I Don’t Want to Talk
About it Today
One of the
things that’s important to me is educating people about amputation. I like it when people ask me questions
because it gives me the chance to tell my story and let them know that having
an amputation isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
For me, it was the best decision I could have made, given the horrible
condition my right lower leg was in after several salvage surgeries.
I
especially like to show my prosthesis to children. They’re so naturally inquisitive and they
don’t hesitate to ask questions. Some
children are initially a little shocked by it when they see it up close for the
first time. Sometimes they like to touch
the fake skin, sometimes they don’t.
When my own grandson saw my prosthesis for the first time without it’s
cosmetic cover, he was fascinated by it and later told his mother that I was
like a transformer.
When
someone asks me how I lost my leg, I usually tell them it was crushed in an
auto accident and never healed after several surgeries so amputation was the
most logical procedure at that point.
But then there are days that I just don’t want to talk about what
happened because there was so much more to it than that.
I
try to keep it to the condensed version because I know people just want a quick
answer. But then there are times I feel
like, if they asked, they’re going to get the whole awful story!
It
started when I fell in love with an alcoholic.
He was also a nurse and we were both going through a divorce at the same
time. Our relationship grew quickly and
within 2 years we had bought a house together (a fixer-upper we bought only to
flip) and got engaged. He didn’t drink
every day, just 2 or 3 nights a week, but when he did, he drank until all of the
alcohol was gone. It was easier to turn
my head to it since he wasn’t an obnoxious drunk, he wasn’t drinking on work
days and there weren’t really any significant problems because of it.
One
fall evening in October, 1998, we went out for the evening to see his
brother. I saw him have 3 beers over the
course of about 4 hours so I was happy to know he wasn’t intoxicated and he was
ok to drive. We were about 4 miles from
home when he fell asleep and we drifted off the road on a curve. The cruise control was set at 55 so we never
slowed down. I was fishing for something
in my purse and never saw it coming. I
had just unbuckled my seatbelt, I still don’t remember why. There was an ambulance traveling behind us
and saw the whole thing. Though it took
a bit of time for them to cut me from the car, I didn’t realize the extent of
my injuries until several hours later when I was admitted to the Intensive Care
Unit. I had sustained nearly 2 dozen
fractures from head to toe. Facial
fractures, all of my ribs were fractured, both lungs partially collapsed, a
contusion to my heart and both legs crushed under the dash. He had a broken nose and a laceration under
one eye.
It
was a month or so after the accident when the sheriff’s department called on
the phone to tell him that he was being charged with Operating Under the
Influence. His blood alcohol level was
0.13, well over the legal limit. It was
then that I learned he had been doing shots of whiskey that night when he was
out of my sight. So although I had only
seen him with 3 beers, he drank much more than that.
I
asked the District Attorney to give him a light sentence. I was still living on the sofa bed since I
had 2 broken legs and couldn’t go upstairs to the bedroom. I needed him home to help me. He was
sentenced to 7 days in jail, the minimum sentence for his blood alcohol
level. Our relationship deteriorated
quickly over the next few months. After
one surgery to remove hardware (I had a spinal and was completely paralyzed
from the waist down) he convinced the nurse to let me go, even though I didn’t
have any feeling back yet. He carried me
in the house, placed me on the couch and announced he was leaving for his dad’s
for the weekend. I knew he couldn’t bear
to look at me without feeling guilty. In
May, he left me with our half-finished house to be with another woman he had
been seeing on the side. He never looked
back and I never saw him again. I stayed in the house for over a year after he
left, working on it in between surgeries so I could try and sell it. I remember one time hanging sheetrock by
myself with one leg in a cast. I did as
much as I could, but eventually had to let it go and walk away.
In
the 2 years after the accident, I made several trips to the operating room to
try and repair the damage that just never seemed to heal completely. During two separate surgeries, I had bone
taken from my hip and implanted into my lower leg to try and start growing a
bone bridge, but both of those ultimately failed. I was on several medications for nerve pain,
post-traumatic arthritis and at one point underwent a series of injections in
my spine to try and calm the pain to my lower leg. Those were fine until one day, it left me
completely numb from the waist down. The
doctor had no idea why that happened, so I stopped the injections that
day. I ended up with a complete ankle
fusion (my lower leg permanently mounted onto the foot) but even that failed
after a year. Amputation was the next
logical procedure and, at that point, I think I was ready.
My
amputation was in April of 2001, 2 and ½ years after the initial accident. I wasn’t prepared for it emotionally and I
struggled very hard for the first couple of years. It bothered me that Mr. Wonderful had never
apologized for what he had done to me. I
hoped he knew everything I had gone through after he left and I really hoped it
made him feel like shit.
I
tried to dull the pain with alcohol the first couple of years. Needless to say, it didn’t help. I grieved for my leg for a long time. I never knew that would happen with just losing
a partial limb, but that feeling was overwhelming. I pushed those close to me away, even my
teenage son. I thought I was going crazy and I didn’t understand why. I hated
my behavior but felt helpless to change it. Eventually I found the Amputee
Coalition of America online and through them I learned that everything I had
been feeling was normal.
I
thank God everyday for the undying love
and support of my family and close friends.
They didn’t understand what I was going through because I couldn’t find
the words to tell them. Still, over the
years, not a day went by that didn’t think about the man who had done this to
me. In 2011 I found out that he had a
terrible life after that, married and divorced the “other woman”, nearly died
in a house fire and had recently died of a brain aneurysm. At that point, I realized an apology would
never come and his death would have to be my closure.
I
contacted his mother on social media earlier this year, on his birthday, to let
her know I was thinking of him on that day, as I did every year. She thanked me and told me some things I
never knew.
She
said “I hope that someday you can find it in your heart to forgive him, as he
could never forgive himself. I know he
caused you much pain and he wanted to reach out to you over the years but he
never knew how to do it. He loved you
very much and you were his biggest regret.
He saved all of the letters and notes you wrote him and I put those in
his urn with his ashes so your words will always be with him.”
I
didn’t realize it at the time, but when I was dealing with the loss of my leg,
I was also still dealing with the loss of my relationship with him. He was “the one” for me. My prince charming, my night in shining
armor, but nobody ever gave that a thought.
They just wondered what the hell was wrong with me. I feel that the words from his mother earlier
this year were what I needed to hear to get my closure.
So
that is the long version of my story; the part I don’t wish to re-live but is
the real truth behind “how I lost my leg”.
I lost way more than that, but the simplest answer I usually give is,
“it was crushed in a car accident and never healed right”. The End
