Wrists

During early May in the late seventies, I tried, unsuccessfully, to create a hole in the side of an empty glass bottle while waiting for my mom to return home from work. (Sitting still was something at which I wasn’t very good; by today’s standards I would have surely been diagnosed deficient in attentiveness and over-prescribed some unnecessary drug.)  I don’t remember much about the bottle, other than the fact that it was clear. (And it may not have been clear, but for some reason, an 8 oz. clear orange crush bottle made its way into past reports and recounts of the story.)

Where we lived had a concrete porch. I remember banging that bottle gently against the side of a stair while Kim, most likely, cartwheeled on the side yard – her legs cutting the air while a glass bottle remained perfectly intact in my hands.

I was a pretty smart kid. I knew physics and I knew that if one banged with enough force, glass would lose a fight to concrete. So I banged and banged and I banged some more until I proved myself successful. Concrete did win out over glass – Hooray! But the physics principle I hadn’t learned yet, the one about the displacement of energy though a 1970s glass bottle, was about to be realized. The glass would take its scientific revenge on me by shattering and displacing its energy into the skin, flesh and tendons of my left wrist. My mom, Louise, met me at the hospital. She told me I had given her her first gray hairs. 

Wristband from my surgery - Late 70s

 

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I arrived at the hospital the morning after the accident. I tried to imagine the elephant man in preparation for what I was about to see, however, no preparation could have prepared me for witnessing my mother unconscious, almost unrecognizable under the swelling, broken bones, breathing tube, and stitches. I lost the ability to speak. I gained a few more gray hairs. 

Louise's Wristband

She lay quite cherub-like as a result of the swelling, but still beautiful, still Louise, still my mom. In that condition, she may have been a stranger to most who knew her. If she weren’t my mother, I may not have recognized her. She never forgot to tell me who she was – “It’s your mother”, she would say, when I’d pick up the phone. After seeing her on the bed for the first time and after collecting my breath, I said, “Mom, it’s David”.

I stayed with her and the crew of the ICU for days. My focus, on the bleeps and bops, pings and pangs of the ICU, Room 134 monitors; my sensors always keenly aware of her blood pressure, temperature, heart and breathing rates. The nurses were amazing; Brooke, Shyla, Heidi, Melissa, Amy and many others were always available to give Louise the attention she needed and answer my questions, as repetitive and silly as they may have seemed - never with pretense, and always with compassion.

Over the course of the four days succeeding the accident, the doctors and nurses kept Louise’s vitals in balance. A slight temperature, a drop in blood pressure, an increased heart rate or quickened breathing rate brought the attention of the staff and an increase, decrease, removal or addition of some medication. This was the roller coaster that Larry, Yvonne, Kim and I (and Louise) were riding. As many doctors reminded us – 2 steps forward, one step back.

The doctors making up Louise’s trauma team were great too. They took great care in explaining Louise’s particular conditions, and like the nurses, answered our many questions in as much or little detail as required. We would meet with Orthopedists, Maxillofacial Surgeons, Neurologists, and other specialists who would start the fixing five days after the accident. The first surgery scheduled was the wrist. During the explanation of the impending procedure, I cringed: Open wound, broken bones, torn tendons.

I slept in a chair; Nurses changed shifts at 7am and 7pm; Doctors woke me up on their morning rounds; I showered in the hospital.   During those first few days, Louise’s body remembered its rhythms and flows. Her frame stirred when it was morning, quickening her heart rate and accelerating her breathing. At bedtime, the monitors would settle down; I could get some sleep.

And wait for the wrist surgery.