THE FIRST SURGERY
A few months later, I was doing my usual Saturday pretend-to-work stint in my parent's hardware store when a regular customer, Mr. D, a Shriner's member, came in. He asked me why I walked that way. Embarrassed, I suggested he talk to my dad. After speaking with my dad, he arranged for me to see a surgeon at Shriner's Children's Hospital in Winnipeg. The Shriners covered the cost of the doctor's appointment, but all other expenses were up to my parents.
The whole family piled into the family station wagon, and off we went to Winnipeg. Although the nature of our trip to Winnipeg was weighty, it felt as though we were going on vacation. We stopped in Whitewood, SK, a small town not too far from the Saskatchewan-Manitoba border, for a bathroom break and lunch. Because my dad had traveled extensively throughout both provinces when he worked for John Deere, he knew all the best places to eat! After lunch, we piled back into the car and continued on our way to Winnipeg.
We stayed at a hotel close to the neighborhood we used to live in because that was the area most familiar to my parents. On the day of the appointment, my brother and sister went with my mom to a mall while my dad and I found our way to the Shriner's Children's Hospital. The hospital was a large building located in a beautiful park along the Red River in Winnipeg. Here, we met with Dr. Riddell, an orthopedic surgeon from the United States. There were many Shriner's Hospitals throughout North America in those days, and surgeons often crossed borders to help children in need.
The doctor assessed my gait at the appointment, then sent me for more x-rays. This time, he not only took x-rays of my pelvis, but he also took x-rays of both feet. After the x-rays, we waited to see Dr. Riddell again to hear his assessment.
While it's impossible to know someone else's thoughts, I assume this surgeon clearly understood that I had severe bilateral dysplasia. Still, for some reason, he decided my feet were the problem. The arch in my foot was too high, he explained. He suggested that lowering the arch would allow me to walk properly on my feet, which would fix my gait.
Today I know that my feet had become cavus due to biomechanics. I don't know whether biomechanics was even heard of back in the mid-1970s, but I suspect this physician felt compelled to have a solution to my 'problem'. With a great degree of certainty, I can also say that I know my parents were desperate to do something to help me.
Removing bone and messing around with tendons and ligaments in my feet had no impact whatsoever on my gait or on the pain I felt while walking. Without properly formed hip sockets, my leg bones were held in place by soft tissue. Each step I took stressed the soft tissue far beyond its intended function. As I walked, the stress on the hip joint and head of my left femur caused it to slip out of the grooved path it had made on the side of my pelvis. The femoral head would push its way between the layers of gluteal muscle doing its best to hold my leg bone in place, resulting in a quick fall to the ground, tearing tissue, and scraping bone.
THE FIRST SURGERY
It was possible to request surgery dates in the 1970s and early '80s, so my parents arranged for the bi-pedal surgery to take place in July so that I wouldn't miss any school.
Once again, the whole family made the journey to Winnipeg. Our old neighbors invited all of us to stay at their house in St. James. When morning came, my parents and I set out for the Winnipeg Children's Hospital.
I was terrified. I didn't know what surgery was, but I knew I was scared of it. The more I wondered about what would happen to me, the more afraid I became, and I began to cry. My mom tried to reassure and comfort me, but my dad became angry when I didn't settle down. I could feel the tension and fear in my parents, which scared me even more. My crying intensified. The stress of the impending surgery, the traffic, and my hysterical crying impacted my dad's patience. He started yelling at me to be quiet and quit acting like a baby.
I was still sobbing when we arrived at the hospital. My eyes were red and swollen from crying, and my feelings were deeply hurt from being yelled at for being scared. The unpleasant and sterile smell of disinfectant hit my nostrils the minute we walked into the hospital's foyer. There were lots of people dressed in white scurrying around. Some were pushing wheelchairs, and some were pushing gurneys. While everyone tried to appear friendly, I could feel this institution's seriousness and my apprehension and worry began to intensify again. My heart was pounding in my chest. My hands were sweaty, and I had a death grip on my mom's hand.
We started walking down the hallway to the admitting office, where my parents signed me in, then a nurse from the floor I would be staying on came to show us to the room. She introduced herself to my parents, then noticing my tears, she bent down, looked into my eyes, and asked if I was Penny. Still glued to my mom, I nodded my head yes. She reached out for my free hand and reassured me that there was nothing to be afraid of. Her kindness and her calm demeanor calmed me down. After a moment, she asked if I was ready to see my room. Again, I nodded.
We took an elevator up to the third floor. As soon as we stepped off the elevator, I immediately noticed the strong smell of disinfectant. Nurses and nursing aides were busy attending to charts, changing the sheets on the beds, and tending to their patients. One boy with deformed legs was lying on a kind of skateboard, laughing as he propelled himself forward with his arms down the hallway. Inside one of the rooms, I could see a small child lying in a crib, strung up with slings. My dad asked what was wrong with her and the nurse explained she had a brittle bone disease. The slightest movement would cause her bones to break, she explained. "We have her suspended by the slings to allow her bones to heal," she said. My dad looked down at me and said, "See?! There are lots of kids here who are way worse than you, so quit feeling sorry for yourself and quit crying!"
I didn't understand why he was angry with me. I was scared, and despite seeing all these other kids with varying deformities and illnesses, I couldn't shake the fear of being cut open. Why didn't he understand that?
Finally, we arrived at my room. Inside was a typical hospital bed with rails, a recliner, a chair, and a large TV on a shelf mounted on the wall. There was a large window on one wall and a closet for my clothes on another. Beside the bed sat a table with two drawers. At the end of the bed was another table. This one rolled and moved up and down. A green oxygen container hung on the wall above my bed, and an IV pole sat beside my bed. The nurse who showed us to the room laid a gown and a housecoat on the bed. She asked me if I had worn a hospital gown before, and I told her I had. She reminded me that the back was open, so I might want to wear the housecoat over the top. She told us she would return in a few minutes to take a history.
Several minutes later, she returned with a clipboard full of papers. She took my pulse and blood pressure and then asked my mom and dad many questions. The intense fear I was experiencing caused my senses to go into hyperdrive. I could hear sounds as far away as down the hallway, and my eyes detected the slightest movement.
Soon after the nurse left the room, another lady dressed the same as the nurse appeared in the room, carrying a box full of small glass tubes, needles, and other supplies. She told me she was a lab technician and gently explained that she needed to take some blood. The snap of the tourniquet on my arm, combined with my skin's tension, increased my fear. I pulled my arm away, telling her it was too tight. She reached for my arm and explained that the tourniquet had to stay on just long enough for her to get the needle inside a vein. Once the blood was coming out, she would take it off. The tourniquet hurt, and the anticipation of the pain from the needle caused me to cry again. My mom and the nurse tried to comfort me, but my dad snapped: "Sit still and do as you're told!"
My heart was pounding, and my eyes were wide with fear. The needle looked bigger than it was. "Turn your head and look the other way," my mom suggested, but I needed to see what was going to happen to me, so I kept staring at that needle.
Finally, the needle found a vein, and the lab technician attached one of the tubes from her box. I watched my blood flow into the tube. She carefully removed that tube and attached a different one to the needle. When that tube had sufficient blood in it, she said, "You're doing great! There's only one more tube, and then I'll be done." When she left, the nurse popped her head into the room and told us that the anesthesia team would be in soon to explain what would happen when I got into the operating room.
Now, it was just my parents and me in the room. My mom was rubbing my back which always calmed me down. I don't know how much time had passed, but I could see my dad was getting impatient. He kept saying, "I wonder how long we are going to have to wait for this doctor to come in?" My mom had her hands full because she not only had to keep me calm but also did her best to keep him calm.
Eventually, a doctor and two nurses came in. They were all dressed in blue scrubs, carrying puppets and a face mask. The doctor introduced himself to us, then very patiently explained how he would put me to sleep for the surgery. As he explained the procedure, the nurses used puppets to demonstrate. The surgeon would place a mask over my face and ask me to breathe deeply. It would smell a little like garlic, and then I would fall asleep. The puppet show was entertaining and funny, which helped alleviate my fear. The anesthesiologist assured my parents and me that there was nothing to worry about, that he would look after me, and that I wouldn't feel a thing.
ABANDONMENT & BETRAYAL
Soon after, the anesthesiologist and the nurses left the room, and so did my parents. "There is no point in us sitting around here any longer," my dad said, "We'll be back after your surgery." My mom was reluctant to leave me there alone, but my dad insisted.
Before they left, my mom ensured I could work the TV and explained that someone would bring me supper. My dad told me that I had better behave and do what I was told – or else!
At first, I didn't know what to do. I knew what 'or else' meant, and I didn't want to get into trouble. I lay in bed for quite some time, but the place's busyness piqued my curiosity, and I wondered what everyone else was doing. I paced from the window to the hospital doorway, carefully peeking out, watching the nurses and other kids scurrying around, then I would rush back to the bed, hoping that no one saw me.
I wondered why the other kids were allowed out of their rooms and I was not. I concluded I was being punished for crying, which reminded me of why I was crying in the first place. I started thinking again about being cut open and what that meant. At nine years old, there was no distinction in my mind between me and my feet, so when I imagined them 'cutting me open,' it was all of me – not just my feet. Everything the doctor had told me about going to sleep did not even enter into my thoughts. All at once, the fear rushed back into my body, and I began to cry. I was trying not to cry very loud because the last thing I needed was to get into more trouble!
Another patient was wandering up and down the hallway. As she walked by, she could see that I was crying, so she stopped and asked me, "Are you ok? Should I get a nurse?" I was so afraid of getting into trouble I said, "no! Don't tell anyone I'm crying!"
She came into the room, introduced herself, and chatted for a few minutes. She told me that she comes here a lot, that the people here are good, and that I didn't need to be scared. I told her I was afraid because they were going to cut me open in the morning to fix my feet. "There’s nothing to be scared of,” she said again, “they take good care of you here.”
Despite her words, I had never felt fear like that before. I didn’t know it at the time, but I had just experienced my first archetypal wound of abandonment at the tender age of nine. It was a deep one, and it was about to have salt poured into it.
Later that evening, the eldest daughter of the family my parents and siblings were staying with came to visit me with her boyfriend. The annual fair was going on in Winnipeg, and her boyfriend had won her a giant stuffed frog. She brought the frog up to my room to keep me company because she felt sorry for me being all alone in this place. I was so happy to see a familiar face! I hugged her and the frog. Their visit gave me a little reprieve from the fear, but I became hysterical again when they went to leave. She comforted me the best she could but told me she couldn’t stay. A nurse came in and told them it was okay for them to leave; she would give me something to help me sleep.
In the morning, a nurse came into the room to insert an IV. She explained that this needle would feel like a bee sting and to be as still as I could. The tourniquet hurt, and she had a firm grip on my little arm. She was tapping up and down my arm, looking for a good vein. When she found one, she started to insert the needle, and boy, oh boy, it hurt! I screamed and tried to pull my arm away, but her grip was firm. “It’s all over,” she said. “Someone will be here soon to take you to the operating room, so stay in your bed now and be still. I’ll get you something to help you calm down.”
Soon after, a man appeared, rolling a gurney. He lifted me from the bed onto the gurney and covered me with a sheet. “I am here to take you to the operating room,” he explained. He guided the gurney down the hallway and into a large service elevator. When the doors opened, I could hear a lot of commotion, but I couldn’t make sense of it because the sedative the nurse gave me was already working. In the hallway, someone put a blue hat on my head, checked the armband on my wrist, and we carried on down the hallway into the operating room.
Inside the operating room, the anesthesiologist and nurses who came to my room the day before were busy preparing for my arrival. The operating room was a lot colder than the hallway, and I began to shiver. Two nurses lifted me from the gurney onto a cold, hard, stainless steel table. I did not recognize anyone because they were wearing masks and blue hats, but one of the nurses told me her name and reminded me of yesterday’s visit.
She extended two padded boards from the table, then carefully strapped each arm onto a wooden board. Next, she applied lead wires from the electrocardiogram machine to my chest, explaining that these wires would allow the doctor to monitor my heartbeat throughout the operation. The anesthesiologist was seated on a stool directly behind my head. “I’m just going to place this mask over your mouth and nose,” he said. “You are going to smell garlic soon, and then you’ll go to sleep. We are going to count backward together from ten, nine, eight…”
The next thing I know, I am in a completely different room. My feet feel heavy, and I can’t bring my knees to my chest like I always do when I wake up from a night’s sleep. Groggy from the anesthetic, I glanced down to see why my feet were so heavy. Big white casts covered my feet and lower legs. The heel and bottom of both casts were saturated in my blood. In a micro-second, I became hysterical! Instantly I began screaming and crying, staring with wide, wild eyes at my feet. What had they done to me?! Where were my feet?
A nurse came running over with a needle in her hand, rolled me over, and jabbed it into my bum. Within minutes, I was fast asleep again.
The next time I woke, I was back in my hospital room. My mom was in the recliner knitting. She got up out of the chair as soon as she saw me wake, reached over, gently brushed the bangs on my forehead with her hand, and said, “Hello, sweety! How do you feel?” I was groggy from all the drugs, and my throat hurt from the intubation tube. My mom gave me ice chips, reassured me that she would be right there in the chair, and urged me to try to go back to sleep.
Later in the day, my dad brought my brother and sister to visit. As soon as they walked in, everyone noticed the blood-soaked casts. My dad outwardly gasped, and my brother began to cry. Pointing at my feet, he asked, “what did they do to her?” Instantly angry, my dad sent him out of the room. “Quit crying and get into the hallway! You’re going to upset your sister.”
My dad set out to find someone who could tell him why they would leave me lying there with blood-soaked casts! Couldn’t they cover it up? The nurse calmly explained they would cover the casts with fresh gauze before being released from the hospital.
The following morning, Dr. Riddell arrived in my room with several other doctors. He began telling the other doctors about my condition and described the surgery he had performed on my feet. Several doctors asked questions, but the one that stood out in my mind was, “How long will she be able to walk?”
Immediately, fear and panic crept through my body. My heart started racing, and my palms became sweaty. I didn’t understand it then, but this doctor’s question caused my mind’s process to reference my wheelchair Mind File. This reference is what is known as a trigger. Instantly, I was in a complete fight-or-flight stress response, and my senses went into high gear. Even though I didn’t understand what they were discussing, my emotional intensity caused my mind’s process to record every word uttered. “The dysplasia is severe, which is rare,” Dr. Riddell told the student doctors. “She will require multiple surgeries.”
I wasn’t old enough or mature enough to comprehend what the surgeon was saying, but I certainly felt the energy in the room change. The student doctors looked at me as if something was wrong with me, and their faces were sad. In my mind’s process, the Mind File from that very first doctor’s appointment was referenced and reinforced with multiple negatively charged emotional filters.
My condition's seriousness and rarity reinforced the fear of being in a wheelchair for life. After everyone left, their words kept echoing in my mind, and it took me quite a while to calm down again.
A couple of days after the surgery, I was taken by gurney down to a casting room. There, they covered up the blood with fresh plaster. The nurses told my parents the surgery went well and set an appointment to return to have the stitches out and the casts changed in two weeks. The hospital discharged me with wet casts, and soon after, we hit the highway back to Regina.
This time we weren’t allowed to be in the back of the station wagon for the trip home. Instead, all three of us kids sat together on the back seat with me in the middle. Everyone was told to keep their hands and feet away from my casts because they needed to harden. In those days, cars did not have air conditioning, so my dad drove with his window down.
Somewhere along the road, a bumblebee got into the car. It was buzzing around us kids and, worse yet, my casts. When I saw the bee, I was reminded of the nurse saying, “this is just going to feel like a bee sting.” I recalled how much that needle hurt, and I started to panic at the possibility of the bee stinging me.
Everyone was talking at the same time. I remember someone said the bee could get inside my cast or get stuck in the plaster. My brother and sister were trying to avoid being stung by the bee and protect me at the same time. They started screaming for dad to stop the car and get the bee out! My dad became angry. He yelled at us to settle down. Eventually, he pulled closer to the shoulder of the road, slowed the car down, and told my brother and sister to roll their windows down. “Just leave it alone, and the bee will fly out,” he said. Eventually, it did, and everyone calmed down. Thankfully, the remainder of the trip was uneventful! Two weeks later, we made the trip back to Winnipeg to have my stitches taken out.
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.