CHAPTER 20
Try On
Slow and steady wins the race.
THE TORTOISE AND THE HARE, AESOP
AS EXCITED AS I WAS TO BE GETTING A NEW LEG, THAT’S HOW matter-of-fact Bill seemed when Tuesday and I rolled up to him in the Jewell Clinic hallway.
“Hey, Luis,” he mumbled. “Hi, Tuesday.”
“Hi, Bill,” I answered, trying to regain my composure for the important business ahead. “Sorry to be such a mess. But a German shepherd just attacked Tuesday on the lawn outside. I can’t believe that just happened.”
“That was Tuesday?” Bill said softly. “Yeah, I heard a commotion outside.”
“It was really something,” I told him, still a little breathless and edgy. “But we’re ready to go. We’re here.”
“Okay,” Bill said, leading us into the examining room and leaving the door open. “Why don’t you wait here, and I’ll go get the leg.”
No, Bill wasn’t much of a talker. But if this was Christmas morning, he was Santa Claus. He had the only present I wanted this year.
Regardless of what had just happened outside, I wasn’t going to let anything interfere with our long-awaited appointment inside. The only exception, of course, would have been if Tuesday had needed medical attention, which he didn’t. Maybe if I’d gotten my hand bitten off, in which case I would need a hand and a leg. But short of that, Tuesday and I had a 9 A.M. slot with Bill the prosthetist, and damned if we weren’t right on time. I took a small piece of pride in that. Nothing, not even a mad dog attack, could stop us now. Who cared if we didn’t look our usual, crisp selves?
“Sit and relax,” I told Tuesday, who I could tell still needed another minute or two.
Certainly Tuesday still looked disheveled. He wasn’t his shiny coat, impeccably groomed self. He’d need a thorough brush out and probably a whole lot more. I saw a dog bath and shampoo in his near future. And still I looked far worse than he did. My Ace bandage was soaked and blackened. My shirt and shorts were stained and wet. I was scuffed up in ways I was just realizing, and that was just what I could see while sitting there. And it hit me, my finger was pulsing with pain. The ring finger on my right hand. I didn’t know if it was broken or sprained or what. But somehow it had gotten jammed in the tussle. And now I couldn’t make it go straight.
While we waited for Bill to return, Lina, a nice VA desk manager, came in to check on us and noticing my discomfort, offered to tape up the finger for me. “I can wrap the two middle fingers together to keep the injured one more secure,” she suggested. That sounded good to me.
Several people who’d been outside—VA workers, I believe—wandered in to say hello.
“Are you okay?” they kept asking.
I should have just thanked everyone for their concern. But I probably just mumbled back. I was even more upset than I realized. The attack outside had been so unexpected and completely unprovoked. I was having trouble believing I’d just jumped into the middle of a dog attack to save Tuesday. The VA is supposed to be a safe environment. That’s a given for humans, but it should also be true for service dogs. Tuesday had been assaulted by another dog like this only one other time. That was in Brooklyn. We certainly weren’t looking to make a habit of it. Now, I was just trying to shake off my grumpiness and focus on what was coming next. I’d climbed into the cab happy and I wasn’t going to let that shepherd rob me of this much-needed reason to smile.
Finally, quiet Bill returned with his hands full. “This is your leg,” he said.
It was the Ottobock Genium C-Leg and the socket he had made from the plaster mold. I couldn’t believe my new leg and I were finally in the same room.
It looked just like the picture and the videos I’d seen on the Ottobock website. What was I expecting? I don’t know. But I was still thrilled to see it in person. I’d never had someone present me with a body part before—not too many people have—and this one was about to become mine.
I’m not quite sure what to compare it to. Like a life preserver floating by in the ocean? Like meeting a new friend? The feeling was unlike anything I’d ever had or imagined. I stared at it for a good, long moment, just taking it in. It was incredible. I thought the leg looked sleek, modern, and cool. I sure hoped it worked as well as it looked. I couldn’t wait to slide it on.
“This is my new leg,” I called over to Tuesday. “It’s called a C-Leg. Pretty cool, huh?” He cocked his head to the side. A disembodied leg was not something he’d seen before.
At Bill’s instruction, I had brought a new pair of tennis shoes along—a pair of Nike running shoes. Perhaps it was a little presumptuous at this stage in recovery, but fitting nonetheless. I put the left shoe on my own foot and I handed him the right. He slipped it onto the foot of the C-Leg, tying the laces and adjusting the shoe.
Each move made the leg seemed closer to real, closer to what I’d so eagerly anticipated. Tuesday was staring intently at me, picking up on my nervous excitement. This is really happening, I thought to myself. I was trying to take everything in.
The next thing that struck me was how big the socket was. We don’t usually think about how wide the top of our legs are where the edge of the hip meets the top of the thigh. It’s the widest part of your leg and usually the least noticed part. You are at least vaguely aware of the size of your ankle, your knee, and your calf. But not this part. The circumference of your leg up there is probably larger than you realized. I know mine is. The socket of my new leg had to match that precisely. Otherwise, the leg wouldn’t fit as snugly as it should.
It is not just the thigh the socket wraps around. It is the hip too. Before the operation, I’d never given any of this much thought. In the movies, didn’t a prosthetic just snap into place? But I’d since learned from the websites and literature and online videos that the flushness from the thigh to the hip is what provides the leverage and support. That maximizes the stability. That’s what allows someone to move and walk. Still, none of my research had completely prepared me for this moment. Now that I was staring at the actual leg, I was seeing all of this from a whole new angle. It was fascinating, intimidating, and thrilling all at once.
“This is amazing, Tuesday,” I said.
Bill might not feel like talking, but I knew Tuesday was always happy to converse.
With a nod and furry shake, I got a firm “you bet” back. He was at least as excited as I was.
Now, Bill was ready for action.
He had me move between the parallel bars that took up a large part of the room.
“Put this on,” he said, handing me the liner, a poly-fiber sleeve that would sit between the socket and my stump.
He pointed at my upper leg. “Make sure there are no air pockets,” he said. “There can’t be any room.”
I did as Bill told me, just the way I’d seen in videos, and pulled the liner up as tightly as I could.
“Now, stand,” he said.
I did, holding onto the rails for stability.
“I have to feel the very top of your leg,” he warned me. I’m glad he warned me first because that was a little uncomfortable, the way he had to grab up there, in the tight and narrow fold where my butt meets the top of my leg.
“Do what you have to,” I told him. These are not places I was used to having a lot of company.
But this was important, I knew. He needed to check up there to see that the seal of the socket was airtight. I’d have to deal with any discomfort and cooperate.
I stood there, between the parallels, not sure what came next. Then Bill placed my prosthetic leg right in front of me.
“Now,” he said, “I want you to take your residual leg with the sleeve and slide that into the socket and the prosthetic leg.”
Shhhuck! The leg slipped right in.
He pointed my attention to a white, quarter-size button near the upper part of the leg. “Once the leg is in, you press this button to create a vacuum.”
The goal, he explained, was to deliver my residual leg into the socket as far down as possible while using the button to release the air and create a vacuum that will hold it in place. I felt like I was back in high school physics class.
I wiggled the stump slightly in and out and from side to side until Bill was convinced it was all the way in.
It felt like it was to me.
I had a right leg.
It wasn’t my flesh-and-blood leg. It was a leg some genius engineer had manufactured for me. But it was still one hell of a leg. And I was standing on it. Seeing it coming out of my hip and my thigh, I have to say, it felt pretty damn awesome.
For the first time in nearly two months, I really felt as though I was standing. I felt balanced. Not confident. Not secure. Not proficient yet. Not close to any of that. But I didn’t feel off-kilter the way I had been feeling, living with only half the usual number of legs.
Now, I felt like I had retrieved an important counterbalance that I hadn’t even known I needed until it was gone. This was the exact 180-degree opposite of phantom limb pain. Now, I had a limb. I was feeling limb sensation instead of phantom-limb sensation which is a whole lot more pleasing, I can promise you that. I felt comfortable. Balanced. I’d felt somewhat balanced with crutches, but this was better. Better than having the best crutches on earth. I don’t want to say the leg made me feel whole. It made me feel whole in a way I hadn’t felt since before the amputation.
“Put a little weight on it,” Bill directed.
I did. And then I put a little more. And a little more.
In the research I had done, I had learned that many amputees are initially reticent and don’t trust the leg. Naturally, I wanted to do the opposite. I wanted to push the envelope.
I shifted, trying to place half my weight on the new leg and then stood as normally as I could. It wasn’t surprising but definitely a relief to discover the new leg could hold me. It really was a leg.
Of course, I hadn’t gone anywhere with it yet. I hadn’t moved at all from the exact spot where I’d first stood. Both sneakers were planted in place. The new leg hadn’t shown its stuff, and neither had I. The parallel bars were there if I needed them. But I didn’t. I was holding myself up without the bars.
I think Bill was impressed I could hold myself up at all and shift my body weight around. I was determined to be the best prosthetic patient he’d ever had.
“Most people aren’t able to do that initially,” Bill told me. “It’s not just about the strength. You have to trust the leg. It can take time to be able to stand and balance. Walking and then running will come after that.”
I knew the answer, but I asked the question anyway, “Do we really have to wait?”
Our session had been scheduled for ninety minutes, and I didn’t want to waste any of it. As I stood on the leg, I concentrated hard on not holding onto the rails.
Occasionally, I had to reset my balance. But one day soon, while walking on the sidewalk with Tuesday at my side, I knew there wasn’t going to be any bar to hold onto. I didn’t want to allow myself even a moment of feeling dependent on these.
I understood the whole concept of training wheels. I’d used them as a boy when I learned to ride a bicycle. Even then, I remember balancing myself on the two skinny tires, challenging myself not to let the tiny side wheels touch the ground. And as I recall, the best thing about a good pair of training wheels was the glorious day you could rid yourself of them.
“I’m ready to take some steps here,” I told Bill.
Bill nodded and invited me to take some short ones.
“Hold onto the bars and take a couple,” he said.
Immediately, I could tell, this walking thing was something I would really have to learn. Or relearn. Or forget what I had learned before and learn all over again. Whatever it took, there was no looking back anymore. It was time to get started—one baby step at a time.
Walking, it turned out, was far more complicated than I realized.
Bill assessed how I was standing, then he coached me on how to move my hip back and then swing the leg forward. He watched me try it a couple of times, then he stopped me to adjust the leg. He fiddled with the ankle. He studied my gait and my stance again. Then, he turned something in the knee. Those changes were very subtle. I couldn’t really tell what he did. But he was treating my leg like a car that needed a tune-up even before it went out on the highway and then some more precise adjustments once it finally hit the open road.
I’d seen babies, their faces contorted in concentration, take their first tentative steps. I was the baby now. They usually got it, and so would I.
I told Bill I felt a little pain where the top of the new leg hit the bottom of the old one, a little pinching where the round end of the socket tightened around my leg. Could he do something with the socket or add a layer of protection to the sleeve?
Low-key Bill, the man of few words, replied as I knew he would—with a single word. “Okay,” he answered without quite offering a specific plan.
Then, he increased the height of the leg a centimeter or two, and I could feel the difference immediately. He watched my gait again and pronounced an improvement. “Better,” he nodded. Turn by turn, adjustment by adjustment, Bill was making the leg mine.
It was one thing to read the Ottobock website or to watch the videos. It was another thing entirely having the C-Leg connected to me. I was putting pressure on it. It was sending pressure back. Flexing the knee and turning the ankle, I used the leg to hold me.
I practiced, and Bill followed me inside the parallel bars. I couldn’t wait to cast aside these training wheels. He kept fine-tuning, and all the while, I knew, the electronics inside the leg were doing their special thing. Measuring. Monitoring. Adjusting. Getting used to me while I was getting used to the leg.
That’s how it was—that’s how it would be—with this new C-Leg. A symbiotic relationship: While I was adjusting to it, it was adjusting to me. It had a brain, but the leg wasn’t fully bionic. It didn’t move without me. I still had to swing it. I couldn’t expect the leg to drive me. I had to drive the leg.
That first day, I didn’t walk outside the parallel bars. I didn’t run any marathons or tango on Dancing with the Stars. That didn’t mean I would never run or tango—just not the first day. But I grew more confident balancing myself, and I even turned around a couple of times. Like pivoting in ceremonial drills while in the military. About face! And I took I don’t know how many little steps forward. Forward. March!
Looking over at Tuesday, I asked, “How do you like this footwork?”
I really felt like I was getting somewhere.
“I don’t know how many people say this to you,” I told Bill as we were getting finished. “But it is an interesting feeling—psychologically, mentally—finally getting here. There are the mechanics of this whole thing, the process of learning how to operate the leg. The excitement of the first steps. But there is also the psychology of it that is entirely different from crutches or a wheelchair. This thing is literally going to be a part of me, a new part, even though it isn’t made of flesh and blood. I have to make it as much a part of me as my other leg. This leg and I, we are in this together for sure.”
It was a heartfelt mini-soliloquy.
Bill nodded as usual.
“Can I take it home?” I asked him.
“No,” he said. “You can’t take it home. You have to see Tom to start your gait training. I’ll give the leg to him. When he says you’re okay to take the leg home, you’ll take the leg home.”
Really?
Tom was a physical therapist at the VA hospital in downtown Denver who specialized in working with patients who had new prosthetics. If Mario in El Paso had taught me how to be an amputee, perhaps Tom in Denver would show me how to walk like I wasn’t one. I was just as eager to work with Tom as I had been with Mario. I’d heard nothing but good things about him. But did I really have to leave my leg at the clinic until Tom gave me the green light? Wouldn’t it be far more useful to start practicing on my own?
Bill refused to budge.
“No,” he said.
“Come on,” I pleaded.
“No.”
“I’m serious. Let me take it home. I need to practice.”
“Talk to Tom.”