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A Collapse
On April 11th of 2006, my MS finally caught up with me. For two years, I'd been using the cane and overcompensating
with my right leg, the 'good' leg, the Non-MS leg. A month before my fall, I could feel the right leg buckling,
a tremor in the fault-line along the Ring of Fire, as though my right foot had grown resentful and were begging
reprieve. I thought little of it. I had to keep teaching for a hundred reasons and used my cane accordingly.
Although this fault-line in my right ankle continued to tremble, ominously, I had promised myself when first
diagnosed with MS back in 1997 that I would teach until I dropped. Well, on the morning of 4/11,
I dropped getting out of bed to prepare myself for school…with a hairline fracture in my right foot.
I had taken my health to the limit and then I simply lost my footing that morning. MS had finally
imploded my 'good' foot. I began shaking my fist at every god in the universe. This was the last
thing I needed. Sometimes, the most reliable things and people betray us. I lay on the bedroom carpet,
while my wife groaned more than I was groaning. Two or three times I tried lifting myself off the floor,
but this was no mere sprain I had suffered. When my wife took off my sock, we both gasped at the size
of my suddenly incurred 'big foot.' I had to stay put until the cavalry arrived.
The ambulette came, the paramedics strapped me onto the gurney, and I was soon transported, amid the
embarrassing sound of a siren, to Sound Shore Hospital. Too many neighbors had gathered outside to
watch my being lifted down the front stoop. I waved to them from the gurney, as though I were some
football player showing the crowd I was still alive and wiggling. My wife of course joined me in
the back of the ambulette and answered the paramedic's questions for me.
Four hours later, after pills, x-rays, and endless waiting in the ER, I was ready to be
shipped home via ambulette by a different crew of paramedics. The doctor had pronounced
his verdict: hairline fracture. I was told to see an Orthopedist immediately and to stay
off my feet six to eight weeks. This time I collapsed into denial, unable to fathom missing
that much school. Later that night, in my own bed, the nightmare had begun. Six to eight
weeks off my feet, and a leave of absence from work. It sounded like a prison sentence,
nearly terminal, wheelchair and all. The sentence was confirmed when each morning I'd awake,
and nothing had changed, like a defective clock fixed upon one time, the minute hand staggering
to the next second but then reverting to its previous groove. Every person who has ever been wheelchair-bound
will tell you the same thing. Nothing changes when you awake the next morning, despite your ambulatory dreams.
Miracles are slow, especially when your wife is at work and you have to fend for yourself getting in and out
of the wheelchair, going to the bathroom, and negotiating a hundred other things that even a man with a cane
takes for granted.
Within three days I went to the Orthopedist who tucked my leg into an inflatable Aircast.
For the next two weeks I made my Wednesday visit to the office, by ambulette, where the
foot was X-rayed. I remained faithful to the wheelchair, Xpress. I ambled around the
house, room to room, preserving my sanity by reading and watching I-O Digital.
Finally on May 3rd, the doctor said that the swelling had subsided wonderfully, and
the bone was set in place. I could begin partial weight-bearing on the foot...as long
as I kept on the Aircast, used the walker, and relied on Physical Therapy. O Happy Day.
As soon as I got home, I had to use the bathroom and decided to make my leap of faith
from wheelchair to walker.
As I arose, some tsunami was headed for Sri Lanka, and Palestinian boys were pelting
Israeli tanks with rocks in the Gaza Strip. My broken bone was infinitesimal compared
to world suffering. And yet, each man's woe occupies him completely. It shouldn't be
this way, but little else matters when a man has been confined to a wheelchair, and
the time has now come to be catapulted out of it. With my ankle brace on my MS leg
and the Aircast on my right, I looked like FDR. I said my prayer, then shifted my
weight onto the walker, frantically hoping (and countless other participals) that
I wouldn't fall…again.
My wife Denise watched anxiously.
How liberated I felt standing up! Emancipation. 'Walking' slower than a tortoise, I kept my head
down and stared at the carpet, the kitchen linoleum, and the bathroom tiles. I hummed the Exodus song
in my mind and issued my internal commands. The walker wasn't to crash. I wasn't to lose my grip and
tumble backwards. Neither of my feet was to splay irrevocably outward into the never, never land of
surgery. After the bathroom, I pointed the walker out the door, delicately retracing my steps through
tiles, linoleum, and carpet, and resumed the music in my head. I even complimented Aircast and Foot Brace
for being such excellent boys and not collapsing on me. My wife applauded. And yet, I knew it would be
a long time before I'd walk 'normally' again and drive my more liberating car. I wondered, moreover,
how my MS foot was going to respond after having spent so much time off its feet. Was it going to
constrict into the tightest of Achilles' tendons? I also understood how each man's suffering was
universal onto himself…despite that man's knowledge that even as he traipsed to the bathroom and
back, ignorant armies were clashing by night.
Steve Sangirardi has MS
and lives in New York. He is also a husbad, father, and retired English
teacher at 55 because of his MS. He just had a book of stories published by
Wild Leaf Press, called Life on the Planet. If you goggle his name, you'll
see the book's website and samples of his other work.
Email: Steve Sangirardi
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