My Next Step (13 page)

At the time, the use of the lift was excruciatingly painful for me, especially on my lower back. I told my doctor that the lift hurt my back and made it feel worse than before my surgery. He reluctantly told me it would be that way for six to eight months. I had no choice but to get used to it.

As a way to help alleviate some of my discomfort, the doctors ordered a custom brace that wrapped around my back and chest to see if that would make moving any easier for me. It helped, but it certainly didn’t make it less painful. I used the brace with a chest plate for about two weeks while I worked on strengthening my core muscles. As I slowly grew sturdier, I graduated to using the lift without the brace, which was still painful but no longer unbearable.

I made my stay at Craig a personal competition against myself. I pushed my body harder than any of the therapists would have, especially in the beginning. They were experts in dealing with patients who needed to be inspired, driven and pushed hard. They had no idea how to handle my level of commitment when I came along. I remember the first time they placed me in my standing chair, a wheelchair that has a plate that drops down and locks you in place so you don’t fall out when they crank the chair into an upright position. Your knees and legs are like vices in those chairs. The seat slides up so you can stand straight. Your total body weight is on your legs but you can’t fall because you’re locked in from the body plate. I knew it would be painful to use, but I wasn’t afraid. If I could conquer this exercise, I’d be allowed to move on to using the robot machines—the ones that physically move your legs to help teach your muscles by example how to move the proper way again.

“How long do I have to stand in this chair before I can use the robot machine?” I asked.

“Twenty minutes.”

“How long does everyone usually stand on their first try?”

“About a minute or so.”

“I’ll make the twenty minutes the first time,” I said, full of audacity and conviction.

“Dave, nobody has ever done that. It’s impossible.”

“I’ll make it. I’m all about making the impossible possible,” I said. And I meant it, too.

Before we started the exercise, I thought back to my training as a jet pilot. While flying jet planes, you use a pressure suit that expands when you start to build G-forces during aerobatic maneuvers. The suit pushes blood out of your legs and chest, back into your brain so you don’t pass out. The pressure suits work to about 9 G’s, but some aerobatics I learned took me to 13-15 G’s. In flight school, I was taught to hold my glutes, abs and quads as tight as can be, as if you’re sitting on a toilet while constipated, and to push as hard as you can. That extra pressure pushes blood into your head so you stay conscious. Once you know how to do that you can call upon it in times of need.

I had been flat on my back for several months. I was barely sitting up in bed on my own and my blood pressure hadn’t yet regulated to become stable. Doing this exercise over time was a way to improve that. An ordinary standing person shouldn’t have an issue with blood flow. However, if you’ve been lying on your back for any extended period of time, the changes to your body are immense. The blood starts draining out of your head much quicker, which means you are prone to fainting. This is one of the reasons I had to be monitored all of the time. The hospitals are scared to death of a patient fainting, falling and getting hurt. The techs were watching me very closely, especially as the one minute marker turned to two, then five then ten. So when they placed me in the standing chair, I didn’t fully understand the danger I was flirting with as they cranked me into the full upright position.

“Are you ok, Dave?” the tech asked.

“Get me all of the way up here. Let’s go!” I said as I began doing my own exercise to push more blood into my brain.

“Dave, whatever you do, please don’t faint. Tell us if you’re going down!”

I thought I was going to make the full twenty minutes, but at fifteen minutes and twenty seconds, I had to give up.

“Ok, put me down. I’m about to faint and throw up.” I conceded.

My failure and my queasy stomach bothered me for well over an hour, but then I got over it and asked if I could give it another try tomorrow.

“Not until we talk to your doctor!” they said.

The techs were initially scared by my will and determination. A typical patient would take four or five weeks to work their way up to fifteen minutes in the standing chair. They agreed to let me try again but on the condition that they monitor my blood pressure every three minutes. I nailed the twenty-minute threshold the very next day. Surprisingly, my blood pressure didn’t vary a single point the entire time—probably because I was squeezing and pushing blood into my brain, but they didn’t know it.

Body part by body part, I was trying to get back to where I could stand and then walk on my own. After four months, my catheter had become rather uncomfortable. With all of the hard work I was doing, it was also getting in the way. The biggest concern about having a catheter in a man for so long is that the bladder gets weaker and might never come back to full function—meaning, I might not ever be able to urinate on my own again or worse, have any control over this bodily function. Sympathetic to my discomfort, the doctors agreed to remove the catheter to see where I was at. Believe me, removing the catheter is just as uncomfortable and painful as inserting it. The good news is, I peed like a champ. I was able to void as much urine as I was holding in my bladder every time I went. The bad news was that I didn’t have a lot of control over my need to go and my ability to hold it, so in the beginning, I occasionally wet myself. I was terribly humiliated and embarrassed the first time this happened because I missed my first Lokomat session as a result. A Lokomat is an automated treadmill where the patient’s legs are guided according to a pre-programmed physiological gait pattern. It helps make the leg muscles stronger and promotes more muscle mass. I hated that I kept all of the Lokomat therapists waiting while a nurse had to clean me up. I swore I would never do that again—wet myself or keep the good-hearted people who were there to help me heal waiting. I was respectful of their time, just as I wanted them to be of mine.

I spent the next several weeks working on my balance, strength, muscle-building and movement exercises. The therapists were extremely kind and cooperative with my demanding physical expectations. My overall physical therapy routine was designed to get me to that next step where I could attempt to start walking on my own. They tried to be extra cautious with me, but I wouldn’t allow it. I wanted to push harder, make quicker progress and give one hundred and fifty percent of myself each and every day. It got to the point where they finally gave in and said, “Go ahead and do what you want because we know you’re going to anyway.” And they were right. I pushed them to push me—which has been a common theme througout my life. Everything I have ever done has been about pushing others as a way to push myself harder and to reach for a higher standard.

I wasn’t willing to stay disabled. I wasn’t ready to accept that I might not walk again. I wasn’t choosing that life. I was choosing to do whatever I could to avoid it. I reminded everyone that I was one tough guy who could take whatever they asked me to do as long as it brought me closer to my goal. I wanted to walk again—the sooner the better.

I was still obsessing over what it would mean to walk just ten feet. Ten feet meant I could have a perfect life. I could get out of bed and take two steps to sit in my chair. I could get out of my chair and take two steps to sit on the toilet. I could take my chair to the car and not need a handicapped van. If I could walk ten feet, it would be the impetus to walking twenty. If I could walk twenty, then I could walk a mile. To me, ten feet meant freedom and independence.

Some patients at Craig were just like me—gung ho and willing to try anything to make their life better by improving their health. Others didn’t have that drive. Many of the patients there were young, immature and had never been given the chance to succeed at anything in their lives. They tell their therapists they don’t
feel
like doing an exercise because it hurts too much. They refuse to cooperate and as a result, stay exactly the same each day. Though the physical therapists and techs do their best to encourage them to participate in the program, each of us is there of our own free will. They can’t make us do anything we don’t want to do.

The next milestone in my pursuit of mobility was learning to do a pivot turn. I knew that simple turn on my feet held the key to the kingdom. One day my doctor came into my room and said he wanted to get me from my bed to my chair so he could examine me. He was busy reading my chart when I suddenly swung my feet over the side of my bed, stood up and pivoted before sitting down. I had visualized the move over and over, believing I could do it—and I did.

The doctor caught my unexpected move out of the corner of his eye. “You can’t do that!” he said with about as much authority as he could muster up.

“Oh, really?” I responded before standing up, pivoting and sitting back down on my bed again. I pulled the sheets up over my legs as if to say, “Says who?”

“You see that board on your wall? That says you still need a sliding board to get out of bed. Until it says otherwise, that’s what you’re supposed to do.”

“I don’t like the sliding board. It hurts my butt.” And it did. My backside was still very sore from my flap surgery and I wasn’t allowed to wear underwear yet because it rubbed against the backside area they repaired. My bare skin on the slide board made it very challenging to gracefully, let alone gingerly, get out of bed. I needed to grab onto something to tug myself up off the board, which made the move much harder than it needed to be. I had learned to pivot by using the Lokomat and knew I finally had the leg strength to pull it off. I had spent three weeks practicing until I had it down.

“As long as these instructions are on your wall, that is what we will follow.”

“Aw, Doc. C’mon. That’s written way up there and I can’t see a damn thing without my glasses.”

He just shook his head in disgust. “You’re going to do whatever you damned well want to do, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir, I am.” I knew what I was capable of doing and what my limitations were. I wasn’t being defiant so much as determined. I had fought full contact karate for five years. I wasn’t afraid of hitting the ground. The doctors, nurses, therapists and technicians want to make sure their patient doesn’t get hurt during the healing process. The last thing I needed was to stumble or fall, break a leg, twist my ankle or hit my head and risk another staph infection. Falling is their number one concern. Not trying harder was mine.

Every doctor, specialist, nurse, physical and occupational therapist, tech and others at Craig kept telling me I was working too hard. Hell, I’ve been hearing that my whole life, so why stop now? Besides, is there such a thing? So I asked one of my doctors how much exercise is
too
much.

“Dave, I know you. You’re committed and are always going to the wall with whatever you do. Screw anybody who is going to tell you not to do something. Do as much as you can tolerate. Be real with how you feel before, during and after. One morning, you’ll wake up and say you don’t feel like exercising that day. When that happens, don’t. It’s your body telling you it needs a break. I know it will be totally against your goals and the expectations you’ve set up for yourself, but it’s your body’s way of saying time out. That’s when you’ll know it’s time to take a day or two off. Knowing you the way I do, those two days will make you angry and upset, but use that time to reset your goals and go back at it with a vengeance. Listen to your body. Don’t listen to anyone else.”

This advice came at the perfect time. I knew I could be a frustrating person to work with because I always wanted more than my therapists were going to let me have. By doing this, I also accomplished more than they believed I could. I never missed a single therapy session and always wanted to do more than they scheduled. If we were doing something twice a week, I wanted to do it three times a week. If they asked me to do ten reps of an exercise, I did twenty. If they had me lift twenty pounds, I told them to make it thirty. I wanted the reputation that I tried harder than anyone else, and did everything I could to earn it. In this case, more was definitely more.

Once my balance was stabilized and my backside was finally healed to the doctor’s satisfaction, they suggested it was time for me to try out my power chair. Up until this point, I had been pushed around in a regular wheelchair by one of nurses, therapists or techs. When I heard the words, “power chair,” I conjured up an image of one of those scooters I’ve seen elderly people moving around in. I thought, “Cool, a little power chair to zip around in, because I’m going to be walking any day now.”

No one had given me false hope. I was the one dreaming big. I was the only person convinced I would walk out the front door of Craig all on my own. When we got to the power chair, I tried to keep the smile on my face, but I couldn’t, because I realized it was just a sped-up motorized wheelchair. My whole body sagged at the sight of it. Until that very moment, it had never occurred to me that I might be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. The thought never even crossed my mind because my well-cultivated, step-by-step attitude had kept me so positive. First I’d be on crutches, then I’d be walking and before you knew it, I would be hunting and fishing again just like I used to. No one ever said I might actually be confined to a wheelchair. Ever.