Two Mistakes

I am not the oldest para I know by a long shot – as many readers are quick to remind me – but I have been around the barn enough times to see how I’ve taken care of myself (with unending help from my wife) or more importantly, how I haven’t taken care of myself. The upshot is that I’ve caused both of us a river of grief. Even before I made two big mistakes, I almost did myself in, stupidly. I stopped taking blood-thinning drugs when I left the hospital on my initial stay. No one said anything, so I just stopped. Three weeks later, I passed out on a city street and ended up in the hospital with a pulmonary embolism. It was serious. One misstep like that could have killed me.

The underlying source of most of my daily problems is, at this point, unfixable. I have severe contracture of the knees. Contracture is when your knee joint freezes in a bent position. The muscles and tendons become inelastic from disuse. I didn’t know the word until the problem presented itself only a few months after my injury. There are ways to reverse contracture in the early stages – first, stretching exercises, done religiously, or cumbersome metal or plastic leg braces that you wear, usually at night. Both need to be sustained for months on end. I tried the braces, more than once, and simply became discouraged with the uncomfortable nightly ritual and gave up.

The most definitive solution is surgery to loosen the tendons – filet them, as one surgeon described it. I was fifteen years younger when I seriously considered this option. It would have been six or more months of repair and recovery at a time I didn’t think I could afford the time off. Even then, my internist thought the procedure was too risky, but at least one specialist who had done many such operations said, for myriad reasons, to do it.

I didn’t do it. I vacillated until it was too late. Now, at my age, no surgeon would recommend such elective surgery and I feel the full impact of my delay. Chronically bent legs on beds, couches, and even rubbing against your chair are major causes of Mistake #2, pressure sores on my ankles, calves, and the sides of my knees. They also throw off your balance. And they prohibit you from using weight-loading devices to stand you up and aid blood flow and muscle strength. This last one is the killer. Because I got cold feet, as it were, I will never be able to straighten my legs again. That’s demoralizing.