Freshie Week, Hospitals, Traction and A Warrior Born

We were all nervous about starting high school. Not only would we be in a room with kids from other grade schools whom we didn’t know, but we also didn’t know what to expect from the kids in the higher grades. In 1979, our high school still held the passing of rights initiation ritual known as ‘Freshie Week,’ where grade twelve students, referred to as seniors, would welcome the grade nine students into high school through a weeklong series of embarrassing, albeit physically harmless, acts. The school had strict rules about how far the seniors could go with their activities and games, and no one was ever physically hurt.

            I think it’s important to note that high schools, colleges, and universities no longer participate in this passing of rites ritual or any other form of initiation, and I believe this vital stage in psychological development has had a substantial negative impact on our society.

                In The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell explains:

                                Mythology teaches you what’s behind literature and the arts, it teaches you about your own life. It’s a great, exciting, life-nourishing subject. Mythology has a great deal to do with the stages of life, the initiation ceremonies as you move from childhood to adult responsibilities.

                 He goes on to say:

They have to do with your recognition of the new role you’re in, the process of throwing off the old one and coming into the new…

                To me, if we apply this understanding to this particular passage of rites from grade school into high school, we might see that the ritual was intended to teach us how to leave behind childhood fears and move into the next stage of emotional development: adolescence.

                Authors Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt (a social psychologist) discuss the damaging psychological effects of over-protecting children in their book: The Coddling Of The American Mind:

                If we protect children from the various classes of potentially upsetting experiences, we make it far more likely that those children will be unable to cope with such events when they leave our [the parent’s] protective umbrella. The modern obsession with protecting young people from ‘feeling unsafe’ is, we believe, one of the (several) causes of the rapid rise in rates of adolescent depression, anxiety, and suicide, which we’ll explore in Chapter 7.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments section below.

Continuing on with my story..

During Freshie week, seniors enjoyed their power over the grade nines. The activities they came up with weren’t new; they were regurgitations of what had happened when they entered grade nine.

Everyone felt humiliated during Freshie Week, so it wasn’t like I was singled out, but for me, the humiliation didn’t stop at the end of Freshie Week. My group had to dress up as clowns and push pennies down the main corridor at the local mall with our noses. They drew on our faces with lipstick and eyeliner and sometimes cracked an egg or two on our heads.

** Please note: This section (Part I, The Beginning) is written from the perspective of the wounded child. In Part II I will discuss the bullying/humiliation/betrayal wound, and in Part III, I will share how I healed those wounds. **

Students from all of the public schools in the area came to this high school. There was an opportunity to meet new friends, which also meant, an entire group of kids who didn’t know me had an opportunity to make fun of my gait. The number one taunt for most of my grade nine year was taken from a toy commercial from that era: “Weebles wobble, but they don’t fall down.”

The school had two floors and no elevator. No one had backpacks in those days; you had to carry all your books to class in your arms. I couldn’t go up two flights of stairs without holding onto the railing, making carrying textbooks challenging. Needing the handrail and struggling up the stairs was noticeable to everyone. Kids would point at me and whisper to one another, and occasionally I overheard someone say, “why does she walk that way?” Other kids would pretend they didn’t notice how I walked, which was equally as bad, and most teachers ignored it.

In Grade nine, physical education was mandatory. I couldn’t physically run without falling, but I was expected to do what I could in class. One of the most challenging activities for me to participate in was the milk run. The milk run route was a two-kilometer-long outdoor run that weaved its way through the neighborhood. The other kids could run the entire course in about 20 min, but it would take me forty minutes to walk it. I didn’t know that area well enough to find a shortcut, so by the time I returned to the school, everyone had showered and gone on to the next class. By the time I changed into street clothes, picked up the appropriate textbook from my locker, and made my way to my next class, I would be at least 20 min late. While I wasn’t required to stop at the office and get a late slip excusing me for my tardiness, it definitely made a point of singling me out from the crowd, drawing attention to my disability.

After eight years of having teachers forcing my inclusion in physical activities, I obviously could not do, my willingness to participate was gone. I refused to continue to be humiliated like that, so I insisted that my parents get a note from the doctor excusing me from gym class. Because physical education was mandatory, the school administrators didn’t know what to do. Apparently, I was the only physically disabled person to attend that school,  so for some unknown reason, I was still required to change into gym clothes and attend class. I was told to sit on the floor against the wall and watch everyone else play volleyball or basketball. To pass this mandatory class, I had to write down the game rules and hand them to the teacher at the end of each class.

By this time, I was already so angry at the world that it didn’t take much taunting from someone before they would get a response of ‘fuck off!’ or a ‘fuck you!’

Today I wonder if these teachers had heard of or were aware of the library. I know that sounds harsh, but to me, common sense had an opportunity to prevail here, but it didn’t. Clearly, no alternative solution was even considered. The courage to step outside of the one rule box and allow a student to achieve in an alternative manner didn’t exist.

An alternative to having me sit like a dunce on a stool for all to see could have been a research paper on my condition (after all, phys ed is physical education), or perhaps researching kinesiology.

Hospital Hell Is On Its Way

My parents became more desperate to get me help and pleaded with our family physician to find a doctor who could do something. Dr. Cawsey had heard of a surgeon known in the medical community for trying complex surgeries no one else would try. He arranged for me to see him.

Dr. K’s office was two blocks from the downtown main medical office building. Like Dr. Froggatt, the first surgeon I saw, K sent me for a series of hip x-rays. After assessing my skeletal condition, he claimed he could perform a surgery called Salter’s Osteotomy, which would solve the problem of my leg ‘popping out.’ He failed to mention that he had never performed this particular surgery before and had only read about it in orthopedic journals. Desperate people make bad decisions, and because my parents were desperate to get me help, and this surgeon appeared to have that solution and said exactly what they wanted to hear, they eagerly booked the surgery for the summer.

NO PAIN ALLOWED

Shortly after school finished at the end of June, I was admitted to the hospital for the first of many major reconstructive hip surgeries.

My dad dropped my mom and me off at the hospital on his way to the store. Mom was there to answer all the questions from the admitting staff and provide my medical history to the receiving nurse. She stayed with me for the entire day, hoping to speak to the surgeon again, but neither the surgeon nor the anesthesiologist came by the room. Dr. Cawsey, our family physician, stopped by the room to speak with us and assured us that he would be in the operating room during the surgery and would report to them as soon as it was over.

It was well known in the medical community that Dr. K didn’t have a good bedside manner, so my parents were relieved that someone they knew and trusted would be in the operating room with me.

Dad showed up after he closed the store, shortly after 6 pm. He chatted briefly with my mom and me, then he and mom headed home for supper. Dad told me that mom would not be there when I came back from surgery but that they would stop in and check on me on their way home from work.

 I was extremely anxious and outright scared about the following day’s surgery. I was also older now and openly curious about exactly what would happen to me during the surgery. Dr. K had described the procedure in the appointment, but that was weeks ago, and the anticipation of pain and the possibility that if something went wrong, I might never walk again was consuming my thoughts. After my parents left, I began pacing the hall. My mind would not settle.

I asked the nurses many questions about the surgery, and to their credit, they took the time to provide me with as much information as possible. Unfortunately, no one had heard of a procedure known as ‘Salter’s Osteotomy,’ and no other patient in this hospital had undergone the procedure. Mary, an incredibly caring woman and the head nurse on the orthopedic unit, suggested we look inside the unit’s most current orthopedic reference book. “You’ll know as much as we know,” she said. We read through the procedure together, and it was exactly how I remember Dr. K describing it. It seemed simple enough; they break the pelvic bones and then pin them together in an attempt to create an acetabular shelf.

Mary reminded me that I would be in bed for several weeks in traction, but she reassured me that they would take really good care of me.

Later that evening, in preparation for the surgery, I had to take a bath and wash down the hip area with a sponge soaked in disinfectant. A nurse would start an IV in the morning then a porter would take me down to the OR theatre on the second floor.

I had gone over every detail in my mind numerous times, and despite understanding the procedure, my fear of the unknown was overpowering the known. I was still incredibly anxious and couldn’t settle down.

 “What if he makes a bad cut, severs a nerve, or cuts the muscle too much? Will I still be able to walk?”

 “How much is this going to hurt?”

“What happens if he can’t fix me?”

“What if….”

I paced the halls pondering all the what-ifs I could think of for several hours until a nurse told me I better get to bed and try to get some sleep because I had a big day coming up.

“I’ll bring you a sleeping pill,” she said. “That will help you calm down and get a good night’s rest.”

Early the next day, a nurse came into my room and gave me some Valium. “This will help to calm you down before your surgery,” she said. “I’ll be back in a half-hour, and I’ll start your IV. Then someone will come to take you down to the OR.”

I took the Valium and fell back asleep. A little while later, the nurse came in and started the IV. Luckily, she was skilled and got the needle in on the first try. A few minutes later, a man named Roger came to take me to the OR. I was already quite groggy from the Valium, so Roger lifted me from the bed onto the gurney. He covered me with a flannel sheet and wheeled me down the hallway to the service elevator. We rode down to the 2nd floor, where the operating theatres were. After the elevator doors opened, he wheeled me down the hallway to a counter area. A nurse checked my ID bracelet and directed us to the correct operating theatre. As soon as the doors to the operating theatre opened, I could feel cold air, and I started to shiver. There were nurses inside the room getting things ready for the surgery. He moved the gurney beside the operating table. One nurse took hold of the sheet at the top of the gurney, and Roger grabbed hold at the bottom, near my feet. Together, they slid me from the gurney to the cold, hard, stainless steel table. As he exited, Roger wished me ‘good luck with your surgery!’

The nurse standing directly behind me undid the tie on my hospital gown and started attaching EKG leads to my chest. Another nurse brought over a heated blanket and laid it on top of me. I was grateful for the warmth of the blanket because I was really shivering!

Within seconds of entering that room, my adrenal glands started pumping out a cascade of stress hormones into my bloodstream. My heart rate and blood pressure increased, and my pupils dilated. The Valium was no longer keeping me calm. My body was responding to multiple signals: the sound of the operating room doors opening, the feel of the cold air hitting my skin, the smell of the disinfectant, the sounds of the operating room staff moving about inside the room, the sight of the machines, x-ray viewers, tables and the narrow stainless-steel table.

Next, the nurses each took an arm and placed it on the wooden armrests that protruded at 90 degrees from the table. One of the nurses added IV bags to the IV pole, then rolled a table with miniature saws, hammers, and screwdrivers alongside the operating table.

Not too long after, the anesthesiologist came into the OR theatre, sat behind me on a stool, and explained that he would put some medication into my IV tube. I wouldn’t feel a thing throughout the entire surgery, he explained. “In a few seconds, you will fall into a deep sleep,” he said. That was the last thing I remember.

Hours later, I woke up in my room. I was in the bed nearest to the window, so I could see it was nighttime. The light above my bed was on its lowest setting allowing the nurses to see when they came into the room to check my vital signs, which was done every fifteen minutes until I woke up. To help manage the pain, a registered nurse administered via intramuscular injection an opiate called Demerol every four hours.

 My left leg lay in a long sling, suspended by ropes attached to a steel frame attached to my bed. At the end of each rope were several weights. A triangular-shaped bar hung above my chest, allowing me to lift myself whenever the nurses needed to change my bed linens or when I needed to use the bedpan.  

I was groggy from both the opiates and the anesthetic. I could feel a great deal of pressure on my hip, so I pulled the blankets away to see if I could tell what was causing it. A large, layered bandage went from inside my groin to my ribcage. I saw a wooden hoop attached to the sling and wondered if this was causing the pressure. I moved it a little to see if the pressure would ease up, but it didn’t.

The more conscious and aware I became, the more pressure I felt until I realized the pressure was pain. It felt as though my hip was in a vice! Just as I was about to push the call button for the nurse, she walked into the room. “Oh! You’re finally awake!” she said. “How are you feeling?” 

“I’m ok,” I said, “but my hip hurts.”

“I bet it does!” she said. “You’ve had a lot of work done on your hip. I’ll get you some pain medication. I’ll be right back,” she said.

She returned a few minutes later with a syringe. “Grab hold of this bar and try to lift yourself up a bit,” she said as she pointed to the bar above my chest. “Roll to the side as best as you can and turn your bum cheek toward me,” she said. “This needle will take the pain away.”

After injecting the Demerol, she took my vitals and recorded them on my chart. “I’ll wait for about thirty minutes, and then I’m going to come back and put you on the bedpan. You have to try to pee. Otherwise, I’ll have to put a catheter in.”

“What’s that?” I inquired.

“A bedpan or a catheter?” She asked.

“Both,” I replied.

“Well, you can’t get out of bed to go to the bathroom, so you’re going to have to go to the bathroom in the bed. We put a pan under your bum, and you go in there. The catheter is a tube that goes up inside you, all the way to your bladder, and lets the pee out,” she explained. “There is a lot of fluid going into you through that IV bag, and it needs to come out. Otherwise, you’ll get sick,” she explained.

I hadn’t thought about how I would go to the bathroom, but I was sure that going in a bedpan was way better than getting a tube inserted inside my bladder. “Don’t’ worry!” I said, “I’ll pee! I won’t be needing that!”

“I’ll leave you alone for a little while,” she said as she pulled the privacy curtains around my bed. True to her word, she returned thirty minutes later and had me lift high enough to place a large, cold, steel bedpan under my butt. I tried and tried, but I couldn’t pee yet! It’s not easy to go to the bathroom lying down, and my bladder wasn’t awake yet.

When the nurse returned, she said, “well, ok. We can try a little later, but you have to pee tonight, or I’ll have to put the catheter in.” She removed the bedpan, turned out the light above my bed, and left the room. It wasn’t too long before I fell asleep.

I don’t know how much time passed before the nurse returned and woke me up. After taking my temperature, pulse, and blood pressure and checking my bandages, she asked, “Do you think you can pee now?”

“I’ll try,” I said.

Again, she had me lift myself using the bar and placed the cold steel bedpan under me.

“I’ll run the tap,” she said, “sometimes hearing water running helps.”

It took several minutes, but thankfully, just as the nurse gathered all the materials she needed to insert the catheter, I emptied my bladder.

“Good for you!” she said as she removed the bedpan from underneath me and took it to the bathroom to empty it.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

“No,” I replied. “I just want to go back to sleep,” I said.

She turned the light above my bed off, ensured I was warm enough, then left me alone to go back to sleep.

The following day, Dr. Cawsey came in to see me. He asked me how I was feeling, and I told him I was ok but quite sore.

“Don’t be afraid to ask the nurse for painkillers,” he said. “If you let the pain get away from you, it’s harder to control.”

“I won’t,” I said.

“You gave us quite a scare in the operating room,” he said. “Your heart stopped beating for a few seconds!”

“What?” I said.

“We don’t know why exactly. We think you had too much anesthetic, but it was only for a few moments.”

I didn’t know what to think about that, and I wasn’t sure why he even told me. None of the nurses had mentioned anything to me last night about my heart stopping. I suddenly was worried I would get into trouble if my dad found out. “Don’t tell my dad,” I said. “He might get mad, and I don’t want to get into trouble.”

Dr. Cawsey chuckled at my request and assured me everything would be ok. He told me the next few weeks would fly by, and before I knew it, I would be walking around like nothing happened at all! He said he’d check in on me the next day, and then he left.

Not too long after, the nurse came in to help me wash up. She gave me a facecloth, and a towel, then moved to the end of the bed. She reached under and grabbed hold of a handle that moved the head of the bed up. Slowly she cranked that handle. “Tell me if you start to feel uncomfortable,” she said. When the head of the bed was about 45 degrees, I said, “that’s good.”

The nurse moved the rolling table over to the bed, raised it high enough to sit above me, removed a stainless-steel basin from the cupboard beside my bed, and filled it with warm water from the bathroom. She poured drinking water from a blue plastic carafe into a stainless-steel cup so I could brush my teeth and placed a kidney-shaped stainless-steel tray on the table for me to spit in. She removed the wrapper from a small bar of soap, handed it to me, and said, “You wash what you can. I’ll be back in a few minutes to help you do the rest. Clean your teeth and spit in this” she said pointing to the kidney-shaped tray. “Breakfast will be here soon.”

I put the face cloth in the warm water, wrung it out as best as I could, and washed my face. The warm cloth felt good on my face, so I held it there for a minute. Then I rubbed soap onto the face cloth and washed under my arms and around my chest. I didn’t go anywhere near the bandages because I didn’t want them to get wet. I dried myself off, cleaned my teeth, and waited for the nurse to return. About twenty minutes later, she returned to the room and said, “how’d you do?”

“Ok!” I replied.

She went to the end of the bed again and lowered the head of the bed. “You hold on to the monkey bar,” she said, “and I’ll wash your back.”

I grabbed hold of the bar and lifted myself up. She quickly washed and dried my back, then applied some lotion. “The sheets are so rough, and we don’t want you getting any bed sores,” she explained. “I’ll be back after breakfast to change your sheets.”

Not too long afterward, my mom and dad stopped by on their way to work. “That’s quite a contraption!” my dad said when he saw the traction apparatus. Mom said that Dr. Cawsey had called them right after the surgery and told them everything went well. Before they left, dad said, “You be good. We’ll stop by tomorrow on the way to work.”

The entire visit lasted maybe fifteen minutes, and then they were gone. For the next month, my parents would stop by every morning on their way to work, and occasionally, dad would drop mom off on Sunday for a visit.

Getting into routines when living inside an institution doesn't take long. Doctors’ rounds were on weekdays between 7 and 8 am. The nurses changed shifts every twelve hours. There was a 30 min overlap between each shift where the outgoing nurses reported to the oncoming nurses. Every morning between 7:30 and 8:15 am, a nurse would bring me a bath basin. We needed to be washed up and ready for breakfast by 8:30 am. The menu for the next day always accompanied the breakfast tray.

The nurse assigned to my room that day would wash my back and apply lotion to help prevent bed sores. Bed linens were changed daily between 9 am and 11 am, and hospital cleaning staff cleaned the toilets, washed down the bed rails and the rolling tables with a disinfectant solution, emptied the garbage, and washed the floors. All of these duties were completed by noon.

At the time of admission, we were asked which faith we practiced. Because my mom had been with me that day, she told them we were Protestant. They asked if I would be willing to see the minister from our church, and I agreed. Twice a week, Rev. Tom would visit between 11 am and 2 pm. I enjoyed those visits, and we often got into some deep conversations. He was fascinated by my views on God, Jesus, and the stories in the Bible. He knew that I didn’t attend church very often and that my dad wasn’t a fan of organized religion, so he was very curious about how I arrived at my beliefs. I could never explain it. All I could say was, “I don’t know how I know; I just know!”

Lunch trays came at 12:30 pm, and sometime between 2:30 and 3:15 pm, someone from the kitchen came by every room offering something to drink and a light snack. Volunteers from the gift shop wheeled a cart with magazines, chocolate bars, chips, and candy down the hallway every afternoon. They were always very friendly and often stopped for a few minutes for a chat. The TV rental person was on the floor every weekday afternoon as well. Supper was at 5 pm, and the evening wash took place at the following shift change - 7:30 pm.

A few days after the surgery, Dr. Cawsey came by for his usual morning visit. He was later than usual this day, so he ran into my parents, who always stopped by for a few minutes on their way to work. My parents were happy to see him and relieved that he was checking in on me every day. They were chatting away when Dr. Cawsey took a step backward and accidentally bumped into the apparatus on the bed, causing the weights at the end of the ropes attached to my sling to swing. My leg jerked, I gasped, and immediately started crying. It was more from fear than pain, but Dr. Cawsey felt awful. “I’m so sorry!” he said, “are you ok?”

My dad was quick to scold me. “Quit your crying!” he snapped. “He didn’t mean to do it!”

Dr. Cawsey looked at my dad and said, “No, no. That’s ok. She didn’t do anything wrong.” He apologized for hitting the weights and asked again if I was ok.

Once my leg quit moving, I realized there wasn’t any pain, I calmed down, and I said, “I’m ok.”

“Good! Well, I had better get going,” Dr. Cawsey said. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” and he left the room.

My dad was so angry with me for crying. He said I had embarrassed him in front of Dr. Cawsey and that I needed to learn how to ‘suck it up.’ That was the last straw for me. From that moment on, The Warrior was born. If my dad thought I was stubborn and defiant before, he had no idea how stubborn and willful I could be. I took it to a whole new level. I became a master at stuffing all the emotional and physical pain inside. My new motto was Fuck you!