The First Surgery Part II
I SEE A SAW
The memory of the physical and emotional pain I suffered only two weeks before came flooding into my mind as soon as we walked into the building. After registering at the Admitting office, we went to the casting room. There, an orderly would take the casts off, remove my stitches, and then send me for x-rays to ensure my feet were healing correctly. The surgeon would review the x-rays, speak with us briefly, and then the orderly would recast my feet. Four weeks later, we would return to have them removed.
Inside the casting room, I sat on a gurney covered with plastic intended to catch all the dust and the cast itself. As soon as the orderly hit the power button on the saw, I pulled my feet away and tried to get off the gurney. My dad used a power saw to cut wood; although this saw was smaller, the blade moved similarly. I was afraid this guy would cut my feet off! I started to cry, and my dad was instantly angry. “Sit still and behave,” he hissed, but I was too scared, and I started to cry even harder. The orderly tried to calm me down by explaining that the saw would not cut me. He said it would cut only the cast, and to prove it to me, he demonstrated the saw’s safety by holding the saw against his arm. “See?” he said, “no blood!” Despite his best efforts, I was already in a panic. The sound of the saw was exaggerated in my mind. Again, I was in complete fight-or-flight mode, and my senses were in hyper-drive. No one could reason with me in this state. I refused to hold my legs still, and I was bawling.
The casts had to come off, so my dad held my legs down. The plaster vibrated against my lower leg as soon as the saw started cutting, and the smell of old blood and sweat filled my nostrils. There were bits of plaster and dust flying everywhere.
A few minutes later, it was all over. The casts were off my feet! I had barely calmed down from the sawing when I saw blood. I thought he had cut me open and immediately became hysterical. The orderly remained calm and tried his best to reassure me by saying, “It’s ok! It’s old blood – from your surgery – you’re not bleeding now! You’re ok!” My dad was getting angrier by the second. “Quit crying! Stop behaving like a baby! What’s wrong with you?” he said.
The attendant began washing the old, dried blood and plaster off my feet. The water was warm, and it felt nice. Finally, I calmed down. Just when I was about to catch my breath, it was time to take out the sutures. Each foot had two incisions. One incision ran along the side of my foot from the middle up to my ankle bone, the other on the bottom of my foot, in the center. I’m not sure how many weeks had passed before returning to the hospital, but these sutures should have been taken out earlier. When you wait too long, the skin starts growing over the stitches, and that was exactly what had happened. After all the reassurance, they would have to break the skin to get some of the sutures out, which would cause bleeding. There were just over fifty stitches on each foot, so removing them was going to take some time.
Every time the orderly grabbed hold of an overgrown suture with the tweezers, the skin would break and bleed, and it hurt. Everyone got frustrated. I was bawling and kept pulling my legs away. The orderly tried negotiating with me, explaining that the more I pulled my legs away, the longer it would take. My dad yelled at me to stay still, but I couldn’t calm down. At some point, he just held my legs down so the attendant could get all the stitches out.
It felt as though it took forever, but finally, the sutures were all out. I had made such a commotion that one of the nurses came in to calm me down, wash my feet up, and get me ready for x-rays. When the cast attendant left, she asked my dad to step outside for a few minutes too.
Her presence made me feel better, and I stopped crying. I watched as she filled a stainless steel basin with warm, soapy water. She spoke softly, telling me, “it’s all over now. We’re going to get you all washed up, then send you for some x-rays”. She placed the washbasin on a table beside the gurney. I watched her place a white face cloth into the water, then wring it out. Gently, she wiped my face, then carefully washed up both of my feet. This little bit of nurturing was all I needed to calm down completely. She gave me a clean gown to put on, then opened the door to retrieve the gurney that would take me to radiology.
A few minutes later, a radiology attendant came to wheel me down for x-rays. The kind nurse told me that I would be ok. She reminded me that x-rays were just pictures, so I had nothing to be scared of. She would be right here when they brought me back from radiology.
The radiologist determined my feet were healing correctly, so I went back to the casting room for new casts. This time, they would insert rubber pads on the bottom of the casts allowing me to walk on them.
Back into the casting room I went. There was a large bowl of warm water sitting on a table beside the gurney, and the orderly had laid out several rolls of casting gauze on the gurney. The orderly began wrapping my feet in a criss-cross manner. It was messy, but at least it didn’t hurt! He did not extend the cast's bottom past my toes for some reason. I was instructed to wiggle my toes several times a day, but one cannot wiggle their toes 24/7. Consequently, I ended up with hammertoe, the first of many iatrogenic injuries.
I don’t think anyone could have imagined the long-term psychological consequences of this surgery. Even something as simple as changing the casts and removing the sutures ended up being an extremely violent experience. I have no memories of after the second trip to the casting room. Obviously, we ended up back in Regina, but I have no recollection of how we got there. In fact, my memory has such significant gaps due to the trauma I experienced that I do not recall anyone else being with us on this trip. I strongly suspect my mom, brother and sister had traveled with us to Winnipeg, but the memories are buried so deep I have yet to retrieve them.