Portfolio #5

In the glass castle I thought that when she was describing the smell of her father as he carried her out of the hospital was very powerful. She described him as smelling of alcohol and smoke and then she made the remark that it smelled like home. It was a sad thought that such unhappy smells were what made her think of her home and the fact that it made her happy was unsettling.

I was at the hospital. It was two months after the wrestling practice that I had heard the three pops in my knee.

I was going into surgery for meniscal repair. I was in the hospital bed in nothing but a gown and hair net. The feeling of being in the hospital was a sense of being bare and defenseless to the world. After having been asked by three doctors to confirm which knee the operation was for, I was finally given some medication to “relax me”.

Soon I was being wheeled into the operating room while everything slowly began to feel warm and my eyelids grew heavier with each blink. I remember pulling myself from the cart to the operating table then the nurses talking and asking me questions, but I can’t remember the exact words they said. The anesthesiologist then waltzed in and put a mask on my face but at this point the other medication was kicking in I hardly awake anymore.

The next thing I recall was struggling to open my eyes. I was out of the operating room and was back in my “room” which wasn’t more than a bed with a curtain around it. I wanted to wake up, but even with all my effort I couldn’t seem to force myself to stay awake. I keep drifting back to sleep. Eventually I was able to stay awake for a few minutes and the nurses came around and asked something but I still too out of it to fathom what she had said to me.

After becoming more aware, I noticed the giant black metal brace on my leg that extended from my upper thigh to my ankle. The brace prevented me from bending my leg the smallest amount. Once I had recovered enough to walk I was given crutches and taught how to use them.

It felt like I was a baby again. I could barely walk around my house. I couldn’t get anything for myself, anytime I wanted some thing I had to call someone to get it for me because I couldn’t carry anything because my hands were occupied with trying to keep my crutches supporting me. I also felt useless I couldn’t help when my family was cleaning or shovel the driveway. I could only sit and watch the world keep moving on.

The hardest part was to not put weight on my bad leg. But soon enough I was able to maneuver up and down stairs with the crutches. The hardest part about the surgery was I had to sleep on my back like a wooden board. The heavy brace and inability to bend my leg prevented me from sleeping on my side. Almost as bad as my pain medication had me feel like I was going to throw up every time I took it, but the only other option was to go without it and suffer so I pushed through the nausea instead.