Page Utilities
Glenys Carl, Pan Books (page 12 of 13) Page 12 of 13
He has a rag doll someone made from wool and rags so he could stretch his fingers around it as part of his therapy for his left hand. At the end of the day he mimics us, becoming the physio trainer telling the doll everything we say to him repeatedly: 'Stretch that leg, hold it, you know you can do better, you know you can do it.' I wonder what is going through his mind. Sometimes he calls me Hitler's Wife, laughing, making me get down and do push-ups. 'One more,' he says, 'you know it's good for you.' Sometimes he jokes, 'I'm going to get out of this place and go to the army; I'd be treated better there. Maybe it would be better in basic training.'
I also listen to him taking his aggressions and frustrations out on the doll. One time he throws it on top of a cupboard and says, 'You're staying there for a week and not coming down.'
Whatever anger he feels, he never carries it into the actual therapy. If it is an older person working on him, and a lot of pain is being inflicted, he will sometimes pick up their hand and kiss it as a way of saying it's okay. He never gives up. Each step of the way his courage never falters.
'Isn't it Saturday tomorrow? Will I get the day off?'
'What do you think?' I reply.
'Okay, okay, I get the message,' he says.
Sometimes when we talk during the middle of the night and he can't sleep, he'll say, 'I have a pain here; will you massage it with lavender oil, make the pain go away?' as if I have that power. Later, he'll fall asleep with a peaceful look on his face. I wonder where he goes in his dreams.
Another time when he sent me a birthday card he wrote, 'I love you, you are the best mom in the world. I love how you take care of me, but I hope you never get sore like I am.' When I asked him about his pain, he replied, 'It won't be for ever.' When I asked him what he missed most, he replied, 'I miss running. I miss my buddies and friends in America that I played ball with. I miss my roommate Niall from Copenhagen, the sports we did together, flirting with the ladies and working at Burger King while planning the next step of our future.'
One of my regular volunteers is Brendan, a young physiotherapist from St Vincent's who used to stop by Scott's room. He appears at our door in his white coat, asking if he can be of help. He is of modest build with short brown hair, narrowly set brown eyes and a wide smile in a slim, pale face. He is also very British, but to his credit he is willing to bend the rules. Inspired by Scott's walk on his knees he says, 'I believe it's critical to try and splint his legs and to keep his spine straight.' So Brendan and I build what he terms a sentry box, a three-sided wooden box that Scott can sit in with his legs forward. Once he is seated, I pad him up so he can't slump, and put a padded wedge between his thighs to drive them apart and to stretch and build his inner thigh muscles – a necessity if he is ever to stand. I also paint a chessboard on top of the table that keeps his legs open, so he can amuse himself by playing chess while he stays in the box for an hour.
Scott's leg is still bent at the knee and one day as Brendan and I sit at the kitchen table discussing therapy strategies, he looks at me with a devilish glint in his eye. 'I know what to do,' he says. 'We sneak him into the hospital, get his legs as straight as possible, and put them in casts to stretch his tendons.'
'Is that possible?' I ask. 'Won't we be caught?'
Brendan smiles. 'Trust me, I know these people. They won't suspect a thing.'
In preparation for the splinting, we intensify our efforts to loosen up Scott's leg muscles and tendons. I set a schedule of a solid week of six-hour days of pulling, stretching and holding Scott's legs for fifteen minutes at a time, with volunteers working in one-hour shifts to get his muscles stretched and pliable before they are cast in plaster.
We will have to transport Scott to the hospital, and once his legs are locked straight in casts, we'll need an even larger car to get him home. Fortunately, one of the volunteers offers his station wagon. On D-Day it appears. We move Scott up the stairs and into the back seat and are off to St Vincent's. Brendan borrows a wheelchair and soon we are in that part of the orthopaedic ward where the casts are set.
True to Brendan's word, the staff pay no special mind, believing Scott has been transferred in from somewhere. On the casting table the technicians lean into his knee, causing Scott to grimace in pain, until each leg straightens as far as possible, and they apply full leg casts.
The next trick is to get him home with the plaster still wet. Scott is back in the wheelchair, but he has picked up front-end weight, and his thick white legs stick straight out at a right angle, making it difficult to manoeuvre in the hall. 'Normally,' Brendan says with a wide grin as we prop and shore Scott's legs, 'people with both legs in a cast are kept in the hospital. But that would be pushing our luck.'
At the flat, volunteers help Scott down the stairs and onto his bed where he lies in considerable pain as his straightened legs pull against the frozen tendons behind his knees. All I can offer is Tylenol. After three days his flesh swells and turns red around the cast, and I'm fearful of an infection. What have we done? I am haunted by doubt and worry. I call Brendan.
'Does he have a rise in temperature?'
'No,' I answer, 'but he's in a lot of pain.'
'I told you he would be,' Brendan says. 'Give him more Tylenol. They have to stay on for seven days or it won't work.'
During those agonizing days, Michael, a Maori from New Zealand, spends hours at Scott's bedside to take his mind off the pain. Dressed in psychedelic colours, Michael has a handsome South Seas look with an engaging smile and great warmth. He hangs a small animal-skin pouch around Scott's neck and tells him it contains a sacred coin. 'You are on a special journey,' he solemnly tells Scott. 'When you travel you should always have money.' Michael eventually tells me he has been inspired to enrol in physiotherapy school because of Scott, so he can be better at helping others.
At the end of a long and painful week, especially the endless nights, Brendan and I return Scott to St Vincent's where the casts are sawn off. The stretching has worked and Scott has more flexibility in his knees, but at the price of considerable loss of skin. So I face a new problem: healing the skin on Scott's legs. Back home, I call Keith and ask for treatment. Keith arrives and rubs drops of aloe vera squeezed from one of my house plants into Scott's raw skin. Then he brings out his needles and gives Scott a full acupuncture treatment. The treatments seem to help, and within days Scott's skin is repairing itself.
From Hold My Hand: A Mother's Journey by Glenys Carl. Pan Books, Pan Macmillan LTD, England, 2005. All rights reserved.
