Chapter 6: Good, Better and Bad

Tuesday, July 10, 8:15 AM

It was time for my first follow-up doctor’s visit. I had no expectations at that point of anything other than getting an X-ray and being told to “hang in there” or “keep up the healing” or some other such BS. Mom couldn’t get out of work for the morning, so Pappy picked me up right after breakfast in his Grand Cherokee. The doctor’s office was in a big shiny new medical ‘campus’ north of town. There were offices for just about every type of doctor you could think of. As my luck would have it, the radiology center was in a building on the opposite side of the campus from my orthopedic specialist. So after trekking across the enormous parking lot to get the X-rays, we had to hike all the way back to get to my appointment.

If you’ve ever broken a bone and had to wear a cast, especially in the summertime, you will understand how I was feeling at this point. There is no way to get underneath the cast to clean the skin, so after a couple weeks of sweat and other natural secretions it really starts to get rank under there. Especially when you’re sweating. And don’t even get me started on the itching! I had commandeered Mom’s yardstick for the purpose of scratching the incessant itch but it only went down so far. Even worse, I couldn’t reach down far enough with anything to get under the cast for the itchies at my foot.

It was a typical mid-July day in Southwestern Pennsylvania: 91 degrees by 10 a.m. and humidity so thick you could practically soak it out of the air with a sponge. My attitude didn’t help— like I said, I had started the day assuming that the doc would keep me in the long, hot miserable full-leg cast for another few weeks. By the time we got back to the orthopedist’s office I was hot, sweaty and miserable. My grumbling and whining was beginning to grate on Pappy’s normally unflappable good humor.

The first indication that things weren’t going as expected came the moment the doctor placed the first X-ray film into the wall-mounted, backlit viewer.

“Huh?” he asked no one in particular.

He pulled the second film from the envelope and held it up next to the first one.

“Huh!” he repeated.

I thought about making a snide remark to Pappy that maybe Medical School must not be as hard to get into as people think, but decided against it. The doc still had a sizable chunk of my near future in his hands, along with the envelope full of X-Ray films.

He pulled a third film from the envelope (the radiologist had taken seven shots at various angles, forcing me into several nearly impossible positions in the process) and then rifled through the file folder with the old x-Ray films from the ER. He pulled three of the old films and placed them in the holders, then looking back and forth between me, my cast, and the six films.

“I think radiology gave you the wrong films,” he finally stated. “Sit tight for a moment while I get this sorted out.”

I looked at Pappy. “I’m not sure how they could be the wrong films,” he shrugged. “The only other people I saw in the waiting room over there were getting x-rays of their hands or arms.”

Wherever the doc went couldn’t have been far. Within seconds of his departure we heard his half of the phone call to the radiologist at the other end of the campus. The first few exchanges were muffled, but as the conversation went on, the doctor began raising his voice in frustration.

“Are you sure?”

“Are you absolutely positive?”

“These can’t possibly be my patient’s films.”

“The break in his tibia was much too severe to be healed this well after only four weeks!”

“Did you have any other lower leg patients this morning? No? Well, thanks for your time.”

He returned a moment later looking perplexed, and went back to looking back and forth between the cast and the films. After a few moments he seemed to come to a decision.

“I’m sorry to keep you waiting, son,” he said. “I remember treating you in the ER last month, and I must say...” He paused, taking another long look at the films before continuing. “I must say, in over twenty years I have never seen a break as severe as yours heal so thoroughly in such a short time.”

He started pointing at various features on the films and spouting medical jargon that I didn’t follow. However, I did understand the bottom line: My leg was healing much faster than he had expected.

Eventually his rant wound down, and what he said at the end caught my full attention: The big ugly cast was coming off, to be replaced by one that only came up to my calf!

He brought out a wicked looking electric saw, and demonstrated on his own arm that it worked by vibrating through the plaster, and wouldn’t cut my skin. He used the saw to cut through the plaster down both sides of the cast, but the plaster was only the top layer. He then used a pair of medical shears to cut through the cotton wrap layer, which served as a cushion between the hard plaster and my skin, and the bottom layer which he called the stockinette. The stockinette had started out soft, supple and comfortable against my skin, but over the weeks had absorbed much of the sweat and naturally secreted oil from my skin. Any dead skin cells that flaked off under the cast had nowhere else to go and became trapped in the mix as well. The result was a disgusting, smelly, gray-black crust on the inside of the cast, but even more so on my skin! Additionally, every muscle from my thigh to my ankle had atrophied from disuse, leaving the entire leg thin as a toothpick— a toothpick encrusted with a month of sweat and dead skin! What was left of my leg looked like it was covered in smelly black reptilian scales!

“Don’t try to stand on it just yet,” the doc said. “One of the nurses will be in to get this cleaned up, then we’ll get your new cast on and have you out of here by lunch.”

The nurse came in and filled a basin with warm water, then proceeded to wash the scaly dead skin, and whatever else was there, from what was left of my leg. It felt wonderful! When she was finished I tried bending my knee, remembering the doc’s admonition not to stand on it, but found that it was awfully stiff after being held straight for a month. The nurse, who was emptying the basin of dirty water into the sink, saw me wince. She told me that the stiffness would go away after a day or two.

The doc returned a few minutes later to replace the cast, as promised, with a much shorter one. Even better, the new cast was made of bright green fiberglass instead of plaster and had a rubber pad that stuck out a half inch or so at the heel. The fiberglass, the doc explained, would be much lighter and cooler than plaster. The rubber pad would let me walk on it without damaging the fiberglass. The downside, though not a major one, was that the fiberglass wrapping was a loose kind of mesh, and therefore wouldn’t be easy for my friends to sign. I could live with that!

Pappy made an appointment for another follow-up in two more weeks, then took me to Howard Johnson’s for lunch. I still had to use the crutches until my thigh muscles strengthened enough to hold my weight, but the new cast was indeed much lighter than the old one.

We made one more stop on the way home: The bike shop! Unbeknownst to me, Pappy had spirited my somewhat mangled bike out of the garage the week before and taken it in to be repaired. “Call it an extra birthday present,” he winked as we rolled my now good-as-new bike back out to his truck. “Just don’t pull any more daredevil stunts with it, ok?” I enthusiastically promised that I wouldn’t. That was one lesson I certainly didn’t want to learn twice!

At home, another surprise awaited me: Brett’s brother Todd, who had turned sixteen just before the end of school, had gotten his driver’s license. Their Mom’s Caprice Estate land yacht was in the driveway and the gang was all there waiting for me on the front porch! Todd, wearing a Jeannette Jayhawks Football tee-shirt, was waiting by the car.

The gang gathered around to congratulate me on getting the short cast while Todd offered to help Pappy get my bike out of the truck. Everyone wanted to sign the cast, so we headed inside. I got a magic marker from the kitchen. David, always the artistic one, was drawing a cartoon-ish face in lieu of a signature when Brett spoke up.

“Todd is taking us over to Tito’s for the afternoon. Do you want to come?”

Part of me wanted to say no. They had been going to Tito’s two or three times a week for over a month and hadn’t invited me once. Another part desperately wanted to go along to see what all the hype was about. A logical corner of my brain piped up to remind me that they had been riding their bikes to get there, and I wouldn’t have been able to go if they had invited me.

I looked at Pappy, who simply smiled and said, “Be back in time for dinner. Call me if you need a ride home.”

Tito’s was everything I expected, and so much more. The new strip mall itself was nothing spectacular. Tito’s was on the right end closest to the entrance from the street. It was also the only tenant out of the four storefronts that was open for business so far. Next to Tito’s, signs in the windows proclaimed that a beauty salon would be opening soon, but the other two stores were vacant.

What made the place so attractive was the area behind it. Before the strip mall, the property had been an old mom-and-pop grocery store. The emergence of the chain supermarkets in the mid 70’s had put them out of business. The new strip only took up about half the space of the old building, so the developer had made the extra space into a small park, with a walking path and a handful of picnic tables. 55-gallon drums had been placed along the back of the building for trash collection. They had also planted some maple trees that, in a few years, would provide shade for picnickers. At the time, though, the only shade was on the northern end of the park, where it bordered a wooded area along the turnpike. Most of the picnic tables had been moved into the shade along the woodline and a crowd of about two dozen teens were gathered there.