My Paper
I wrote this! That means it is mine, mistakes and all. If someone out there wants to use it for something else make sure you cite me (credit me for my idea or at least my writing)
Jesse Stolba
English 213
Professor Sexson
24 April 2007
Shit Happens Things Change
also known as the rewalking of Jesse
I'm trying to figure out what in the eternity to write about. There are two major noises in my brain right now and they are shit happens things change and transformation. Oh, well that narrows it down. So how can I write about this in the context of me, not that I want to talk about me cause like most every person you come in contact with the person is boring and lame at best, but because I know me and therefor have great knowledge of said person to ramble on about thereby creating thus predetermined length of paper. Now I'm getting somewhere! So here's what comes to mind a transformation of me when shit happens creating a change of things. Brilliant!
It was a brisk evening the night of December 19th in the year 2000 and 7. I was being a good active aikido student when all of a sudden during a routine activity my knee became severely injured. In short I got a owie. I saw the doctor in the morning and he wanted to do surgery that day cause there was nothing else that could be done. This was very depressing because he said the recovery time for this injury is 9 months. I'd be 24 by the time I could live again, but the surgery was a must so I agreed. However I was bumped that day and scheduled for the next. The surgery went just fine except for being starved for two days in a row due to being bumped. Now my life really started to change. Since I had an owie I went to my mommies where she took care of me, but this was no walk in the park recovery (no joke I wasn't walking). I didn't get up the at all that first day. My leg was locked straight in a brace for about four weeks. The weight of my brace on my leg hurt so bad over the next week that I would slide on the carpet to reach the bathroom. Ever so slowly I started to use the crutches. First it was just standing with them while I griped the brace and lifted it up to help reduce the weight, then after a few days I was able to let go of the brace and just stand with it, but not for long mind you. My progress was painfully slow. I spent three weeks in my mom's trailer without leaving it. The first time I left it was to go back to the doctors for a check up. I rode in the back of the car stretched across the seats. My leg was still kept straight and there was now snow on the ground making stairs in and out of my mom's place a nightmare. I wasted away in that place for quite some time. Rotting my brain out watching tv, barely able to get to the bathroom, my life was depressing and hellish.
After that doctors visit I was given an activity away from that black hole of a couch that I clung to. It was in the disguise of a physical therapy prescription. His name is Steve Wiltzen and he is also in aikido. He's a person who likes to heal with pain whenever possible. Most of what he does is tai chi or other eastern methods of healing and they work quite well. Lucky for me a cartilage injury is not one of those “heal with pain” situations. Steve gave me a few different exercises to do around the house every 2 to 3 hours and since I had nothing else going on I had no excuse not to be doing them. For the most part they were to keep my muscle mass where it was at so as not to lose anymore and 1 or 2 exercises were to start bending my knee, something I'd been waiting for since the surgery.
Before I knew it school was going to start. The first big step was staying at my place again. Honestly I was ready and couldn't wait but my mom didn't want to let me go; just like moving out all over again. The most difficult thing was showering since my place only has about 10 minutes of hot water and my shower time had been taking closer to an hour. It gave my mom an excuse to bring me back out to her place while I got reacquainted with my living environment. All in all thing started coming together. I still couldn't drive so I relied on friends and family to get me to the physical therapist and later to and from school. The getting around situation got very tiresome. Grocery shopping had to be planned out and any type of entertainment or “activity” had to be thought out in advance. I still couldn't stand being on my crutches for very long because of the swelling and weight but things were progressing.
The worst part about being confined to crutches while going to school is the damage that gets done to your hands. The wrists were not made to support your body and I found this out the hard way. In fact my right wrist still gives me troubles from time to time. When your wrists hurt and you have to use crutches life is no longer fun; not to mention it makes going to classes very difficult. I remember the first day of my Classical Japanese Literature class. It was to be held on the third floor of Reid. I arrived and took a seat thinking that there were a lot of girls for this class cause normally there are not many girls in any Japanese class. So I sat and waited for the teacher to come in, but to my surprise when the teacher came in he, not the she I knew who would be teaching the class, was speaking Spanish. I quickly found out that the class had been moved to the second floor of Wilson. Just great, not only was I late for class but I also had to go back down stairs, across campus, and up some more stairs. That was not a very good day.
As the semester went on I figured out little tricks to make my days easier. Such as where to sit in classrooms so my crutches would be out of the way, which paths to take to class to avoid people and steep hills along with snowy and icy terrain, and how to get food from where I wanted to eat to where I wanted to eat it.
To hopefully help me recover faster I started taking pills with glucosamine and other stuff that I have no idea what it does. The pills seemed to help or at least Steve Wiltzen thought I was recovering very quickly. The doctor didn't seem to notice or care when I went in for my check up. They told me what they would like to see as far as improvement goes. Mostly it was more muscle mass but I didn't care what they thought as much as how I felt I was progressing.
In my progress I slowly came upon milestones. The first being able to toe touch. This is where I simulate walking by touching my toe to the ground, very gently, while using both crutches. From there I gradually put more weight on it and used more of my foot until I was practically walking with crutches. The next big step was going from two crutches to one. I might have looked like I was progressing nicely with the two crutches but when I went to one my world started shifting. It never seemed right to me having three legs like an old man because when my right leg, the injured one, was down the weight that my upper body tried to hold couldn't be evenly distributed turning my nice walk with two crutches into a limping one. The best part was around this time I was able to drive and drive confidently, incidentally driving became a real life saver for me. I found the problem with progress to be this: you are forced to move on to the next level or step before you have mastered the one you are currently on.
The day when I no longer needed to have crutches was great. No extra appendages to take with me to classes or in the car was the greatest reward! Although there was one thing about this level of recovery that really started to bother me and that was the knee brace I had been wearing since the 20th of December. It would start to slip and fall off my leg while I was walking which became a nuisance, but you can't win all the time. After fighting the leg brace for sometime the day came when it was no longer required :)
My whole recovery I was getting prepared for this momentous occasion, walking. Sounds stupid but it's true. Most of my physical therapy was just training me to walk and now that the day came I was learning how to walk for the second time in my life. Actually I was learning how to walk correctly for the first time in my life. Now I still have little milestones for me to conquer like working (I'm not allowed back at Target yet but my friend Chaz hired me on at his place delivering pizzas), running, and getting back into aikido, but the main mountain has been climbed and that was walking. From here on I just have to play the game as it goes. Some days my knee is fine others I have problems with it; I never know. I'm almost back to where I started but two things I learned is that the knee is for flexing and extension not twisting, and to quit while I'm ahead.
posted by Unclejesse @ 11:11 PM
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