It all started fairly innocently after catching an edge going down a laughably easy slope in Utah. Creating the classic skier’s yard sale, I splattered on the snow—popped-off skis landing several yards away. Sprawling on the snow, poles still strapped around my wrist, my thumb wrenched backwards. Embarrassed and at first thinking only of my bruised ego, I shook off the incident skiing down a few more times before succumbing to the pain and the urging of our friends to get it checked out. At the clinic, conveniently located next to the base lodge, I was x-rayed and passed from doctor to doctor the last of whom made a splint and bandaged my right arm turning it into an unwieldy awkward appendage. Diagnosis--a torn tendon, a small fracture, and instructions to see an orthopedist as soon as I got home.
Within a few days, my thumb not hurting much, I convinced myself the clinic was wrong; it was probably just a sprain; surely the doctor would just have me wear a splint for a few weeks, at most, before returning to normal activity. Arriving home, that hope quickly shattered as an orthopedist –a man of few words—took one look at the x-ray, did a few simple tests (which hurt like hell) and began writing out instructions for surgery the following week.
Having been with Melanie during her cancer surgeries, and with two surgeries of my own in the past few years, I remembered what a difference it makes to actually prepare for any kind of assault on the body so for one week, I meditated, prayed, read about the surgery and recovery, asked around about the doctor I was using, while also clearing my calendar. As the day approached, feeling confident with the doctor and my own ability to cope and grateful that Chris would be by my side throughout it all, I just wanted to get it over with so I could begin to heal.
Arriving at the outpatient surgical center, all went as expected. The excellent staff of nurses and anesthesiologists could not have been more professional or upbeat. Still it was in that prep time that I began to be suspicious that my body was in for something new. It began with the nerve block injected into my shoulder and arm. My arm lying across my lap, the anesthesiologist asked me to look away, which I dutifully did, until he told me it was okay to turn back. Looking down for my arm still across my lap, I found it had gone missing. I could feel it resting there and yet searching around, I spied it lifelessly hanging down beside my leg. Even with Chris reassuringly holding my other hand, it felt like my arm had decided to go it’s own way without my permission.
A few minutes later after being wheeled into surgery the world went blank until waking to find myself being wheeled to the recovery area. Soon, fully awake I once again began searching for my wandering arm (which I still thought was lying peacefully across my body.) There it lay beside me on the bed only now it was wrapped two or three times it’s normal size in a hard cast.
Preparing to go home I had a glimpse of the challenge of the next few weeks. Getting dressed with a cast is just plain awkward but getting dressed with an arm that takes no instructions from the brain is ridiculous. It waved around going wherever gravity and inertia took it while the nurse and I maneuvered my body into some semblance of propriety.
The last orders of the day were instructions that came with the prescriptions they required Chris to get filled while I was under the knife. Pulling out two large bottles of drugs, Vicodin and Oxycodone, I was told to take them that night when the feeling started to come back into my arm. She wanted me to “get ahead of the pain” and continue that for a few days.
The next three days were, as they say in doctor speak, “uncomfortable” but certainly manageable with the Vicodin. By the fourth day, the pain had subsided to the point where I stopped taking the drugs. A few hours later I was not sure what was going on but there was unspeakable tiredness, watery eyes, no appetite and even more disturbing a black cloud of depression creeping over me and it only got worse the next few days. A few mornings later I woke in bed thinking I did not have one reason to get out of bed --ever. Only Opal’s big kiss and wagging tail forced me up that morning while Chris was a work.
Shaken and realizing something was very out of whack and suspecting the connection between the drugs and my feelings, I turned to the Internet, Googling “ Withdrawal from Vicodin. ” Low and behold, I had classic symptoms of withdrawal. It was downright scary and sad to read story after story of desperate people trying their best to kick this habit-forming drug. After only a few days of use, I might be feeling lousy but these folk’s worlds were crumbling as they lost families and jobs and a piece of their souls. While it took several more days to feel like myself again, I was lucky to realize what was happening fairly quickly and do what I needed to do for myself in the meantime.
Now I cannot stop thinking how interconnected our minds, and bodies, and souls are. I also realize how much my brave daughter taught me over the years about handling assaults on the body with resiliency—the need to pay attention, to know your body and honor what it is telling you, as well as when to let people take care of you as Chris did during my recent “couch days.” Knowing that Melanie is the only one who truly lives with cancer, I have learned about myself in the process of living with her disease. Of course, I would trade every speck of that knowledge for a cancer-free daughter; there are other ways to get that wisdom and knowledge, but my guess is most of them involve suffering as well. I wish I knew why it has to work that way, but that seems to be the way it is in life. So for now, I am simply grateful--grateful for the healing that has happened in her life and in mine as well.
