One, two, move the legs, one, two, place my hand, lift and swing. I miss the toilet and land on the floor, my head missing the basin by an inch. I lie there for a second, struggling to hold back the flood of tears that is trying to break through.
I was discharged from rehab a few days ago and this is the first night that I am alone in my cottage. My mother has gone back to Witbank and the nurses and physios are left behind at the Netcare rehab centre.
There is no one to lift me up, and I realise I don’t have the upper body strength to lift myself into my wheelchair or onto my bed. I drag myself around the cottage trying to find something to climb onto, I drag myself for hours on end and nothing seems to work.
I finally let the tears pour, cursing every moment of my existence as a river flows down my face. I have wet my pants, the catheters are too high for me to reach when I am not sitting in the chair. My ankles are bleeding from all the dragging and banging against unfelt objects in the house.
I cry myself to sleep. I awake to the realisation that I am still stuck on the floor. I spend three days trying to get myself onto a chair or at least the bed. I fall, I roll, I drag myself across the floor. I cry, I tire and sleep, only to wake up and cry some more. I keep telling myself I need to survive, I need to do this on my own.
On the morning of the fourth day, I don’t feel so well. It might be from a lack of food and water, but it could also be a bladder infection. I decide maybe I should ask for help, just this once. I live in a cottage located at the back of a house where three boys my age live. After some more crying and trying, I phone one of them.
Without hesitation, two of the boys jump over the fence dividing my cottage from the house and lift me into the chair. One cleans my ankles as the other checks my arms for bruises. All I can think of is whether they can smell the pee in the house.
When they are done, I wheel myself outside and stare at Dolly. With tears skating down my face again, I think back to September 10, 2014.
*
I began a love affair with her in January; nothing could separate Dolly and me. Every chance I got I was all over her. At night she would lie outside my bedroom window, under the stars and in full view of the moon.
I would whisper sweet nothings to her as we rode the wind. I would promise her travels and she would guide me to my destinations with ease. We gelled to such an extent that I found myself telling her all my secrets. I teased her with the possibility of turning professional. Imagine Dolly wearing the Springbok colours for cycling, I would whisper into the wind.
On this day, we would not travel to Roodepoort or Krugersdorp, we played near home. We were to test all the little hills and to trace the outlines of the neighbourhood. Spring was in the air, flowers were smiling at us, and we rode up and down the streets of Westdene with not a care in the world.
I blinked for a split second and landed in a stranger’s arms. Where did the crowd come from, I wondered, who is this man holding my hand? He looked like the Hulk, his Barry White voice coaxing information out of me.
Only one name came to mind, and I tried to head her way but for some reason I could not move. My legs felt as if they had been ripped wide open and I could not close them. No one even dared to hand me a bottle of water. ‘Don’t try move, stay still and all will be fine,’ the Hulk said in a calm voice. But his eyes looked troubled, and I could not understand why because I planned to get up and walk as soon as the numbness passed.
I knew Dolly would be damaged beyond repair, my gut told me that. But I wasn’t worried; I needed an upgrade and I had seen some pretty awesome bikes at the Soweto Cycle Challenge. They can call their ambulance, I thought, and I will be out of hospital after a day or two and back on a bike in a few weeks.
Everyone keeps holding their mouths when they look at me, but it is really not that bad. As soon as I can sit up I will show them, the numbness is just taking forever. There is something I need to tell a friend, I just can’t remember what, but it’s funny. I just need to get up and drag Dolly home now, the sun is burning me.
*
I hear her voice before I set eyes on her, and the immediate change in her tone sets alarms off in my brain. Her eyes do not stay long enough on me and I am unable to study them. Maybe she is upset because I am late. I said I would be there soon but I have been lying here for too long.
I could tell her the numbness is taking forever to subside, but instead I start laughing and tell her not to make me laugh. I rest a bit. My name is being called from a distance, but can’t I just rest for a bit. ‘Open your eyes Palesa, Palesa open your eyes,’ my friend instructs. Why won’t she let me sleep for a bit, I am tired, hot and thirsty. She won’t let me sleep.
My stomach hurts and starts to swell, I can’t breathe properly, everything hurts, I whimper like a puppy. I want to sleep the pain away, the ambulance is singing a lullaby, but she won’t let me close my eyes. She calls my name and I force my tired eyes open and I smile. At other times I ramble on about everything and anything, but I am tired.
I blink and I am engulfed by sound but no one is in sight. I rest for a few minutes and awake to groping hands. Still I am denied water. Just one sip, I beg, I won’t tell, I whisper. I am ignored; the day dissolves at a slow pace. People keep saying, ‘It’s a bicycle that did this.’ And others keep saying, ‘It’s impossible, it can’t be!’
Lights are shone in my eyes, hands placed all over my body. ‘One, two, three, lift—careful with her.’ No one is talking to me. ‘Nurse, nurse, please, just a little water, please,’ I beg. ‘Alright, relax and I will bring you some now,’ she says, and disappears never to be seen again. I ask everyone for a quick sip and they all promise ‘in a minute’.
‘Lift her with the bed and hold her still,’ orders are barked. Ooh, they crack, I hear them break, I feel sick. You broke my ribs, I cry out, you broke me in half! Put me down, I demand, but they keep at it. I am turned at the count of three, I scream in pain at every turn. ‘Give her some morphine,’ someone orders.
One, two, three, they lay me down again. No more X-rays, please, you took enough, I whimper. I don’t want to be touched anymore, tube after tube of blood taken. Pricked by everyone who walks by, oxygen mask too heavy and stuffy, lights too bright, how do they expect me to sleep in this place.
They keep asking whether I’m okay and I keep begging for water. No one seems to know what water is in this place. I am grateful for the little naps in between, this day is dragging on. When am I leaving for home? When is the numbness going? My friend keeps appearing to tell me who she has called and then disappearing with promises of water.
Friends, family, colleagues come and go during the course of the day, my aunt keeps asking me whether I know who she is and I keep trying to ignore her silly question. None of them tells me when we are leaving this place.
‘We have to make a hole in your chest from the side, just near your breast. You have blood in your lung and it needs to be drained,’ a doctor explains as she gently touches my face. I slowly move my oxygen mask to the side with my heavy hands and tell her, the blood is not bothering me, I can’t feel it.
She calls over another doctor. ‘Turn her onto her side,’ he instructs. It is really not bothering me, I insist. ‘Relax,’ he orders, ‘I need for you to breathe in and hold your breath for me until I say breathe out.’ Can I please have some more morphine, I plead with wet eyes. ‘After this,’ he promises. I feel the tube coming in, I groan. ‘Hold your breath or I will have to redo this,’ he snaps. Streams of water roll down my face; I feel the tube being pushed deep inside me.
Later in the day another female doctor comes to check on me. She looks at how the tube was inserted and shakes her head. ‘This tube is in too deep, it needs to come out now,’ she says. She looks at me and explains that if she doesn’t take it out I will have complications. I tell her I don’t mind the depth, in fact it’s not uncomfortable at all.
She smiles and asks the nurse to help her turn me onto my side, I keep begging her to leave it as it is. She gently tells me to hold my breath and as I do she pulls the tube out and inserts a new one to her satisfaction. I am now in tears again and hiccupping. She gently wipes my face and says it’s all over now and no one will have to take it out again for a long time. In between my sobs I tell her that I like the tube and it can stay there forever. For my trouble she gives me her Coke Light through a syringe and I forgive her immediately.
I am told I was in the emergency room for three days without being operated on because the doctors couldn’t stabilise me and thought I would not make it. On the day of my operation they were not sure I would live. In my mind everything happened in one day.
*
Three weeks and still I can’t move, three weeks and every time I wiggle my toes the doctors can’t see it. They keep pretending to touch my feet and asking me whether I feel it, I’m getting tired of their silly games.
I’m constantly peeing into a bag but I don’t feel it, must be this damn catheter they have inserted into my bladder. ‘One, two, three,’ and the nurses turn me onto my side, every two hours a pillow is lodged into my back, another between my legs and the two I lay my head on are fluffed.
It takes everything within me to talk, I have to take deep painful breaths just to get a sound out, but I don’t sound like myself. The doctors keep instructing the nurses to change my neck brace: the first one was cutting into me, the second one was too big, the next one was too small and the fourth one did not look comfortable.
Three weeks in and I suddenly have a boyfriend; without fail Eddie the nurse comes to check on me first thing in the morning whenever he is on duty. He pulls the bedding over my shoulders properly and promises to marry me. At times I close my eyes to sleep and wake up to find him standing over me, deep in thought.
My jealous future husband warns the other male nurses that he saw me first and cautions my social worker not to get too cozy. ‘Leave me alone, Eddie, just go away,’ I hiss daily. He leaves the room only to come back later to tell me that couples fight all the time and that he forgives me for breaking his heart earlier. I want to kick him.
I want to kick the doctor who said, ‘You are a complete paraplegic, you may never walk again, and your level of injury is T9/T10.’ My mind keeps playing back that tape and then erasing it, only to play it again when I am alone. ‘We have done all we can do, it is all in God’s hands now.’ I was told that weeks back but I was not bothered because they are wrong.
I am touching my legs and willing them to move. Just once, even if it’s a little bit, I whisper. I take all the strength I have and lift my right leg and it flops back down. I pinch my left leg and feel nothing, not a single sensation. They are still wrong. I am willing my toes to move, any second now my leg will bend.
As if she knew what was happening, my friend walks in to find me in tears. I am silently sobbing, I don’t want to attract any attention. I want to be left alone, I want to wheel my bed out of the window, I want to sleep and never wake up. Instead my sobs become more intense and I struggle to breathe as she walks towards me.
‘I want my legs back, I don’t want this, what did I ever do to deserve this?’ I ask my friend as she holds me and says nothing. ‘Why won’t they move, Nozi, why can’t I feel them?’ I can’t understand why she doesn’t have an answer for me; she always has a solution, but not today. We lay in bed, I ask for my legs to move as I cry and she holds me tightly.
The nurses keep taking turns to come and look at us, not one of them has dared to ask her to get off the patient’s bed. We create a bubble around the two of us, I snuggle up and sob till her T-shirt is wet but my legs still won’t move. ‘Will I ever walk, Nozi?’ I ask. As she cups my face and lifts it towards her lips and silently plants a kiss on my forehead, my heart begs her to say ‘Yes Deejay, tomorrow you will walk,’ but she pulls me tighter and says nothing.
*
As a child I lived with my grandmother until I was six years old, but I did not live with her and my uncles for the full first six years of my life. At some stage during those early years I was shipped off to boarding school in Westenburg, a ‘Coloured’ area in Pietersburg (what the city was called before it was renamed Polokwane).
I attended the boarding school with the youngest daughter of family friends, who was slightly older than I was. Pauline, or as the family called her Polly, and I got along, from what I can remember; I have memories of running to her for comfort most times and her always feeding me ice cream when we were home.
I also have a memory of my mother and I running in the yard at my grandmother’s house and in this memory I ran faster than my mother with my tiny legs. I would always look back and she would be laughing out loud as she held out her hand for me. I have no memories of my father, yet photographs tell of his presence when I was a little baby.
I do not have a single memory of either of my parents visiting me at school. Instead it is my grandmother who appears. I remember the days she would come and visit me and how, before she left, she would put me in the bath at school and bathe me. I would splash about happily as she scrubbed my entire body and told me she would come and see me again soon. Later that night I would wet my bed; I would always wet my bed on days my gran came to see me and left me behind.
And, like clockwork, someone would notify Polly and she would be there, holding me in her arms and helping me out of my wet pyjamas as someone else was changing my bedding. She would tell me that I am a big girl and that I shouldn’t wet my bed and that gran would come see me again soon. I would promise never to wet my bed again, but I always would.
*
People keep coming to visit me, my friends, ex-colleagues, my sister, my new cousin Tumi (my uncle married his mother), my aunt Tazz. Some are there daily, others every other day, but there is always a friend by my side. In the evenings when it’s way past visiting hours Noz and Malik appear with something I need. This happens daily for three weeks and each time they appear I hope that they have come to take me home.
The ward I am in is full of movement and whispers; it takes me a while to figure out that the whispers are about me. I am lying flat and I cannot see the people I share the room with, but I hear them praying for me at night before they go to sleep. There is a nurse constantly coming to help me take a sip of water, or a group of them will appear to help me turn.
I am not always fully awake when this happens, nor am I fully awake when my blood pressure is checked or when I am given a handful of pills to swallow before I receive my morphine. I always remind the nurse not to forget the morphine and always suggest that I should get two injections, but no one ever seems to like my suggestion as much as I do.
There is an old woman who keeps coming to check on me in the middle of the night, and after a while I realise that she is a patient as well. She is always pulling up my covers so I do not catch a cold. I also come to understand that she’s the one who gives the others a report about me and leads them in prayer. And at times when I whisper ‘nurse’ and there isn’t one in the room, she’s the one who gets out of bed and gently puts a pipe in my mouth so I can suck on some water.
It’s only later on that I find out that she’s the only one in our room who can really move around, that she is there for a hip replacement and is 70 years old. She was in the ward when I was wheeled in from ICU. She would later tell me that I was connected to so many things and had so many tubes dangling from me that she thought I would never make it. She tells me that when her family comes to visit her, first on their prayer list is me.
This woman makes me yearn for my grandmother, who had always been there for me when I was in trouble. I ache to see my uncles who had thrown me into the air and caught me as a little girl. The numbness never leaves me in the three weeks that I lie here. I am sure I am in trouble but my rescuers don’t show up.
I barely see my own mother in the early days after the accident and I have not laid eyes on my father at all. The few times my mother does come to see me, I ask of my grandmother — her mother — and my uncles. ‘They will come,’ she says.
*
My recovery is taking forever. I keep telling myself I will go home today. I will show them, my legs will move and I will jump out of bed. In fact, as soon as they move, Noz will find me waiting by the door with my things.
I don’t feel so well though, and I tell the doctor in the morning. He asks me when was the last time I pooped, I tell him the morning of the accident, after I got back from a run. ‘So you haven’t pooped in three weeks and you have been having regular meals?’ he asks.
The nurses are instructed to give me a suppository immediately after breakfast and to report to the doctor what comes out. Noz, who calls every morning for a progress report and to find out what is needed, is notified by the nurses that I am constipated and something needs to be done about my situation, my diet needs to be changed, they will give me a suppository.
Noz relays the message to everyone who has taken an interest in my health and they share ideas among themselves of how to deal with the constipation. When Noz arrives on day one of Operation Poop, she takes away all the food that might contribute to my constipation and replaces it with food high in fibre. My stream of visitors, I come to find out later, are searched by Noz before they enter the room, nothing that will contribute to my constipation is allowed in.
I drink a number of concoctions made with all sorts of fruits and vegetables, but still Operation Poop is a no go, even after my second suppository of the day. I do not even fart.
It’s day two of Operation Poop and nothing has come out of me yet. The doctor says, ‘Let’s give it a couple of days before you insert your fingers.’ I am confused as to what he means by ‘inserting the fingers’. I ask the nurses as they empty my catheter bag and refill my water bottle. I am told that if I do not poop someone will have to put their fingers into my bum and try to get out as much poop as possible. If that doesn’t work they will have to operate on me. I do not like either of the suggestions but I am unable to push and therefore unable to force the poop out myself. I tell the nurse to give me another suppository immediately. She laughs and tells me I just had one now, I will have another later in the day. She says, ‘Try thinking about pooping during the day, that might help.’
Noz comes into the room before visiting hours as per usual and asks me whether I have pooped. ‘No, Nozi, I haven’t,’ I respond sheepishly. I have been thinking about poop the entire morning and nothing has happened. She chuckles and takes out another bottle of home remedy that someone has asked her to pass on to me. ‘Drink,’ she instructs. I am more than happy to devour the mixture, but nothing seems to help. ‘You have to poop,’ the nurses keep whispering to me. ‘Think about poop,’ they say, ‘visualise yourself going to the toilet.’ The frustration of not pooping is mounting, nobody else in the room has the same problem that I am having. ‘Relax,’ they say, ‘it will come if you just relax.’ Drink this, drink that, but nothing comes out.
Day three arrives and I have not pooped. The doctors look concerned, and the nurses are told to increase my suppository dosage. I don’t feel so well, in fact I feel light-headed, but I eat because I am told to eat.
*
‘Can you walk?’ my uncle asks and I stare confused at the phone. Did he not see me yesterday? Lying on the bed supported on both sides by pillows. Surely he saw that I cannot sit up and that I have a bald patch developing on the back of my head from lying on my back?
But how could he have seen all these things? He did not even come near me during his visit. I waited three weeks with only my friends and colleagues in sight. ‘They will come, my child,’ my mother would say, ‘they are just a little busy.’ I ached to see them, to be held and told that all will be fine.
Finally they come. ‘We are here,’ my uncle announces over the phone. The excitement of seeing them will surely ease the pain of being unable to move, I think. My friends excuse themselves when my family walks into the ward.
But they freeze in the doorway and stare at me as if I have contracted some deadly disease. They are just in shock, I tell myself, they will get over the shock and talk to me. My friend ushers them into the ward. ‘Hello Palesa,’ they mumble, before returning to silence.
They stare at me as though I am a leper and I stare back, not sure what I am supposed to do or say. More visitors come in, hug me, ask about my health and rub my feet or stretch my legs. My family continue to stare as if I am contagious.
‘Is there anything you would like to ask me?’ my friend asks them. They shake their heads and mumble no. They have no questions about my health, no interest in finding out what the doctors have to say. Do they not want to know what my chances of walking are or whether the operation went well?
It feels like hours with them sitting there saying nothing. I start to feel uncomfortable, as if I have done something wrong. I brought a plague into their house and now they need to decide how I should be dealt with.
I have been constipated for three weeks; everyone around me is running around trying to find a solution. My stomach is swollen and I am uncomfortable. ‘She will be fine,’ they say when they are told this, and they continue to stare. My friend asks again whether they have any questions, their response has not changed. This time she tells them all she knows, in as much detail as possible. ‘One of the doctors is around if you would like to talk him,’ she says.
‘We are happy you are taking care of our child, because we live too far away to do it ourselves,’ they respond. They get up to leave after that, to avoid traffic, they say. They give me a sandwich, which I cannot eat because of my constipation.
I check the time and they have spent exactly forty-five minutes staring at me, only to drive all the way back to Limpopo.
I lie on the bed overcome by emotion. Surely that did not just happen?
*
The next day, when my uncle is asking whether my legs move, I hand my sister the phone.
*
—Palesa ‘Deejay’ Manaleng is a journalist and athlete based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Follow her on Twitter.
