Chapter 100---No Pain, No Gain

“Katelynn! Are you okay?” The shaky voice was coming from somewhere above me. A warm liquid trickled down the side of my head as I slowly became aware of everything around me. I opened my eyes and looked towards the sound; memories slowly began to connect the present with the past.

I assessed the situation as I tried to stand; unbearable sharp pain prevented that action. “My foot’s broken,” I calmly answered, then shouted back, “Are you all right, Anthony?” I unsuccessfully tried to stand once more. If your body uses pain to communicate with your brain, my right foot was yelling at a new decibel; it made my head spin. I touched the liquid---blood. “My head is bleeding too.” Shock was allowing me to analyze the situation in a strangely serene state of mind.

Anthony was standing hundreds of yards above me on the face of the mountain. There were so many thoughts running through my head; before I could interpret one, it was replaced by a new equally confusing thought. If he was standing, he wasn’t paralyzed. I moved my toe. I wasn’t paralyzed. Where is my shoe? I was shaking. What happened to the four-wheeler? It must be somewhere at the bottom of the mountain. I reached up to touch my pounding head. Where is my helmet? I didn’t check to see if there were bugs on this dirty rock. Spiders…my thoughts were interrupted by Chase coming over the top of the mountain.

“Oh my heck! What happened? I’ll call 911!” He was standing near Anthony if my ears were working correctly. He continued, “I don’t have service here! I’ll have to go down the mountain and find some.” I was his date and he didn’t even come down to see if I was alright; I found it irritating and comical at the same time. His footsteps sounded further away and I assumed he had started his hike back to his four-wheeler. Sensitivity to light from my head injury had forced me to close my eyes and rely on other senses. The intensity of the pounding in my head increased with each second. I was cold, despite the bright Spring sun beating down on me.

As Chase’s footsteps became inaudible, Mandy, Anthony’s date, came running to our side of the mountain. Frantically repeating the same string of questions, she hurried to my side. My answers were the same, “My foot’s broken. My head is bleeding.” I reassessed the situation, shocked at myself I whispered, “I peed my pants.”

“Let me see how bad your head is, Kate,” Mandy said gently lifting my head to get a better look. “Holy…” she exclaimed under her breath as I pulled my hair back; she was trying to be calm.

“How bad is it?” I asked, already knowing the answer from her explicit phrase.

Mandy didn’t know I had heard, “It’s not bad at all,” she lied in a shaky voice. She took someone’s shirt and began to apply pressure to my head. She tried to help me lie down. I resisted. The ground is dirty. There could be bugs. I don’t want to lay on this. I stripped off my shirt to use it as a blanket. As my shocked mind realized that someone else had assumed the role as the calm level headed one, panic set in.

“I could have killed us!” I screamed in a voice comparable to that of a woman giving birth. I began to voice the incoherent thoughts that ran through my head. “Basketball season is ruined!” I was becoming hysterical. “We could be dead!” With each scream, hot tears flowed, the pounding in my head multiplied, and the hysteria peaked. “I ripped my pants! These are my favorite pants!”

Between pain and the effects of the body’s natural response to stress, the next few hours of waiting for the ambulance were a hazy blur. Despite my protest, the ambulance personnel had called my parents; my dad was there among the ER staff to transport me from the ambulance into the hospital. “I broke my foot, daddy,” I said pathetically.

His real feelings masked by his trained calm in stressful situations, my dad’s sympathy was as cold and hard as the tables in the ER. Looking at my swollen foot he responded, “It looks like you did.” Numbed by his assumption of the role of physician, he added, “We told you not to go, Kate.” Those words hurt worse than the actual break. He continued, “Let’s get you into x-ray.”

After x-rays were taken and an operating room was prepared, the shock began to wear off. The epinephrine that had suppressed my awareness of pain no longer had full effect. “Please, please,” I found myself almost begging, “just make it stop. Give me drugs.” My wish was granted and with an IV steadily flowing into my arm, the pain began to dull.

My mom held my hand as I drifted in and out of consciousness. Lovingly she reassured me, “Go to sleep now, when you wake up it will all be over.”

I believed her. However, it was just the beginning. The physical pain was blinding the day of the accident and it was far from over when I woke up.

“You’re lucky. The fracture was a bad one, Kate,” my Dad was explaining the prognosis to me after surgery. “You’re lucky to be alive. You’re actually lucky to have a foot, if this happened fifty years earlier we would have had to amputate it. Thanks to technology, we were able to put a few small titanium screws in your foot to hold your joints together.”

“Screws? Will I set off metal detectors?” I questioned. The irrational hysteria of shock was long gone by now, but sometimes the things I say make me question my priorities.

My mother is always there to ask the important questions, “How long ‘til she can walk on it?” Knowing that I had been counting down to my senior year of basketball since I was ten, she rephrased her question quickly, “How long until she can play basketball again?”

“Well…” He spoke slowly implying that bad news was on its way, “absolutely no weight on it for four weeks, then we’ll start physical therapy,” he paused. My dad obviously hated seeing me in pain, he tried talking to my mother as if I wasn’t there, “Most people with fractures this bad have to relearn how to walk. The books suggest no rigorous activity for at least a year…”

I tuned out the rest of the conversation to calculate the meaning of this in my head: Four weeks, I pulled out my mental calendar, put me to the first week in June. Only one week of sun loss. Not too bad. Three weeks of school with crutches---that’d be bad but doable. One year. I mulled that thought over in my mind. It was May. Pre-season started in October. May to June, June to July, July to August, August to September, September to October---“That’s only five months Dad?” I spoke my concern out loud.

“Five months to what?” Obviously the conversation had continued without me.

I clarified, “Basketball starts in five months. It’s my senior year; I’ll have to be ready in five months.”

“We’ll see if you’re ready by then,” my mom tried to bring me to grips with reality.

My parents had raised me with an invincible confidence. “It was a statement not a question,” I said determinedly.

The day my cast came off I looked at my skinny hairy right leg and round, sausage toes. Blood oozed slowly from two jagged wounds that were still healing on the top of my foot. I watched it drip slowly to the floor. “Frankenstein had a better looking outcome than this,” I exaggerated. I almost asked to have the cast put back on. This was not going to be easy.

“You’re free Kate,” my dad said with a smile as he wiped up the blood off the floor, “go ahead and put some weight on it.”

It was the first time in four weeks I had even thought about stepping on that foot. “Are you sure Dad?” Sometimes having your Dad as your doctor pays, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you don’t get as much sympathy or explanation as a normal patient does; that day I wanted more than a restriction release. As I put my foot down, the weak muscles and stiff joints cried out in pain. “Pretty sure I can’t walk. I don’t think I’m ready. Shouldn’t I graduate to a walking boot or something?” The confidence I’d had a few weeks earlier was gone.

“You’ll heal as fast as you’ll let yourself,” my Dad said unsympathetically. “The x-rays look great and you are free to do whatever you think you are ready to do.”

I wasn’t ready to do anything but feel sorry for myself and limp around on one foot and unnecessary crutches. Every time I would attempt to put weight on my foot, my muscles and joints would cry out in pain. For the first time in my life, I found myself repeatedly using the foreign phrase, “I can’t! It’s impossible!” Relearning to walk was the first challenge I couldn’t conquer easily.

The Monday after I got the cast off, summer basketball open gym started. As captain I felt an obligation to go even though it was obvious I wouldn’t be playing; I hadn’t even been able to master walking yet. I hobbled into the gym on my crutches and was met by the appropriate reactions.

“Look at those sausage toes!” Mandy gawked. “Your right leg compared to your left looks like a stick!”

“Does it hurt?” Someone questioned.

I stared at them in disbelief and fought the desire to say, with complete sarcasm, “Of course not stupid. I only broke my foot in half four weeks ago, it doesn’t hurt at all!” Fortunately, the injury to my head did not damage my frontal lobe. I was able to win the battle with my fierce, bitter tongue and ignore her.

Then my best friend asked the question that changed everything, “How long until your Dad says you can play again?”

I hadn’t thought about that yet. I had been focusing on learning how to walk and I had been stubborn and unmotivated. Now my perspective changed a little. In order to play basketball I had to be able to run and jump. In order to run and jump, I had to be able to walk first didn’t I? In order to walk, wouldn’t I have to first be willing to take a step? I came to the conclusion, despite the pain; I needed to start by taking baby steps, literally.

I sat on the side of the court reasoning with myself as my team warmed up without me. I felt isolated; it was like I was viewing reality from behind a wall of hazy glass. Deep thuds resounded throughout the gym as basketballs came in contact with the floor; the net whispered softly as shots were made; and the traction of the shoes on the newly waxed court squeaked in coordination with each movement of the players. The music of that moment combined with my deep thoughts consumed me; my heart beat increased with each dribble.

Someone missed a shot and the ball bounced off the rim and rolled in my direction; the ball seemed to shatter the glass wall that isolated me from reality. Without thinking, I called, “got it,” stood up, walked to the ball, bent over and picked it up. Since the day on the mountain when my life had changed, no pain had ever been more satisfying---no pain in my life was more welcomed. I threw the ball back to the shooter. Everyone was watching in disbelief as I hobbled back to my seat.

“Four months and counting,” I whispered to myself as the forgotten fire of confidence rekindled within me. There was no doubt in my mind; I’d be back and ready to play.