After being home for five months, hoping to carry my third pregnancy to term, basically on bed rest, you'd think I”d learn the art of patience. I am a slow learner.
My husband was the sole income provider and we were sinking deeper into debt. My parent's convinced us to move our trailer to their property next to them, saving us the expense of rent. We did. After Alfred”s birth, Al and I went out one night to the bar where we had met. We had a car accident. By the Grace Of God, Alfred was not with us. I, to this day, say there was a car that blinded us with its head lights. The police didn't believe me because we'd both been drinking. My stock answer when someone asked what happened was that A BRIDGE JUMPED OUT IN FRONT OF US! When I was oriented enough so I could understand what had happened, I got the doctor lecture about what happens to a brain that gets whacked on the dashboard of a car and how you can imagine things or not remember them at all.
What I think I remember about the accident is coming to and hearing sirens. Al was slumped over the steering wheel bleeding. The only thing I seemed able to move was my left arm. Al started to pull back and I put my hand on his back and I don't know if I thought or said, “Be quiet, helps coming". That's all I remember until I woke up in the emergency room puking my insides out. I really wasn't with it. I didn't know what was going on. All I knew was that people were flying around me like a flock of birds. I don't remember hearing or saying a word. Just the beehive of activity. I think they took me out of the emergency room and put be by a nurse's station in the hall. When I came to again, I asked where Al was. They said he was picked up and taken home to clean up and would be back. They said he was OK and just had a cut on his forehead.
I must have been in and out of consciousness. Next I woke up in a room. Al was there. I eventually understood that we'd been in an accident and that my leg was not in good shape. My right leg had been pinned under the dashboard. I had a jagged break in my thigh bone. My knee had been torn up badly, including severing of ligaments and muscle. My lower leg had been gouged out badly. They were waiting for a doctor to come from the city. When he arrived, I would go to the operating room, have a pin put in my leg and be put into traction. I didn't know what the hell they were telling me. My only stable source was Al's hand holding mine.
I have no idea how long any of this was. I was just there being manipulated by who knew who and doing whatever they wanted. When I woke up again my leg was suspended from bars and ropes and there was this trapeze thing hanging over my head. I also realized I WASN'T IN KANSAS ANYMORE! I knew none of these people who were doing heaven knew what to me. I was in Newark Community Hospital not the familiar territory of Clifton Springs Hospital where I worked and knew people. I must have been in the hospital for a week or more before I became coherent enough to start asking where Al and Alfred were. Slowly my brain pieced together what was happening. Not being able to leave my bed for even the basic functions of life became my reality.
I do not know how Al survived during this time. The main contact we had was by telephone because he could only come to see me when he could find a ride. We had a second car but his license had been suspended because of the accident. Alfred was allowed to come see me once a week if someone could bring him.
Al and my parents got in a hateful relationship after the accident. Al had to move the trailer back to our old park because that was where he could get the most consistent rides to work. He also took Alfred with him, away from my parents.
At first a neighbor watched Alfred until other arrangements could be found. Not long after the move back and with all the other things Al had to deal with, he was turned into Child Welfare Services accused of abusing Alfred. I along with everyone who knew Al would testify that the sun and moon rose and fell because of his son and it was not possible. Child Welfare came to that same conclusion in short order.
We were drowning in debt because Al was the only one bringing money in. Along with babysitting, normal bills, food and such for him and Alfred, he didn't know what to do. I tried to help by taking the responsibility for paying the bills, which I had done before the accident anyway. He deposited his check, minus grocery money, and I tried to finagle enough by paying what would get them by. If there was any to spare, I paid another bill.
I didn't know that Al had not gone to work for a couple of days and that the owner of the company where he worked told him to get his ass back to work and he'd help figure something out. Al came and had me sign a paper his boss had drawn up. His boss would pay all our outstanding bills up to that point and only take out a small amount from Al's check to show good faith that he would be repaid. The majority of Al's check was still his for food, electric, rent and such. Al always liked his boss but this was the point where he said he was like his father and I think his boss felt the same. As far as I know and later was told, that his boss never did this for anyone else.
The mother of a girl Al worked with offered to care for Alfred for a minimal amount. Lucille not only came every day to pick up Alfred and bring him home, but if Al didn't have a ride to work she would take and pick him up too for no extra than her babysitting fee. When I came home she also spent most all day with me the first week so I could get comfortable lifting and doing for Alfred. When I first came home I was on a walker and no weight bearing on my right leg.
Now don't tell me there are no ANGELS in this world because I just told you about two.
There wasn't much I could do for five months stuck in bed with my leg dangling. Being cared for like an infant, depending on whoever was working that day. If I needed to be taught more patience, The Lord picked the right way to do it. My life was definitely not IN MY CONTROL. One of the nurses taught me how to knit. When I went home I tried to knit but if I screwed up I didn't have the PATIENCE to tear it out and fix it. You think God will ever get me to learn my lesson?
During the early part of my stay I got HIGH. It was the first time they moved the pin in my leg because it wasn”t holding the jagged break in my thigh together. They did it right in the room. They gave me a shot for pain and drilled the new pin through my leg and removed the old one. I felt no pain but the drilling and the anxiety did me in and I slept until late morning the next day. That night Ann, my sister, came and brought me chocolate ice cream. I had just had a pain shot. I could see myself like floating around where my trapeze was looking down on myself and watching me try to get a spoonful of ice cream in my mouth. My mouth wouldn't stay in one place. No matter how I moved the spoon, my mouth would go the other way. Ann took the spoon away from me and fed me. I think she was having trouble finding my moving mouth too! I don't remember after that until I woke up the next day. The next time I asked for something for pain, I told them NO SHOT! No more MORPHINE for me!
Al couldn't come unless someone brought him because he had no license. Every now and then someone would drop him off and we were alone. Miraculously the curtain between beds was pulled. If I had a roommate they disappeared. The hall door that was never closed, was closed. It's surprising what you can do when your leg is hanging in the air and you can hardly turn your body to the side. A few well placed touches will soothe the savage beast. Don't tell me miracles don't happen. I never knew who did that for me but I surmise my knitting teacher had a hand in it. She later had a tragedy of her own and I never saw her again. Her husband was killed in Vietnam.
After five months on your back even sitting up makes the room spin. It took days of practice before I could finally stand up straight (on one leg) without being dizzy. About two weeks later I was released from the hospital.
When I could finally see my leg, I discovered this wart on the left side of my right leg. I started to call it my witch's wart. I had this vision that it dropped off my nose during the accident and fell to my leg, signifying that although I still had a way to go to be witch free I had managed to be a little less of a witch. Don't ask if it makes any sense. I don't care. It's still there which means that I'm not witch free yet.
The first office visit after I went home I got someone to take me and watch Alfred while I was in the office. The doctor still said no weight bearing, no driving, but I was doing amazingly well considering they had contemplated AMPUTATING MY LEG AT THE KNEE. I nearly passed out. I decided right then that I was not going to baby myself. To me no weight bearing met slight weight bearing. I started off small, just bearing a little weight when standing. Then I progressed to one step at a time, then two steps, etc. At my next appointment I got someone to watch Alfred and I drove myself to the appointment ( I didn't tell Al). When the doctor said I could bear weight, I showed him what I could do. He was surprised and told me to keep it up.
Even in my youth, we were not a church going family. I always knew in my heart that a Greater Power was watching over me. After my husband died with Alzheimer's disease, I started going to a bible study group. The bible study has taught me a lot. One thing that sticks out for me is that in our trials God lets us hurt a little so we can grow a lot. He has had his hands full in teaching me my life lessons. Even if I have to hurt, I hope He never stops teaching me. If He does. I am lost.
