PERSONAL PARALYSIS

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I have previously reflected on the following experience, but not having ready access to that story among far too many files, and far too little time, I feel inclined to reflect on it again.

A few years ago I decided to trim my neighbor’s tree. Generally, I would not have been quite so altruistic, but the limbs of the tree hung over my driveway, and as spring approached each year a healthy supply of oak pollen showered my car, and the pavement upon which it was parked.

And since there was a basketball post just beneath the offending tree, it seemed good to me to prop my straight ladder against it, and having done so, I set about the task at hand.

Did I mention round posts and straight ladders are altogether incompatible? (Well, they are).

Suddenly, the ladder accomplished a task for which it was never intended. It became mobile. And I became its unintended pilot. Given the choice to ride the thing to the ground, or jump, I chose the latter.

And as I “winged my way to worlds unknown” I chose to land upright, (or something approximating it) and twisted my body just enough in my failed flight to the concrete to land on my right foot.

I knew. I just knew

My ankle was broken

After lying there a moment, and using my car for leverage, I stood upon my left foot, hop-scotched to my front door, opened it, and made my wife aware of my injury.

Fast forward several weeks, and I found myself in a prep room at Tampa General Hospital preparing to have my ankle reconstructed; since it was not only broken, but it was badly shattered.

Just prior to being wheeled into the operating room a nurse administered an injection to my right thigh, and explained that shortly thereafter my leg would develop a state of paralysis, and that when I awoke I would experience this condition for several hours prior to the restoration of feeling.

As she predicted, when I came to I was provided an entre into a state of being to which I had never before been privy.

For a full 65 years I had enjoyed complete use of all four limbs. Suddenly, I was short one. Initially, my paralytic experience was nothing more, nothing less than interesting. The natural scheme of things in which we move, and live and have our being had been interrupted. Perhaps if I expended a little more thought, a little more will power I could lift my leg an inch off the bed. (Well,… no). Perhaps if I focused all my energies on my little toe, I could wiggle that tiny digit. (Nice try).

Nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch

By this time I had gone from being an interested observer to a concerned participant.

I imagined the worst. I mean, I could just see myself being discharged in this condition, and having to use a cane the last third of my life; while all the while dragging a useless limb behind me.

Alarmed, I spoke,

“Nurse, uh, you’re probably aware that my leg is paralyzed. Uhmm, does this sorta thing ever go wrong? Is there any chance I’m stuck with this dead leg for the duration?”

“Nurse Simms” assured me that the paralysis would abate, and that I’d regain complete sensation and mobility in the limb within a few hours.”

And true to her word, that is exactly how things fell together.

My nephew, his name was “Wade,” was born with a malady referred to as “Spina Bifida.” While he had some use of his arms and hands, his legs and feet were paralyzed from birth, and he was dependent on a wheelchair throughout his all too brief life. And though Wade endured countless surgeries, and a significant amount of pain and humiliation, he never seemed to complain, and it was if the angels had loaned him a permanent smile.

During the two decades Providence allowed Wade to grace this planet, I sympathized for and with him. However, it was only after his death, and my subsequent injury, surgery and (temporary) paralysis that I could truly empathize; since it was only after my own experience that I had any real hope of understanding what ‘til then was beyond my understanding.

by William McDonald, PhD