) person — laying around unable to do things on my own is a pain unlike any other. Well, aside from that hospital bill.

Anyhow, that’s where I’ve been. I’ll be recovering for several more weeks at least but now I’m on the other side of the worst of this ordeal (and mostly out of the pain-killer coma). See you here again soon. In the meantime, don’t break a leg!