LOOSEY, GOOSEY, AND A LITTLE CHICKEN

 

There is a beautiful rose garden near my house. It has an amazing variety of roses. Some are huge. Some are dainty. Some smell heady and thick and others have only a hint of perfume. It is lovely and so very southern feeling when you walk lazily around the path in that garden. The garden is part of Loose Park. The park itself is beautiful. In addition to the rose garden, there is a fountain that rests in the middle of a small lake in a corner of the park. Around this lake is a path lined with benches perfect for sitting and pondering and watching the many varieties of ducks and geese that land on this little bit of ducky nirvana. There is a tiny island in the middle of the small lake and occasionally when walking quietly around the lake you can spot a turtle sunning himself on a rock or ledge out on this island. Every so often bubbles churn up from the bottom and you imagine fish finding their way in the water. Birds chirp wildly from the many trees that spot the rolling hills in Loose Park and on any given sunny day you can find dogs and their humans playing Frisbee and lovers laying on blankets and moms and kids eating peanut butter and jelly in the shade of trees that survived the Civil War battle fought here many years ago. It is a lovely park. Quiet. Quaint. A quintessential sanctuary … and every time I go there, I throw up.

 

Literally.

 

Twice in the bushes. Once in a garbage can and another time – when I tried to convince myself I could control it and lost the bet - on the ground, much too close to the walkway.

 

Loose Park makes me sick.

 

To understand, you have to know it's really not Loose Park as much as it is what I associate with Loose Park. For me, Loose Park and Chemo are inseparable. When I was going through treatment The Hub would take me to Loose Park. Those were awful times. Those were fragile times. Those were moments of utter despair and desolation. We tried so hard to make goodness out of badness in those days. There wasn't a lot of brightness during those dark months so every now and then we would go to the park. We would walk around that little lake – never trying or even dreaming of trying to walk much more than to the first bench or two. We would take long pauses. I would rest leaning on the bridge, on the trees, on The Hub in the short distances between benches. Those benches seemed so far apart and the longer chemo went on, the longer I had to rest at each bench.

 

The Hub always remembered to bring some sort of bread and I would toss bits to deserving ducks. Occasionally I would work with a duck or two long enough that we would develop a trust. With each crumb he would inch closer. Sometimes I would get down and crawl on the ground toward the edge of the water … doing my part … going halfway. Every so often a trusting duck would eat out of my hand. And when that happened I would turn and look at The Hub and I would say … "give me the biggest piece you've got!" … risks like that need to be rewarded.

 

The problem is, I was very sick when we went there. And as tender and joyful those memories of those days in Loose Park are, my body has associated Loose Park with being sick and the association is so powerful now that when I go to Loose Park, I Loose it. "It" being whatever I last had for lunch. It's awful.

 

My oncologist warned me about association. He told me that five years from now I'll see him on the street and get ill. The nurses told me to be careful what I ate and drank during chemo because I wouldn't be able to eat it later on because of association. The message boards all held stories of people who survived cancer but still can't drive the route to chemo or use the pillow that comforted them during treatment. I listened to all of this. I believed their stories. But whatever! I'm not THAT sensitive, I thought. How could I be THAT prone to suggestion? I've always prided myself on the fact that I have control of what I feel and I don't hold grudges or make unreasonable connections. I have a friend who once got much too drunk on some really good scotch. To this day, she can't look at the stuff without saying, "Ugh!", in a quite powerful and convincing way. But I've never been like that. In fact, I've always thought I would be the girl who would survive a horrific plane crash and then hop a flight the next day to tell someone about it. I've always reasoned that even though I understand the whole mind/body connection I have control over my mind. I thought association issues wouldn't be issues – not for me anyway.

 

Cue a visit to Loose Park a few months after chemo and the uncomfortable moment of realization and release. Since then, I cannot go to Loose Park without throwing up. It's crazy. I know it is crazy. I know you are thinking, Jenne, how can you be fine one minute and then the next minute be feeling just like you were going through chemo and start throwing up when you really aren't sick anymore? And my answer to that is , I don't know. And also, Shut up … who died and made you the Puke Police?

 

I'm bitter.

 

It's a shame because I like that park. I really do. But every time we've gone there since chemo … well, we leave quite embarrassed and searching for gum or mints. It's no wonder I'm scared to go there at all.

 

When I was 20 I broke myself. I was skiing. It was late in the afternoon. The slopes were icing up a bit and I was tired. I've never been one to make stellar decisions in those moments and regardless of the icy conditions, my weariness, and my somewhat sketchy rented equipment, I decided to go slowly off a little jump. The little jump was fun. I did good. Since I did good on the little jump going slowly I thought I could probably do even better if I went faster. This, by the way, is the same flawed thinking that I've used with shots of tequila and shooting craps in Vegas. If a little was good then a lot will be better. (Sigh. I know. I frustrate myself too.) Anyway, I went again. I went faster. I did get more air. And it was awesome … Right up to when I fell and the back of my ski planted in the snow. And my boot didn't release. And well … something had to give and that something was my knee. I remember looking at my leg and thinking …I didn't realize I could twist like that. Turns out I was right. I can't.

 

Fast forward a few months later – surgery, recovery, infection, hospital, blah blah and I'm in therapy – physical therapy (this time) – and I'm trying to rehab this hunk of a knee into something I can actually use. Contrary to what you might think (I mean, who knows WHAT you think), therapy is not easy. There's the ice bath and the bending and the quad exercises and so much more. Because of my complications, I had some scar tissue build-up that had to be broken down and ye-ouch, that hurts. The favored technique to break up scar tissue in the knee is for the patient to lie on a low table on a mat on her belly while the sadistic therapist grabs the patient's ankle, bends the knee and pushes the ankle toward the butt. We were trying for a 45 degree angle. Which, for a normal knee, would be no problem but mine stopped somewhere right around 179 degrees. I could get nowhere close to the acute angle my therapist was trying to make out of my lower and upper leg.

 

So she would push.

And push.

And the scar tissue would rip.

And I would bite on a towel.

And she would say sweetly, "Breathe!"

 

And I would think, "Someday, somehow a long time from now, I am going to find you… and when I do you will regret the very day you decided to become a physical therapist when I put my boot (on the end of my obtuse angle of a leg) in your ass."

 

Ah. Good times.

 

It just so happened my therapy sessions coincided with another gal's sessions. This Gal was actually an in-patient. She did not break her knee while skiing, she broke her entire body in a car accident. I've never seen someone so incredibly beat up. She was bandaged and swollen and pale. Her legs were in braces and casts and God knows what else. Her face was covered in slashes and cuts. Most of her hair had been either burned or shaved off. She was raw in places – with skin pink and obviously tender, and in other places so wrapped up she seemed to be a cousin of the Michelin man. The first time I went to therapy and saw her, I was taken aback. I almost couldn't stomach looking at her. She seemed less a person and more a Thing. I asked my therapist about her. She readily told me about the accident, about the recovery, about the road ahead. And she told me about the progress this woman already had made. How when she got there she couldn't do anything. How they started with her tracking a finger with her eyes and have worked up from there. How she was getting stronger all the time. I could hear the pride and admiration in my therapist's voice and it was no wonder. I would watch the various therapists work with this young woman. I would see them trying to re-teach her how to put block shapes into holes. I would see her struggle with the smallest of tasks. Pick up a pencil. Roll your head. Speak. As I continued my therapy, she continued hers. I went three times a week for an hour. She was there daily for six hours. My therapy would last a few months … hers would last years. Sometimes, I have to be honest, I wondered if it was worth it for her. Sometimes I just thought it was nuts. Some days it seemed she wasn't making any progress at all and other days I swear she was moving backwards. Sometimes I wondered if she was crazy to go through this. It seemed almost futile -- this therapy of hers.

 

But she continued. In the face of sadness and setback, she continued.

 

One day, as I was laying there biting on my towel and trying to move past the 90 degree angle we had worked up to and seemed permanently stuck on, I saw the therapist working with The Gal wheel her to the end of the parallel bars. This was not all that new. I'd seen this before. They would wheel her there and with much effort they would help her stand. And then, one arm at a time, they would help her rest on the bars and slowly put weight on her legs. And she would do this. And she would stand. Sometimes for just seconds. Other times she would stand for minutes. On this day, the routine started the same with her being wheeled to the bars, hoisted up and shifted around until she held herself steady on those bars. I watched quietly as my ankle was being inched toward my bum. I gritted my teeth and reminded myself the pain I was in would be so short compared to hers. I breathed deeply and settled back into what I was doing and then I heard this statement, "What do you say, Super Star? Want to try to walk a step?"

 

My breath caught.

My therapist stopped pushing.

It seemed the whole room inhaled and held it.

 

Then, without a word or indication she'd heard, she leaned to the right, put all her weight on that one side and swung her left hip forward … once, twice … three … four times she pushed forward with her left hip until finally that leaden left leg jumped out in front … maybe an inch … two at most. Then she shifted her weight, leaned heavily to the left and repeated the motion with the right leg. Swinging it forward on the first try. Right foot met up with left foot. A step. A single solitary step. She steadied herself and shakily brought her head up to meet the eyes of her therapist who said, simply, "Super Star." His assistant brought the chair up behind her and without a word they eased her back into it. Once seated she looked up and said, one raspy, tight word at a time …

 

"I'm. Getting. There."

 

It was said without inflection. Without excitement. Each word was said in the same tone. It wasn't a statement to be cheered. It wasn't anything but a simple statement of fact. Her way of saying, "I'm not there yet. I have a long way to go. It's nearly killing me, this recovery, but by God, I'm not stopping now."

 

Today I went to Loose Park. Despite my fears of depositing my cookies in a bush, I went. I parked the car in the lot near the entrance. I got out, left my bag and locked the doors. Today I walked down past a hundred geese and tiptoed through their droppings to the sidewalk around the man-made lake. I watched a few ducks push their big orange feet through the water and shake their little duck butts when they hopped out of the basin. I walked to the edge of the water. I stayed there quietly. Then I walked back to my car and left. None of this seems remarkable, I know. It all sounds so run of the mill. It is almost boring, isn't it? But guess what?

 

I didn't throw up.

 

I didn't stay long today. Only walked to the edge and came back. Anyone who was watching would have wondered why I went there at all. Would have thought that girl must be crazy. Must have thought the trip was useless, meaningless, futile. It's a mile and a half around that park. Today I walked maybe 10 steps before going back. I have so far to go. But by God,

 

I'm.

Getting.

There.

 

 

 

 

Comments

[LIEvans]

Dear Ms. Fromm -

Me and the guys down at the precinct salute you.

Officer Ralph Hurley
Kansas City Puke Police

[beek]

Yeah you are!!!!!!!

[Mind Body Shop]

For the warrior, there is no "better" or "worse"; everyone has the necessary gifts for his particular path.

[runr53]

Awesome story! I had a somewhat similar moment in Cleveland last weekend, what a small world. See you in Michigan, Stinky Out!

[Mo]

This reminds me of a quote from my favorite book Illusions by Richard Bach - "Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours."

You never seem to argue yours..you're spectacular and I love learning from you.

M

[WalkFit]

I've only been reading since the last few posts, but I am enjoying your views more and more. I'll be back for more and will be sure to subscribe!

[Nicole]

Jenne,

It's amazing that when you most need encouragement, it somehow shows up. I was pointed towards your blog from the 3day site, and have been sitting here for an hour or so reading over your blogs. This story really hits home for me. I broke my back only weeks before this year's 3day in DC. Luckily, I managed to walk 15 miles over the 3day weekend, but since then, haven't hardly had the energy or motivation in my healing. My back brace comes off this week, and the physical therapy begins. I've been in the mind sent of.. "i'm not there yet," but you really made me think... you are right.. "I'm getting there!" Thank you for your continued inspirations.