Standing on One Foot

I broke my ankle last week. As on most Tuesday mornings, I was out running with Gary, my road companion of fifteen years, and I slipped (hmnn, no, I didn’t slip, I did something else), on the ice, upended, and came down somehow with a foot twisted horridly awry. Without thinking I twisted it back, as if I had merely to screw it back on to repair the damage. No success there. Gary ran what he claims to be a sub-four minute mile back to the car, sped back to where I was lying on the ice, packed me in the front seat, and moaning in sympathetic misery, sped us to the hospital. By the time we arrived at the emergency room, there was a swelling the size of a tennis ball on the inside ankle.

Interestingly, I did not suffer great pain: some said it was the endorphins, others said it was psychic numbing. Even when I had tried to turn my foot aright, I had felt nothing. I just lay there anguished that there would be no more running for awhile, and I could not imagine how I would psychically survive the abrupt cessation. I’ve been running for thirty years, and have never rested for more than four days in a row, never paused longer from taking my thoughts and my troubles out on the road. I now envisioned too many troubled months ahead. I decided to schedule an appointment with the therapist.

I had to have surgery on the ankle, during which they placed pins and plates and other implements of construction into the bones. Eight weeks later . . . well, I hope to back on the roads with Gary. But in the meantime, I feel like a hobbling cliché.

You see, I’ve never suffered an injury before. When I was three or four years old, I had my tonsils (and adenoids) removed, and once I included my finger when I sliced through a bagel. Six stitches for the finger and cream cheese for the bagel. I’ve had the occasional tooth extraction. Once a year I develop a cold which sends me to my bed for recovery. And last year I had a trigger finger repaired. (A trigger finger is a carpel tunnel syndrome of the finger—it causes a bent ring finger to remain bent). Other than that, I take mega-vitamins and no other medications.

Now, I can hardly move. Every event has to be carefully planned. Whereas before I was completely mobile, now I am completely immobile. I cannot get up from my chair to get an extra pencil; to find a book from the shelf; to urinate at will. I can’t carry my laptop about with me, nor plug it in to what is now an inconvenient outlet. I cannot arise from my labors easily to make another cup of coffee—not because I cannot get to the stove, (though it is certainly a chore to maneuver there), but because I cannot return to my desk using my crutches and carrying the filled cup as well. I find myself imagining such inventions as hooks onto which one could hang things like filled coffee mugs, slices of French bread, and apples, leaving hands free and permitting travel. Suddenly, the world has to be rethought and reorganized from the position of immobility. For example, right now I would love to get up and go to the bathroom, but the energy required just to arise up out this chair, move the computer off of my lap and find some temporary resting place for it, reach for my crutches, lift myself out of my chair, schlep myself to the toilet—for ease onto which I now sit—and then schlep myself back to my chair, opening assorted doors along the way, keeps me in my chair, albeit, a bit uncomfortably. Because if I wait just a few minutes, I might use the return trip from the bathroom to grab some breakfast in the kitchen through which I must pass to return to my seat. Conservation of energy.

And whereas I was once completely independent, now I am completely dependent. Oh, I do not mean to exaggerate, nor even romanticize—I remember, that I yet control all of my bodily functions and I maintain all of my F-A-C-U-L-T-I-E-S, and I still hobble about on crutches. But I cannot, as the cliché goes, eat and chew gum at the same time. I can move on crutches into the next room, but I cannot also carry my book along with me. I can still enjoy a dish of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream cone, but not while I am walking down the street.

So many unassuming acts now have assumption. And so, for the first time in my entire life, I am forced to rest wholly and completely. I cannot run, and I cannot walk. I cannot drive, and I cannot swim. I cannot cook, and I cannot clean. I am consigned to my chair and to my books. I must be immobile. Oddly enough, there is privileged sense of freedom in that restriction.