The Break - Part IV: Recovery
After what seemed like only minutes, I woke up with 10 incisions, 35 staples, five screws and a metal rod in my left leg. Fully casted, I tried to lift it up off the hospital bed. It felt like it was a million pounds. There were cables and wires all around me. All I could hear was the steady beeping of machines. I was hooked up to oxygen and an IV. Again, I thought to myself, “All of this for a broken leg?”
I looked around the dimly-lit hospital room. My mom was sitting next to my bed in a chair, passed out with her elbow propped on the armrest. My heart swelled with appreciation for her...she has always known that I struggle with hospitals. It made me feel good knowing she was around. There was also an older gentleman sharing the room with me, only his head peeking out from the thin, white curtain dividing us. He was mumbling lethargically with someone else behind the curtain, presumably his partner.
I soon learned that he was a construction worker who had undergone shoulder replacement surgery. He had told me that he experienced severe discomfort for years and medicated using painkillers so he could continue to work and provide a good quality of life for his family. He had a daughter at City College. Luckily, his employer offered strong benefits and a comprehensive medical package, so he had to pay very little out of pocket for his procedure.
A look at the hardware that went into my leg. That’s a metal rod which was inserted into the medullary (central) cavity of my tibia, secured in place by five nails. The procedure was called an intramedullary fixation.
At this point, it was almost midnight, and I desperately wanted to go back to sleep but my leg was aching. The gentleman kept prodding me to ask the nurses for a nerve block, which in his words basically cuts off all feeling to a specific part of your body.
“I don’t feel shit right now, it’s a miracle! And everybody’s coming over and bringing me snacks. This is like a vacation to me. I’m never going back to work!”
While I appreciated a bit of comic relief to brighten the mood, I politely declined his offer to request a nerve block for me. (Yes, he was really prepared to do that. No, I’m not sure if he realized that’s not how things work in the hospital.)
Eventually I did manage to get to sleep, but only after a dose of hydrocodone from a very friendly nurse. And I didn’t stay asleep for long...every couple of hours, I would be awakened and the nurses would run routine tests on my vitals. Then, at the conclusion of their tests, more medication.
The doctors shaved my wrist when they gave me an IV, so I woke up from surgery to this pleasant surprise. It didn’t fully grow back for months.
It could have been the meds, but I remember surprisingly not minding the periodic wake-ups. I remember just wanting to talk to somebody. Not about anything in particular. I just vividly recall having an urge to make conversation. I felt bad because on multiple occasions the nurses had to go check on other patients and only then would it actually hit me: “Whoa. This is their job. They have probably been working for 10 hours straight, and there are probably 50 other people on this floor that require attention right now, and they’re tending to me as if I’m the only one in the entire building.” They were young—my age, possibly even younger—and they were running tests and doing analysis and discussing observations and making decisions. I may have been heavily medicated at the time, but I certainly wasn’t hazy on the fact that I was impressed. With them around I felt at ease, comfortable, safe.
I woke up for good in the morning before my mom, and when she did, I was attempting to indulge in a turkey sandwich. It was all that was available within arm’s reach, and it was probably about 7:30 AM, but it tasted tremendous. The oxygen wires were interfering with my ability to eat though, and I remember firmly (but politely) stating that they needed to be taken off, at least temporarily, because nothing was going to get between me and the sandwich. The nurses obliged.
Before I was allowed to leave the hospital, I needed to demonstrate that I was able to use crutches properly. The nurses took me to a room with a small staircase, and showed me how to crutch up and down stairs. You would have thought I was trying to juggle knives and do calculus simultaneously. For some reason, I just couldn’t do it. I was so frustrated. It was not a complicated task, but at that point I was exhausted—physically and mentally. A nurse encouraged me, and told me that it was normal to struggle at first. But I was angry at my own ineptitude...perhaps unjustifiably so. I scolded myself as I nearly lost a crutch and clutched the railing for stability. After almost an hour, I had managed to figure it out enough to the point where they trusted I wouldn’t break my other leg trying to maneuver around.
When my stay came to an end later that evening (just over 24 hours after I arrived), an older gentleman came to my room with a wheelchair to take me down to the lobby. He was as cheerful as could be. He didn’t stop talking the whole way down the hall and on the elevator. As we neared the front doors and my mom’s car came into view, I got up the courage to ask him what I had wanted to ask every hospital employee I’d encountered.
“So how do you like working here?”
Without a moment of hesitation, I could sense the grin spread across his face as he wheeled me through the lobby.
“I love it here. I know everyone and they all know me. It’s like everybody’s one big family.”
My stay in the hospital was as positive as it could have been, and I’m lucky to have been treated at NYU Hospital for Joint Diseases. Looking back, it was one of those rare occasions that restored some of my faith in humanity. I have no shame in admitting this, but after I had gotten home and had a few minutes to myself, I got a little choked up thinking about the people I had met during my brief stay. They really were like a family. They were a unit. Every day these folks witnessed injury, sickness, and even death. And every day they met those things head on, with the perfect combination of empathy and strength. How would I fare in an environment like that?
As our car pulled away from the hospital and we made our way across Manhattan to the Lincoln Tunnel, I thought about the road ahead. I’d made it through surgery, but that was only the first hurdle. I had a long way to go before I’d be running and playing basketball again with my friends. Before I was even enjoying simple pleasures like walking to work in the morning. But knowing I’d passed the first milestone of the process, I felt inspired. I was optimistic. I was looking forward to the recovery.
*Note: The cover image of this post portrays one of many turkey sandwiches I consumed in the days following my discharge from NYU. Judging by the fact it was served luxuriously on a platter and laid on our living room couch, I probably ate this one while watching Steve Harvey.
