We first welcomed Lesley Grant Law (not to be confused with Leslie) to our guest blogger stable a few weeks ago, when she told us all about the creatures of Ocala. Today, she checks in with a story of determination, rehab, and perspective during a traumatic injury, told as only Lesley can. Thanks for writing, Lesley, and thanks for reading!
From Lesley:
I read a lot about Riders having confidence issues especially after falls. So when EN asked me to write something else I thought perhaps I would share my story of my worst injury as it may be of comfort to some and amusement to others.
Sometime in February of 2009 I found out I was pregnant. We had been ‘trying’ for about six months which I found hysterical as when you are a kid your parents scare the life out of you convincing you that if you get within two acres of a sperm you will without question become pregnant. Anyhoo, I was a very sick pregnant lady. Morning were a disaster and I had to line up saltines by my bedside every night as that was the only way I would make it out of bed without barfing. Horse shows were particularly trying as you have to often wake up very early and move fast and that was not so easy. No one but Leslie knew I was pregnant and we had decided as I had two lovely young prelim horses at the time I would do the one star at Ocala in April and then call it a day with the eventing until after the baby was born. For those that know my analness, you can imagine I had read every journal on pregnancy and I felt fine about eventing up till then as all the docs said that the baby was safe as long as it was behind the hip bones and I never showed until about six and a half months so I figured I was golden. I ran around on my first horse no problem with just a few time faults and then jumped on my second who was the easier of the two and had a good dressage mark so I was quite excited at the prospect of doing well. We ran around fine until the second to last fence when I discovered my right foot had become firmly lodged into my stirrup and I couldn’t get it out despite all the wriggling and moving about I did. What the heck, I thought, I had one jump left and then I could sort it out. To be critical I got a bit close to the last fence which was a table, and my horse jumped up pretty hard and on landing I heard quite a good ‘pop.’ Apparently your ankle/leg takes up quite a bit of shock absorption I guess as my upper bones went down into my wedged lower leg and snapped the tops off of both tibia and fibula and hammered the bottoms down. Of course I didn’t know the details at that time but the funny thing is I clearly remember thinking to myself, ‘just hold on and the finish is about ten strides away and you are doing great’ and then straight away thinking ‘you idiot, did you not hear that pop? Your leg is broken you are not jumping tomorrow!’ That was all I remember until I opened my eyes to find Roger Haller staring down at me and a flurry of busy bodies moving equipment and getting out screens around me and I remember thinking “I’m not dead yet!” like the poor lady in the Monty Python film.
Leslie still had stuff to do so I was stuffed into one of our wonderful clients Susan Millar’s car and taken off to the Ocala hospital. By that point I had insane pain in my leg and a very large lump coming out of the side of it. I pretty much knew I was in trouble but was still holding on to some hope that I would get sent home with a cute cast that I could have my friends sign and put funny phrases on. We naturally sat in a waiting room forever, me lying on the bed trying my very hardest to be witty instead of bawling my eyes out which was my preferred option at the time, and Ms. Millar sitting in a chair across from me looking kind of worried about the whole thing. After what felt like forever a nurse came into the room and naturally the first thing out of her mouth was, “Are you pregnant or taking any drugs?” My stomach just about fell out of me. I looked at Ms. Millar and said, “yep, I’m pregnant.. surprise!”. I love Ms. Millar but you know I kinda had it in my head that my mom might be the first to know. However, such is life I guess. Poor Ms. Millar just about fell out of her chair, she was having much more of a day than she had bargained for. I got sent off to x-ray and then another hour or so later finally had a doctor arrive that looked about 18 years old and I’m not sure but I feel fairly confident that he may have gotten his degree on line. He looked up to me for one second, looked down at the rads and said, “Ms. Grant I have looked at your x-rays and I cannot help you. I will refer you to a specialist to go to on Tuesday in Gainesville.” At that point it is fair to say that I lost my witty demeanor. Keep in mind this is Saturday and this boy-genius wants to send me home with my leg in pieces to wait until Tuesday. So that is exactly what happened.
Leslie came and got me from the hospital relieving the poor over-informed Millar of her post. I, true to my form, held myself together as much as I could until I got into the car and fell to pieces and then called my mom to tell her I had good news and bad news. That is how my mom got to find out about her first grandchild; probably not so much the way she had imagined either.
We got home with my mangled leg and then started the most interesting days of my life. I had to stay in bed with my leg straight all of the time. If I moved or let my leg hang the bones shifted and created a pain that would make you rip a phone book in half. For the first time in my life I was totally dependent on other people and for the first time in Leslie’s life he had someone that was completely dependent on him. My entire life I have been seriously private about all bathroom activity and Leslie knew never to come near the bathroom when I was in it no matter what. Now I couldn’t go to the bathroom without Leslie holding my leg out straight in front of me whenever I moved. So basically I would hop on one leg while he held the other leg out straight in front of me and this is how I would get to the bathroom and back. It was horrific. We tried a shower once but if you can imagine it was like a Cirque de Solei performance trying to get me into the shower stall with my leg sticking out of it Leslie holding it out straight. That mixed with the anxiety of being afraid of falling was enough to throw me off the edge so I pretty much forgot about showering after day one. Leslie does try to be an outstanding husband but I think on some occasions the experience was almost as hard on him as it was on me. For one thing, Leslie doesn’t cook. So the first night he went to the grocery store with all the best intentions of cooking me a chicken dinner with mash, gravy and all. He got home and although I was in the bedroom, from the sound effects I believe what went on was something along the lines of the gravy bubbling over and the mash may have gotten thrown against the wall in frustration and there were certainly more than a few curse words. Bless him; I only really wanted soup anyways. We got through a few days of this and then Tuesday came along. I was sure I was saved that I would go to the place in Gainesville and everything would be put right again.
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Went up to Gainesville and did an MRI and guess what? I was beyond them as well. Apparently I had done a capital job of messing my leg up. They sent me home with a promise that they would send my MRI around and investigate the best place for me to go. Leslie had to leave to go up to Rolex as we had two students doing their first four star and I didn’t want them to go without him so we faced the conundrum of who got the prize job of looking after me. Denise Rath stepped up to the plate and was a complete superstar. For one, Denise can seriously cook and being a woman I guess, knew just what I would want to eat and such. The only real problem we found was that Denise is a very sound sleeper so the first night when I woke up at 2am and really had to pee I called and called but couldn’t seem to wake her. Luckily she had her cell phone in her room so I called her and she came to the rescue. Times like this you find out who your real friends are as they say, and for those few days, I will eternally be grateful for Denise.
A few days later, Gainesville rang up to say they had found the man for my job and it was a Dr. Cole in Orlando. They assured me he was top class and that I had a date with him for surgery in a few days. Finally I was to be saved. Keep in mind, all this time I was not taking any good drugs as I was scared to hurt the baby and couldn’t drink on top of that.
Leslie and I finally went into the Orlando hospital at 5am one morning and to be fair, at that point I started to get very scared. I still hadn’t met my surgeon or even spoken to him on the phone so I felt a bit surprised that without even a first date this guy was going to dive into my leg. I met him at the last min and to be fair he did have salt and pepper hair and large glasses so I thought surely he was good. Big drama came when one nurse told me I had to take my tongue ring out for surgery. That piece of metal has been stuck in my tongue since I graduated high school and has never come out. Removing it required pliers and a rather large orderly on the other end of them but apparently it had to come out as when they use soldering tools places where there is metal will burn. You learn something new every day don’t you? Like I said I was proper scared at this point. I think the main cause of my angst was that I was worried about the baby and losing it. I must have driven Leslie nuts as I was fairly wet and messy at that point. The next conversation was with the anesthesiologist who said if I wanted to be 100% sure no harm would come to the baby that I could do the surgery with just an epidural. I asked him how long the surgery would take and he said just over 4 hours. I am a person that goes into full body rigor during a dental appointment as I hate the sound of the drill. How do you think I would fair being awake for four hours of drilling and sawing at my leg? It would be like giving a cat a bath for four hours. Knock me out, I said. Because of the pregnancy they didn’t give me the normal sedatives they give surgery patients so I got wheeled into the operating room fully awake. It was all shiny and there were a bunch of dudes all in white with only eyes behind glasses. I thought to myself, surely Scully and Mulder are here somewhere. They explained to me that they were going to put the mask over my face and I was to start counting backwards. Always one to think that a happy worker is a good worker, I remember telling the Doc, “Please look after my baby, do a good job with my leg, and if you have some time left over, if you could give me a bigger rack that would be super.” I could see them smile in their eyes and then I was out like a light.
When I woke up all I remember of the rest of that day was that Leslie had a super nice card waiting for me, a doc came in and hooked up an ultrasound and showed me my baby was fine, and my boobs were unfortunately still the same size.
Sadly the pain after surgery was worse than before as the doctor had warned me. This was my first big stay in the hospital and I quickly discovered how important nurses were. I felt so badly for them all the time having to deal with me. With regards to my aforementioned ‘bathroom privacy policy,’ you can imagine my total repulsion at having to use a bed pan the first 24 hours. The first man that came into my room on day two looked just like the villain in the black hat and glasses in the Indiana Jones movie. He came in all sour-faced, handed me a pole with a stirrup-like thing on the end of it and told me quite matter of factly that he was in charge of physio and that I was to get out of bed and get around on crutches. I looked straight back at him and told him that for someone that had clearly smoked as much crack as he had by nine a.m. that surely he should be happier. You have to understand the level of pain I was in, and without drugs mind. I am a girl that never flinched when they stuck a needle through my tongue, I’ve broken my wrists being a good Canadian skiing and skating as a kid about 4 times, I am no stranger to danger but this was an all-new level of pain. As well I guess when you don’t use your foot for a spell the muscles in your foot/ankle seize so I could no longer get my foot to go flat. So how this dude thought I was going to get up and on crutches was beyond me. But I did it. I cried the entire time and hated him every second of it. For those of you who know me you know I can at times use a few choice words so I really had to bite my tongue with this guy as when you are completely dependent you have to be extra careful who you annoy. I used that stirrup pole as I still couldn’t bend my leg so that was how I moved my leg for the next few months however at least now I could let my leg hang without all the bones shifting so things were looking up I suppose. The next thing physio natzie brought me was a machine that I had to strap my leg onto. It ran from my foot up my thigh. It plugged in and had a dial that you set to degrees and when you started it up it moved your knee up by that many degrees. Apparently I had to get to 80 before the doctor would let me leave the hospital. I couldn’t get to 10 on day one and called Leslie up and told him he better bring me more stuff as it looked as if I were moving in permanently.
By day four things started to turn around. I could get out of bed on my own and hobble around on crutches. By this point, between the sponge baths and the bed pans I had lost any bit of modesty that I had ever harbored. In fact I would do my rounds around the floor hobbling on crutches perhaps not worrying toooo much about whether the back of my gown was done up completely. It was a depressing floor with mostly older people whom I felt really sad for and I thought hey, if I can give the old men an eyebrow raise and the old broken hip ladies something to shake their heads about at least I was giving them something to talk about when their family came to visit. Instead of focusing on their pains they could laugh about the crazy blonde chick limping down the ward with a bit of bottom showing. I finally appeased my Doc by making it to 75. He told me then that usually he only expected people to get to 40 but seeing as I was younger and rode horses he wanted to push me harder. He was a top class doctor, that Dean Cole, and there will always be a small piece of my heart for the dude that put me back together again. I certainly recommend him if you ever require 12 pins, two plates and something that looks like a bicycle chain installed in your leg.
When I finally got to go home my mom came in as the circus had left town without me; our barn had moved up to Virginia for the summer but I had to stay behind for two weeks in order to get a check up. For those weeks I basically lived in that leg machine until I could get my knee bending at 90 degrees again and inbetween sessions I would hook my foot into my stirrup pole and pull on it with all my might to try and get my foot to go flat again. It was a depressing time and the only thing that really whipped my butt into shape was thinking of my friend Susie Tuckerman, Bruce Davidson’s partner, whom had broken her back and had very serious relearning to do. She was my inspiration at that time as I thought if Susie could go through what she did I could shut the heck up and get on with it.
In time Leslie came and took me up to Virginia in our tiny Mazda where I had to lie the seat flat out and stick my leg out the windshield area for the 15 hour drive. To try and make an already too long story shorter, when I got home my months consisted of them parking me in chairs by the ring hooked up to a Game Ready machine to get the swelling out of my joints. I was starting to get fairly pregnant by that point and got really upset that I was feeling more and more of a beached whale just getting fatter no matter what and not really being able to move. By June when I could drive again and get around better on the crutches I told Leslie he was going to have to do an extra lesson a week as I had had enough off the beached whale routine and was going to join a gym and get a personal trainer that could help me somehow exercise in my limited capacity. Most of the personal trainers were scared to touch me what with being a double whammy of pregnant and a cripple. I however explained to them that the baby wasn’t growing in my butt or thighs was it? I found one lady that was brave enough to take me on and that took away a few of my useless feelings as at least in my mind I was riding a bike like Lance Armstrong and lifting weights like Mr. T. I got some strange looks when I went into the gym full of buff soccer moms and in I came all pregnant, limping and scarred-legged but it was probably the best decision I could have made for myself.
By August I sent Dr. Cole some new x-rays of my leg and photos of me bending it and I got the OK to toss the crutches and start weight bearing. It was a weird thing to be so afraid and tentative of walking. It got better and better as time went. Don’t get me wrong I was limpy and slow. If I had run into any loose lions I would have definitely had to rely on skills of negotiation as I certainly wasn’t going to outrun anything but at least I could make the gravy again. It was almost as good as new by the time I had little Liam. It certainly made the cesarean a piece of cake. When they asked me to walk around the hospital floor after that operation I asked them what time they would like me to do it in as seriously the cesarean was an inconvenience compared to the leg.
The entire experience certainly gave me a new appreciation for dependence and life without pain. It has also given me a huge respect for those in the health care profession that quite honestly I never gave a second thought to before. I never really associated it directly with ‘horses’ as it was just such a series of unfortunate freak events that made it happen that I could certainly never blame a horse. However, I will say I stick away from fancy plastic jumping stirrups now and go with the old iron ones all the time. It taught me to find laughter in dark and scary times. So I guess since the purpose of this article was to try and restore faith and confidence in those that have had accidents the moral of my story would be ~ no matter how bad it seems at the time, there is always a boob joke to be made, a friend or family to be appreciated, and light at the end of the tunnel.
