Three Years Ago (Part 4)

This photo was taken at the Rush Medical Center outpatient physical therapy gym September 2012.

While I was still in the rehab center, Bill and our friend Michelle visited me. I was surprised and yet very pleased that Michelle had accompanied Bill, while they were with me someone walked in to take me to the in patient rehab gym. In situations like these no time is ever wasted and rehab is started immediately, I was to walk on my one prosthetic leg using a walker.

Bill and Michelle joined me at rehab and I remember Bill, Michelle, and I joined hands and she said prayer for me. It was during their visit that Michelle said to me "through great losses come great blessings." In addition to coping with monumental loss of my second leg, I was also wondering about my future and how I was going to survive financially, specifically  how I was going to keep my condo. Bill remembers this better than I, but Michelle said in a confident almost omnipotent way, "oh you are not going to lose your condo."

There are probably a whole host of other instances that occurred but these are the ones that stuck out in my mind the most and the most clearly. Eventually I returned home and began an arduous task of recuperating and putting my life back together.

One of the main reasons why I wanted to recall and explain all of these things to you is because there is a chance that there may be someone out there reading my words who is going through something similar. As difficult and seemingly hopeless as my story seemed as it was happening to me at the time, there has been life after amputation. There has been life after double amputation.

I am not going to sugar coat things and say everything is great, because it isn't, however life has progressed forward and adjustments have been made. My life will never be as it once was, nor will your life if you are living similar circumstances. This I can say, I still laugh, I still love, I still want to be loved and all of the basic human qualities remain.

Through the past three years I have grown as a person. I am much more aware of the preciousness of life,   I am thankful for what I do still have and I understand more fully that as difficult as my life may seem sometimes, there are those whose lives are even more difficult than mine. There are those who have lost even more than I and have managed to have full and happy lives.

As Thanksgiving is tomorrow, I know that I am thankful I was given the opportunity and freedom to express myself to you and that with God's grace my words will find their way into your heart and help you in some small way, be a better person, live a happier life and pass the love along.

Thank you.


*To leave a comment hit the button below, to reach me personally write to: glennartinc@yahoo.com

Three Years Ago (Part 3)

Here I am standing in front of a St Lucia sign, this is one of the last pictures taken while I still had my left leg.

As we traveled down the expressway toward Rush Medical Center, my mind was racing, my emotions were all over the place, and yet there was a calm practical aspect to all of this. I had to remember to pack things like my hairbrush, razor, and cellphone charger, after all I knew I would in the hospital for quite a while and despite the costs of a hospitalization it is certainly is not a hotel.

My assistant Frank, not a very comforting type of person, meant my conversation in the car was relegated to the practical aspects of what he was to do at my place in my absence and not much else. I could not look to him for any emotion support, his approach is much too clinical for such pleasantries as offering comfort. 

When we arrived at the emergency room, Frank offered to come in with me but I declined his offer as I knew he was much too hyper a person to play the waiting game and his being there served no purpose. In medical emergency situations I have found it to be one of the most alone periods one can endure. No one can have the surgery for you, no one can recuperate for you, no one can even genuinely comprehend what you are actually going through. 

At this stage of the game things begin to get a little foggy. I know they put me in an emergency cubicle and I was given a tranquilizer, Ativan, I definitely needed it at that point to help me cope with what was about to transpire. I do not recall whether or not they attempted to do a TPA procedure or whether is was determined to be a fruitless effort. 

At some point I called my sister, Rhonda and either she or I called Marguerite and Marguerite called Bill. Those were the only people whom I alerted right away, the others, Ruthie, Steve and others came later. Fortunately under such dire circumstances you are administered a plethora of drugs which of course drape your memories in a heavy thick fog. 

One of the last recollections I have is being in a pre-op area which is the last stop before you are wheeled into the operating room. I know Rhonda was there and either Justin, my nephew, or Erica, one of my nieces, were there and for some reason my friend, Shawn may have been there. Forgive me for not knowing exactly what occurred, if I am not retelling this exactly, those who were there can correct me and I know their account would be more accurate than mine.

I remember feeling loved and being surrounded by those who cared about me, it was a feeling of comfort and warmth. The next thing I remember is being in intensive care. The intensive care units are designed to be just that, intensive care. They are curtained off partitioned areas in one large room, void of telephones or televisions, hot, and very noisy. It is next to impossible to get any rest despite the potent drugs that were coursing through my veins.

I think at this point Christmas had already passed or was within a day or two. My sister, Rhonda had given up her Christmas to be with her brother and I hope she knows how much her sacrifice means to me even to this day. I do recall her only grandson, Max, was celebrating his first birthday on New Year's Eve and Rhonda wanted to be home for that, I insisted that she go. She had already done enough.

Normally a post-operative person without complications should only remain in intensive care for a couple of days, however, there was a shortage of available rooms in the regular part of the hospital and I was forced to stay in intensive care well beyond what was necessary. This posed a problem because as I said, it is very hot, very noisy and no privacy whatsoever.

Eventually I was given a private room on the eighth floor of the hospital, a place where I had been many times before, everyone knew me from all of my previous stays. A few things happened that really stand out in my mind.

I remember calling my dear friend, Ruth, or maybe she called me, I told her that what I had hoped would never happen, did in fact happen. I had lost my left leg above the knee, thereby making me a bilateral above knee amputee. Ruth cried. She does not normally cry, I have known her for over twenty years, we are dear friends and maybe she has cried once or twice in my presence. She cried because she knew how much this would change my life. I will never forget it.

Another incident happened after I was moved from the regular hospital to the adjacent rehab center. A friend of mine named Patrick, visited me, he and I had become friends at Cheetah gym. I remember he used me as an example to some of his less dedicated friends  about not making excuses for not working out. Anyway he was not prepared for what he saw, and I guess the full magnitude of what had happened to his friend hit him pretty hard.

I told him I would bounce back, but it was too much for him seeing me like I was, he had to leave the room. I think maybe he went to gather his thoughts, perhaps cry, I am not sure. He did come back more composed and apologized for leaving the room, I told him there was no need to apologize. This was an emotional situation for all involved, not just for me but also for those who love me.

To be continued.....

Three Years Ago (part 2)

Above  is a photo of  me sitting on my balcony drinking a protein shake after my workout taken March 2010.

Fortunately, I have always had the ability and wherewithal to bounce back from many medical procedures. After having gone through two surgeries and three total hospital stays during 2010, I enjoyed the second half of 2010 free from any impending medical procedures or complications. 

I enjoyed my 10 day cruise immensely, I was back to my routine. I will never forget Saturday December 18, 2010. I went to the gym as usual and everything was fine, I had stopped to talk to a friend near the locker room and it was then that my world began to change forever. Walking the short 150 feet from where I was talking, to the front of the gym, a clot occurred. One of the most insidious things about this hyper coagulation syndrome is that you have no warning, one minute your blood is flowing the next minute it is not, kind of like turning off a faucet.

There I was sitting on a couch in the front of the gym, terrified. I knew from past experiences what had just happened. I also knew what lie ahead for me at least in the short term and what potentially and most likely lie ahead in the long term. It took about 15 minutes for a sufficient amount of blood to reach my feet before I could walk to the car and drive home. Often times even though you have a clot,  some blood can eventually reach your extremities, the amount of time it takes varies with the severity of the occlusion, I knew this was bad.

When I finally got home my mind was whirling like a cyclone, fear, anxiety, worry, what to do, who to call, I was a mess. I had a conversation with God pleading with him to not let this be true, to let it pass or let it be my imagination on overdrive. In my heart of hearts I knew the truth, and yet I immediately went into denial, I did not deserve this, I had already been through so much, I was a good person and on and on. 

It took a lot of courage for me to do the unthinkable, remove my shoe and sock and look at my left foot. Tears were welling up in my eyes as my greatest fear was visually apparent, my foot as white and as cold as snow. No blood in my foot causing the whiteness and coldness, this had really happened. A voice in my head resonating Dr. Jacobs words, "if this bypass fails there is no where left to bypass." What that meant was I was going to lose my left leg also, I broke down and sobbed.

Always a resident in the hotel denial, I thought well maybe it will be better by tomorrow, it was one of the worse days and nights of my life. I lie awake most of the night, I slept with my left leg draped over the side of the bed letting gravity pull as much blood as possible into to my poor blood starved left leg and foot, but it was of course of no avail, a last ditch effort.

It was one week before Christmas, Bill was in Nashville for the holidays, Marguerite and Paul were two hours away in Normal Illinois and everyone in my family lived three and a half hours away in Indianapolis. I could either call an ambulance or call my personal assistant Frank. I opted to call Frank to take me to the hospital. When I called him on Sunday morning I told him what had happened and told him to pick me up in a couple of hours, I needed time to pack.

It was one of the longest and most somber car trips I had ever taken..........

To be continued.

Three Years Ago (Part 1)

Pictured above is a shot I took from the Emerald Princess cruise ship in November 2010.

It has been almost three years since the loss of my second leg. At this time three years ago I was preparing to embark on my first cruise to the Caribbean with my friend Shawn, his sister, Lisa and her husband, Dan. I was a mixture of excitement and a smidgen of angst. I had never undertaken such a trip before and having lost one leg at this point I was a little nervous. After much encouragement and reassurance from family and friends I was looking forward to the trip.

A couple of weeks before the trip I had undergone a test to check the circulation in my remaining left leg, I did not want any complications while at sea. Everything had checked out fine and I was doing well in physical therapy, in fact, I had been learning to walk with my prosthetic leg up and down sloped areas, soon I may have been able to dispense with the cane altogether. Alas, that was not to be.

I returned from the cruise on Saturday December 4, I was well rested, very tan, and excited to return to Cheetah gym and resume my everyday life. Things were going well and I was proud of my accomplishments having bounced back from the loss of my right leg just 18 months earlier. I was driving using my left leg, going to the gym 5-6 days a week and had even managed to work a couple of jobs, things were going to be just fine.

During the course of 2010 I had been battling to keep my left leg. Things took a turn for the worse December 27 2009, I had a blood clot occur during my visit Christmas 2009. My sister, Rhonda ended up taking me back to Chicago in her car and my brother- in-law, Peter, drove my car to Chicago. Fortunately my vascular surgeon, Dr. Chad Jacobs, was able to dissolve the clot through a procedure called a TPA. Again in April 2010 another clot appeared this time, however, the clot was not able to be dissolved and a bypass was performed. 

I remember while recovering from the  bypass my surgeon advised me he was not particularly pleased with my bypass and wanted to redo it so that it would hopefully last longer. I was upset and said I wasn't sure my body could withstand much more invasive surgery. He assured me that I was in fact physically capable of undergoing further surgery. We decided to redo the surgery in June. In May the veins occluded again unexpectedly, and I went in to have yet another by pass, this time something that had never happened before, occurred, compartment syndrome.

Compartment Syndrome is what happens when too much blood rushes into your veins too quickly and can rapidly cause your veins to burst. The emergency solution is to make long cuts into your legs to allow the proliferation of blood to escape. This procedure was performed successfully and allowed me to dodge the bullet and keep my leg.  I will continue this in my next post........

Being Oblivious

My Personal Assistant

This may seem like an odd subject to address, however, it has been on my mind for quite sometime, so I thought I would write about it. For about the last year or so I have been having a lot of problems with my personal assistant.

I have had this particular assistant, whom I will call Fred, for the past three years. Granted I may not be the easiest person to work for, in that, despite all of the physical constraints that have been placed upon me due my limb losses, I still maintain high standards with respect to how my household is run. I realize, and have previously written about, the frustration that occurs when you are no longer able to physically perform tasks that prior to your loss, in whatever capacity, were simple.

It is often difficult to verbalize how or what you would like to have done by your assistant in a way that is easily understood. That difficulty is exacerbated if your assistant either is slow to absorb information or simply has trouble paying attention to what you are saying. Either way, it leads to a miscommunication, you are frustrated by his inability to get done what it is you have asked of him and he is frustrated because he does not understand what it is you want him to do.

Occasionally my PA has voiced his opinion about me personally, which caused me to wonder what he thought of me as a person. Case in point, about a year and half ago we had one of our many heated discussions and in the course of that discussion, he stated, "well at least I have never had to take money from the state." Needless to say I was shocked and offended by his comment that I was in some way,  sponging off of the state by collecting disability. Although I did not make a big deal out of his comment, I did tell him in no uncertain terms that I had worked tirelessly for 35 years and what I was receiving was not a hand out, and that I would much prefer to be working.

There have been so many instances of Fred's incompetence, forgetting things, breaking things and general disinterest that it would bore my readers to list them all, but I want you to understand how tolerate I have been throughout the last three years.

Last week another episode occurred that may be the proverbial straw. I had asked Fred to change one of the light bulbs in my shower and suffice it to say he dropped it in the shower and broke it. That in and of itself is understandable, but when told me about it, he said the fixture broke. I corrected him and said no it did not break it was broken. Once again Fred refused to accept responsibility for his actions and chose to blame the object and not his action.

He went on  to say that, "things do break, like your legs or your HIV." Anyone who knows me already knows when those insensitive  and uncompassionate words came out of his mouth,  I was livid. He sensed how enraged his comments had made me feel and quickly added that he didn't mean it that way.

All of this may seem to you to be petty bs but multiply it by three times a week times 52 weeks a year and perhaps you get some idea the frustration I feel. I had hoped that a day or two later he would realize how offensive his words were, and would apologize. Thus far no apology and no acknowledgement of his harsh words.

I ask you, am I being too sensitive or is what he said cold and cruel? This last episode has further solidified my conviction that this assistant has no understanding or compassion for my situation and I have to wonder whether  I want someone who has so little regard for my situation, working for me.

Please let me know if you feel I am jumping to conclusions or whether his words and subsequent non action are reason enough to look for another assistant.

*To leave a comment hit the comment button below, to contact me personally write to: glennartinc@yahoo.com

Finding the Beauty

I recently received an email from my friend Bill and forwarded it to many of my friends. I am going to discuss this man's perspective on being a quadriplegic. Hopefully after reading this man's story you can appreciate how I feel also. Please google the following: This is How It Feels To Be A Quadriplegic  I was unable to figure out how to create a direct link, my following post is based on the above mentioned article, please take the time to read his article first so that my comments below will make sense.

This article really struck a chord with me and understandably so. I hardly know where to begin, but first and foremost I must commend this man's courage and congratulate him on a most perceptibly accurate account of living life either unable to use existing limbs or having lost limbs due to amputation.

I realize that there are fundamental differences between this man, Jimmy Anderson, and myself. First and foremost he is paralyzed and I am an amputee, I still retain use of my arms and hands and he does not, and I have had my legs removed, he has not. There are also other differences in the way we arrived at our respective situations and a host of other things.

There are also a lot of similarities between our two different scenarios. I agree with Jimmy that my leg loss and his paralysis has made our world feel restrictive, unable to do the simplest of tasks or to participate in some of life's simplest pleasures. I still really miss walking on the beach, feeling the sand between my toes, I suppose I always will.

 Jimmy states in his article that the world is a series of obstacles and barriers, this is true. Before embarking on any type of outing, one must first "scope out" where one is going and how easily, accessible or inaccessible it is. If you are as lucky as I am, people who are close to you begin to observe these things for themselves, and then they also feel the pangs of inaccessibility and understand more fully the magnitude of your paralysis or limb loss.

Jimmy Anderson also states in his article, "This Is How It Feels To Be A Quadriplegic," that not being able to use your hands is even than the loss of mobility. Naturally, I have not had to suffer that devastating loss, and my heart aches for his loss. Having experience in monumental loss, I can more closely relate than someone who has never suffered that type of loss at all. Having said that,  it does not even begin to make me be able to comprehend how much worse it must be to not have the use of ANY of your limbs.

Those of you who know me, already realize how important and crucial my artwork has been to me with respect to helping me get through these leg losses and to even contemplate not being able to create my art is incomprehensible to me.The way that Jimmy Anderson expressed himself in his article made me rethink my situation with a greater appreciation for what I do still possess, it gave me a moment of pause, to really examine myself and reaffirm the thankfulness I feel when I able to maintain my autonomy.

As Jimmy was describing the news story about a quadriplegic man who committed suicide by driving his motorized  into a lake and drowning, it struck fear within him, that perhaps his life and his prospects would be so bleak he might contemplate the same thing. I must admit that even I after the loss of my first leg, imagined the possibility of losing my other leg with feelings of trepidation, fear and wondering whether I would have the wherewithal to continue living.

I think these feelings are not uncommon, what seems to occur in many instances, is that you seek and ultimately find the strength and courage to continue down your path to the best of your ability. Like so much in life, if we seek it out,  we can often find what it is we need to accomplish in our lives that might make life worth living. Fortunately for Jimmy Anderson and for the rest of the people of this world we were blessed with his wisdom and and inspired by his words to do the best that we can possibly do.

Not unlike Jimmy,  I too, have sought to bring hope and encouragement to others in my position. I always remember that old, adage  that goes something like this, "I used to complain about the holes in my shoes, until I saw a man with  no feet." I am now that man.

I agree with Jimmy Anderson, that I also seek to find beauty in this world and I find it everyday in the words and actions of people like Jimmy.

Thank You Jimmy for making this world a better place in which to live.

*To leave a comment, hit the comment button below, to reach me personally, write to glennartinc@yahoo.com