He's A Leg Man

A few months after I got home from the hospital, I met a man who rocked my world. He was a take-charge kind of dude. Within the first ten minutes of meeting him, his hands were on my inner thighs. He was, and still is, my hero.

(Spoiler alert – this is not one of my novels. If you’re expecting to read a smokin’ hot love scene right about now, you’re in for a huge disappointment.)

So anyway, his name is Jeff, and he’s a leg man. He’s my prosthetsist.

            I’m right there with you. I didn’t know how to pronounce that tongue-twister of a word either. I didn’t even know what it meant at first. It’s not like the word is part of our everyday lexicon, unless you happen to hang out with people wearing manufactured body parts. In fact, the first fifty times I tried to say the word I sounded like I’d popped a few extra Dilaudid to take the edge off -- “Praw-sssshhhhtiii-isht.” Even now, I get it right only about half the time.

A prosthetist (prahs-thih-tist) is a highly trained professional who designs, fabricates, fits, and services a prosthetic device prescribed by a physician. Many prosthetists also specialize in orthotics, like knee braces, and arch supports. In my opinion, that job description falls way short, since my prosthetist also become a therapist, confessor, life coach, cheerleader, Mechanical Engineering 101 professor, and close friend.

Jeff knows his stuff inside and out. Literally. At the age of eight, he was diagnosed with cancer and had his right leg amputated just below the hip. So when he tells me he understands what I’m going through, he really does. And then some. I have a residual limb (R.L. for short), so my prosthesis can attach to the thigh with a suction system. Jeff’s leg must be secured around his waist with a harness. And yet the guy zips around like nothing’s amiss. He plops down on the floor and pops up again at least a dozen times per appointment, and when he’s not at work, he swimming, running, biking, and mountain climbing with his family. He’s an awesome role model. Everyone I’ve met who knows Jeff says the same thing about him:  “Isn’t he amazing? You can’t even tell he wears a prosthetic leg!”

 But in my experience, the most incredible thing about Jeff is that he’s one-hundred-percent real. I’m not sure I’ve ever met anyone like him. He’s a mellow and thoughtful guy who manages to tell it like it is without passing judgment. I’ve come to appreciate that about him, since becoming an amputee in your fifties can really leave you spinning. It’s like moving to an alien world without speaking their language: I needed a tour guide and an interpreter, and Jeff became both. He told me to ask any questions I might have. Boy, was that a mistake.

Is this type of frustration normal? Is it always this hard to get used to a prosthetic limb? Do I really have to go through all this shit? Why me? I don’t think I can do it. Am I doing all right? I give up. Help me to not give up. It itches. Why does it itch? It hurts. It gets sweaty. I don’t have any more patience left. You should probably give my leg to someone else who’s better at this than I am. Would you like to do that?

Many times, I’ve shuffled into Jeff’s office frantic about some new development with R.L. or the latest incarnation of my prosthesis. With my eyeballs popping, I will ask, “Is this a good thing or a bad thing?”

Jeff always shrugs and says, “It’s just a thing. We’ll work with it.” If I ever write a book about Jeff, I want the cover to read:

“It’s Just A Thing”

Shit My Prosthetist Says

By Susan Donovan

I will never forget the day I arrived at Jeff’s office for my initial evaluation. The adventure began even before I met him. My writer friend Grace volunteered to escort me. “Escort” sounds so pleasant. The truth is, those who volunteered to take me anywhere in those days had to have the patience of Mother Teresa. The job was a theatre of the absurd production in four acts. Act 1:  Wheel me down the spanking new wheelchair ramp now installed at my house, assist me up and into the truck, dismantle and fold the wheelchair for storage. Act 2: Unfold and reassemble the wheelchair, assist me out of the truck and into the chair, and wheel me inside the office. Act 3: Wheel me out of the office, help me from the chair and into the truck, and disassemble and fold the wheelchair. Act 4: Unfold and reassemble the chair, help me out of the truck and into the chair, wheel me back into my house via my lovely new ramp.

Once inside Jeff's office that first day, I was directed to a room and told to wait.  "He'll just be a minute," his assistant Ryanna said. She closed the door. I looked around, instantly creeped-out by the shelves of fake feet and hands and a variety of plastic forms in a whole spectrum of flesh colors. I broke into sobs looking at that wall of parts, imagining myself to be the abandoned doll in exile on the Island of Misfit Toys, needing to be fixed before anyone would love me again.

The first of many "temporary" legs

A later version of a "temporary" leg 

                     

Poor, poor Jeff. He opened the door with my chart in his hands, ready to offer a friendly greeting to his new patient, only to find a snotty, air-sucking, sweaty, sobbing mess of a one-legged lady slumped in her wheelchair. He handed me a box of tissues. “I only have one rule here,” he said, his voice kind. “No crying unless you fall.”

That made me cry harder. We would often joke about that in the years to come, since it seemed I cried every damn time I came to see him, except for the day I actually fell trying to get into his office. I pulled myself up and went on – not a single tear. Go figure.

During that first appointment, Jeff listened patiently as I told him everything I’d been through in the last five months or so. When I was done he told me he had some good news for me.

“You are the type of patient I love to work with. I can already tell you will do great with a prosthesis. Want to know why?”

I nodded, clamping my nose with a tissue.

“You are a fighter. You beat the odds. You were healthy and active before your illness and the amputation was not because of diabetes or other disease. You are highly intelligent and you want to get your life back.”

I cracked a smile. And our friendship began.

Jeff explained four main principles to me that day, principles we would return to many times through the years.

1.                     A prosthetic limb is a marvel of engineering, but it is not the biology I was born with. Using a prosthesis would require retraining the mind and body, but even then, it would never “replace” the function of my lost leg. Expecting that outcome would only set me up for a double helping of frustration and disappointment.

2.                     Getting my “permanent” prosthetic leg could take months or even years. I had to be evaluated, approved by insurance, and go through a long process of trial and error to discover exactly how to best meet my needs in terms of technology, fit, attachment system, and a whole slew of other factors. Like the rest of my health crisis saga, the process would be two steps forward followed by one -- or more -- steps back. I would need to be patient.

3.                     I  was fortunate to need a prosthetic in 2012, as my options would have been severely limited anytime before. The leg I received would be the result of the suffering of thousands of men and women who lost limbs in a decade of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The medical establishment had been forced to quickly advance prosthetic technology to meet the demand for limbs, often for young people in supreme physical condition who wished to resume previous activity levels.

4.                     This was also unfortunate for me, because the public view of prosthetics and amputees was based on media coverage, stories almost exclusively about robustly healthy people in their twenties, products of world-class military fitness training,  newsworthy because they were running marathons six months after they lost a leg in a quick and violent incident. “You know that isn’t you, right, Susan?” Jeff held my hand. “You were fifty years old when you got sick. It was systemic. You had many, many complications and it will take a long time for you to heal – not just your leg, but your whole body. You weren’t a twenty-two-year-old Marine

                               before and you won’t be after. Unfortunately, not everyone else will realize that."

           That first appointment, Jeff and his assistant took a cast of R.L. while I stood on my intact leg, supporting myself on a set of parallel bars. They covered the thigh in plastic wrap and proceeded with what was basically a papier-mâché project. The cast hardened, and Jeff slipped it off. I had my first mold! Technicians would use it to create my very first temporary socket – the top part of the prosthesis that fits over what’s left of my thigh. It was my first one-legged lurch on the path toward walking again.

          About a year later, I told Jeff that I was thinking about writing a blog -- and eventually a book -- about my experience. It was the first time I ever saw him get crazy excited about anything.

“Yes! Yes! You could become the face of necrotizing fasciitis!”

           And what girl wouldn’t want that? I can imagine it now. The next time I’m doing a booksigning I will hear the whispers . . . “OMG! Is that Susan Donovan? She’s the face of flesh-eating bacteria!”

I told Jeff it wasn’t exactly the vibe I was going for, but he pressed on. “You could help a lot of people, Susan. You have to do it.”

           As with most everything else, I think Jeff was right.