6/23/2016 6 Comments Making Progress!It has been just over 6 weeks now since the little fall that saw my everyday life be tipped on its head and me off the boat. I’ve learned a great deal in that time about myself, about what my kids can do and about the process of recovery from a significant injury as a boatie.
I must say, at the outset, that the boating community has been fantastic throughout this whole ordeal, from helping me get off the boat and to the hospital, through supporting the children to manage everything, and to assisting me with somewhere to stay while I am recovering. I really couldn’t have done all this without that community of givers, carers and kind-hearts. It’s been 5 weeks today since the surgery on my leg. I had thought for a while that it was my delaying getting help that had resulted in the delay to surgery, but the more I understand about this process, the more I understand that the delay is fairly standard and that the inflammation we had to wait to subside was more about the injury and less about how long it took me to get seen to. I found that a great relief in many ways as I tended to hold myself responsible for that first painful 10 days before I could even have it repaired. That’s all behind me now and I am happy to say that I am healing well. My wounds are all going great, the staples have all been removed (all 23 of them) and no, it was not exactly pain free! There has been no sign of infection or anything amiss, and because it was an open reduction internal fixation (ORIF) rather than having an external cast on the leg, I have a pretty good range of movement in my knee and ankle and can comfortably straighten my leg. Each day I work on two things – rest and movement. Rest to ensure my bone has the best possible support to knit away inside, growing, building and doing all it needs to, and movement to ensure that I am developing and strengthening my capacity to return to a full range of motion in the affected joints. In just over one more week I go back to the hospital for my next orthopaedic appointment. At that point there will be x-rays and examinations and possibly I will hear that I can begin some partial weight bearing which puts me closer to being able to return to the boat! It’s still some ways off but I can see the light of it glowing just a little further ahead. Meanwhile the children have been fabulous. I mean that. They have done the MOST amazing things. Grown in the most amazing ways. I could not be prouder of how they have managed this very difficult situation. It’s funny because I kind of delayed going to hospital in part because I was worried about how the kids would manage if I had to wait a while at casualty. Being off the boat for six weeks already and some still to come, was the furthest thing from my imagination and not something I ever thought manageable. Each week while I have been off the boat, Gail, the sailor who so kindly invited me to recover in her home, has taken me to the various gatherings of the boating community. This has been awesome for me, so I have been able to stay connected with the kids and my friends but it has also been great for Gail who has struggled to get back to her boat since the tragic death of her husband. Now she too has become part of this little group and has even taken the first steps towards getting her own boat back in shape. And the best thing of all is that it is now only a week until we are free to return to anchoring in the Marine Stadium area which means that finally we will be able to return to something that resembles normal! The children will be safer, they will be able to access their bikes again and ride to work, and be closer to the awesome supportive boaties who have made this experience so bearable. Falling and breaking my leg so badly has also been an amazing eye-opener for how people with a mobility disability are treated these days. At ‘home’ I hop around using a frame to assist me to keep the broken leg safe, but out and about I use a wheelchair. Before this, if you had asked me, I would have said most places I go to are pretty wheel-chair friendly. I knew there were parking spots, ramps and accessible bathrooms. What I didn’t realise is how rarely these things all match up. Yes, there are parking spots, and ramps but often the ramps are nowhere near the shop you actually need, or not near the disabled spot, and you have to walk twice as far to get to every shop. Yes, there are disabled bathrooms everywhere but I cannot tell you how amazed I am at how many abled-bodied people that emerge from them, or the times mums tell me they ‘prefer’ the disabled loo because it’s easier with the kids, and they will only be a minute, little realising that this is currently my ONLY option, not my preference! The other thing I have noticed is how people often don’t see me when I am in the wheelchair. I might be at the counter waiting to be served, but people look at Gail and not me, as if I don’t exist! We have come a long way in our attitudes towards disabled people, but what I have learned is that we still have quite a long way to go and once I am back on my feet again there are definitely things I will be doing differently!
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It’s been almost 4 weeks now since that fateful day where one little slip put me in hospital with a badly broken leg.
At first I had just thought I might have dislocated my knee, then after the x-rays they told me it was broken but I still thought we were talking about my knee. Later that night the doctor sat down with me and told me the most unexpected news – that I had a depressed tibial plateau fracture which would require ORIF – open reduction internal fixation – and that I would have surgery first thing in the morning and then need to remain in hospital for 6 full weeks as I would not be able to return to the boat until I was able to bear weight on the leg. I was shocked and devastated to think that I had done so much damage in one small fall. The following morning, I was again saddened to learn that the surgery couldn’t go ahead as my leg had swollen too much and I would have to wait a week for the repair – the thought of six weeks off the boat was hard enough – now it would be seven – I couldn’t believe it. It has been an interesting time to say the least. And there has been a lot of learning and processing. One of the things I have come to appreciate is that being brave and stoic caused me more pain than I had really needed to endure. If I had called an ambulance instead of patiently waiting for friends to help get me there, I would have had pain relief sooner. If I had mentioned at the hospital how much pain I was in, I might have been seen sooner, and if I had been assessed sooner I might have not had to wait a week for the surgery as the swelling would not have been so bad. Lesson learned – speak up! Don’t think it’s nothing, take the pain seriously and don’t worry more about being a bother to others, worry more about getting help faster! I did survive that first long, slow, painful week before getting to surgery and finally 2 ½ weeks ago was wheeled into theatre. At last! It was awesome to be awake when I was taken in and I think they had to put the mask over my face just to shut me up so they could get on with the surgery, I had so many questions! But when I woke up it was a different story! Oh my! I’ve had 8 babies, six at home and some horrible miscarriages, but nothing matches the intensity of the kind of deep bone pain I woke up to. It took quite some time before the recovery nurses could get my pain levels under control and I was taken back up to my room but I was treated with such kindness and gentleness in that time and will always be appreciative to Shelly for her soothing presence and her softness. Once back up on the orthopaedic ward the goal was to begin to recover and I knew it was going to be a long journey. I could only hop on my good leg. My hurt leg was wrapped in bandages and in a splint still, like before the surgery and apart from the significantly increased pain, things seemed little different to before. But by the second day they had removed the bandages and I could see all my incisions – one long one for all the hardware inserted into my leg, and 5 others - for drains and the arthroscopy that was done at the same time to make sure the rest of my knee was all cleaned up, in addition there was one for where they had to push the bone back up in to place. Nice. And the next day the splint came off! I was pretty scared at that – no cast, just all the nuts and bolts inside holding it all together – but they assured me it was fine and that the plan was to do as much movement as I could tolerate. Normally people are encouraged to go home within days of their surgery but with my home being a boat, and being a boat at anchor, I presented the staff with somewhat of a challenge. They could not send me somewhere I couldn’t get to or function on, and so I had to stay until somewhere could be found. But there was nothing. Day by day I was making improvements and quite ready to leave the care of the hospital, but there was no program that could take me – I was too well-managing for rehab hospitals, too young for any kind of care homes and too well to stay on the ward…… And then the awesome sailing family I am part of stepped in. A woman I had met through the network Women Who Sail (a Facebook group) heard of my situation and volunteered her home. How amazing was that? I was speechless and so appreciative of her kindness and so plans were made for me to leave. There was quite a lot to organise. To go to Gail’s home I would need a number of mobility aids. I cannot put any weight on my repaired leg at all for at least 5 more weeks and so to move around the house I must continue to hop. I needed to hire a ‘hopper frame’, as well as a wheelchair for bigger trips – like out to dinner on Tuesdays at the Fisherman’s Tavern (Marine Mirage) with my other boatie friends, and coffee’s at Diva at Marina Mirage that I regularly shared in. In addition, I needed a shower seat so I could safely shower and a frame to surround the toilet so I could manage that too. Suddenly I have been thrust into a whole new world and see things I never saw before. Have you ever tried to open the door of a disabled toilet in a public building? I had no idea these could be so heavy. Or that the taps could be so hard to reach……I think we have come a long way in making places wheelchair-friendly but we still have a long way to go. And that’s only to mention two small things I have encountered – I know that by the time I am up and walking around again I will have gained a lot of insight into this area of life and will never again look at disability in the same way. That’s one of the wonderful aspects of this whole ordeal – how I have had this insight into how life is for many people. And I have learned that hopping is exhausting! I do a workout just getting to the bathroom! It’s amazing how this one limitation has changed the way I function! I have put a bag on the frame so that I can carry things around – because it’s awfully hard to hold things while hopping, but alas I have yet to be able to hop with a cup of tea! Gail has been awesome at looking after me and while I work on independent actions, it will be quite some time before I can manage on my own! Meanwhile the children have had challenges of their own. With my absence they have suddenly found themselves needing to not just look after themselves, but manage everything on the boat. And that has been far from easy for them. Erina had a job interview on one of the first days I was in hospital and began working at Turtle Bay Resort in Mermaid Beach the following day. Suddenly I was gone and both the kids would be at work all the time! How life changes! Early on Erina decided to cook ahead to make sure there were always decent meals available for them after busy days. She never does things by halves and ended up with over 30 meals! The freezer is full now of casseroles, Liam’s beloved Butter Chicken and goodness knows what else, all ready to be thawed and heated as needed. I worried so much at first about how they would manage alone but after nearly four weeks I can happily say that they really are awesome. They have had so much to contend with – the food was the least of their concerns really! The biggest issues have been with the need to keep moving the boat (6 days in one anchorage and then 24 hours away in another, and then returning to the 6-day anchorage) as per the local rules. We have been so fortunate to have an awesome group of boaties around us who have offered to assist and so each time the boat needs to be moved someone goes with them. Both Erina and Liam are able to do the move on their own now, which is brilliant, but having someone there in case something goes wrong and to be a guiding voice, well that’s an absolutely wonderful thing. Thank you to everyone who has offered to help with this. There have been other challenges with the boat, but more about that next time. And so I hop and move and rest and write and Liam and Erina manage and work and move the boat and that’s our life right now. Four more weeks and things will start to change again – and hopefully Miss Hoppy will be able to return again to being Mrs Argos. But Mrs Argos will be changed and her crew – well her crew have undergone the most profound change through all this – a more capable pair of teenagers you will never come across. I’ve been proud of them in so many ways for a long, long time – but my pride in them grows by the day – they have managed a very difficult situation with such maturity and strength. I wish things could have been easier for them but then I think, what awesome things they have learned and managed and what a foundation for things that will come at them in the future. The bad things become the making of us all. |
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September 2017
Our life aboard Argos has been seriously challenged this year with the surprise departure of our skipper. As a writer, diesel mechanics and the complexities of many aspects of Argos’ on-going maintenance are way beyond me! We would like to see Argos continue to sail and eventually hope to use her to offer support, encouragement and a break to people who are struggling in their lives. Any on-going help towards maintaining Argos would be greatly appreciated and enable us to achieve this goal.
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