Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Clinic | Three Weeks after the Accident

Moving to the rehab clinic brought a whole new existence for me: one of increasing autonomy.

But it came with a price.

I had to agree to over an hour of physical, occupational, and recreational therapy five days a week, and thirty minutes more for one day a week.

Six days of therapy every week, learning how to use my muscles again, seemed unimaginable to me, especially when I was still confined to a bed.

But I was willing to try. After all, it meant I was one step closer to going home.

Therapy also meant it was time for real clothes. A hospital gown just wouldn’t do for the types of movement and exertion I was expected to tackle now.

When a nurse’s aide came in to help me get dressed for my first visit to the therapy center, I surprised her by putting on my tank top with one arm and mostly by myself. I needed help with the bottoms, though. My abdomen was still attached to the wound vac and so swollen that she had to get a pair of loose scrubs. She removed the ace bandage and plastic cast from my leg and foot, and I inched the pants over them, being careful not to bump anything. When it was time, I leaned back on the bed and lifted my rear, while she pulled the scrubs up around my waist. Then she put my cast back in place and slipped a sock over my good foot.

It was time to transfer to the wheelchair.

My new wheelchair, measured to fit only me: shiny and black with chrome handles and footrests. My new best friend. A means of freedom and getting out of bed. It meant using an actual toilet by myself instead of calling a nurse to help with a bedpan. It meant leaving the confinement of a hospital room. A wheelchair meant going home.

I couldn’t wait to try it out.

The aide pushed it beside my bed, locked the wheels’ brakes, and asked if I was ready.

Of course I was, thanks to Danielle. Danielle had been the taskmaster I needed.

I was already sitting on the edge of the bed, so using my good arm and the bed’s railing, I lifted myself up, putting weight on my right foot, while she held me around my waist. I grabbed the arm of the chair, she pivoted me, and gravity plunked me down on the seat. It took just a few more minutes to place my legs on the footrests and hang the portable wound vac from the back.

“Am I going to wheel myself there?”

“No, today I’m going to take you,” she said. “You’ll learn how to move around in it once you get to the gym with the physical therapists.”

She wheeled me out of the room, down the hall, and through a doorway into an adjoining facility, the physical therapy gym.

People were everywhere. Different kinds of people: people in scrubs, people in wheelchairs, people on crutches, people with walkers, people in white coats, people in street clothes. Men and women, elderly and middle-aged. They were sitting around tables, standing by other people, or lying on square makeshift beds. Some played cards or worked on games, some lifted limbs in exercises, some guided others through those exercises, and some sat looking back at me.

This was a busy place.

It was also strangely quiet. Only the sounds of low voices, piped-in music, and the occasional movement of someone nearby could be heard.

I was fascinated by the scene, my eyes darting here and there as she pushed me slowly through the large rooms. So many people needed rehabilitation. So many broken people.

Like me.

And then I saw him, the guy Mom had been telling me about.

A big man, broad-shouldered and burly. He was a Hell’s Angel who had lost his leg in a motorcycle accident. My parents had shared a crowded waiting room with his friends while we were both patients in the ICU. He had long gray hair thinning on top and an even longer beard. He was struggling to a sitting position on a square sort of bed, his right leg missing from just above the knee.

He was angry, too. The scowl on his face and the coarse tone of his voice as he yelled at the therapist standing beside him made that apparent. His new body was frustrating him.

When the aide pushed me past, I averted my eyes. Even though we had something in common, I decided not to strike up a conversation. He was scary, and I felt guilty. My body was new, too, but all of my limbs were intact. I would eventually gain my freedom back, but he, well, he would always be limited in his.

And then it hit me once again: I was lucky. Lucky to have gotten out of that crushed car alive. Lucky to have survived my injuries.

Those times, the luck was about survival.

But the lucky I was feeling now was different. I was alive, yes, but there are all sorts of ways to be alive and unlucky.

I could be the one missing a leg or an arm. Even paralyzed. I could have been left with brain damage, or unable to breathe on my own, or without the function of my kidneys. I could have had my face cut up beyond recognition.

Huh. How about that. I was lucky. Again, maybe even a miracle.

For the past two weeks, I had been feeling so sorry for myself, when I really should have been feeling thankful. The Universe had protected us that night—it was evident in my memories, it was evident in those photographs, and it was evident by my injuries.

But it’s hard to be thankful when you’re angry.

• • •

I spent three hours a day in physical and occupational therapy, and I hated it.

I complained about it.

I even tried getting out of it.

But I also knew that it was preparation for leaving. I had nothing better to do anyway.

In those first days, physical therapists had to pick up my shaking body, too weak to move on its own, and set me on the square, wooden bed’s red exercise mat. There, I did the minimal work required. I couldn’t wait to go back to my room and get into my bed.

Even so, the physical therapists were a breath of fresh air, a welcome break from the grumpy nurses of the Spinal Injury Rehab floor. Patients were always coming and going, and most times, the therapists were dealing with the frustrations of ten of us at once. Still, they remained positive and welcoming, special kinds of cheerleaders. The scopes of their jobs were fascinating—they worked with so many people. People in wheelchairs, people without limbs, people behind walkers.

People who were damaged—some beyond repair—people like me.

But my challenges were minimal next to some, a thought I tried to keep in perspective. My new body gained strength, and in just over a week, I had progressed from arm- and leg-lifting exercises to making my own wheelchair transfers and hopping without the use of my one-handed walker.

Occupational therapy, however, tested me in different ways. Here, simple tasks to work my fine motor skills were more difficult than I anticipated: playing games, putting puzzles together, moving a little plastic car around a peg board, balancing on my good foot for minutes at a time. All to improve my eye-hand coordination and reflexes. Soon, I was also practicing gross motor skills like getting from the wheelchair onto a bath seat in a tub or in and out of a vehicle.

As therapy got easier, I realized that going home would soon be a reality, and that scared the hell out of me.

Here I had the care and protection of nurses, physical therapists, and a hospital room.

Home was an old, roomy apartment I’d moved into only two months ago and where my mother would live with me playing nurse. How would I really take a bath or get out of a car or maneuver my wheelchair? Practicing to do it, which was really pretending, wasn’t the same as actually doing it. My body was so fragile and scarred.

And yet I’d witnessed its resiliency. Physical therapy had taken everything out of me, but I kept pushing myself to move.

The desire to go home paired with the fear of leaving safety.

Just months before it had been the desire to leave safety paired with the fear of leaving my children and making a mistake.

My, how quickly things change.