Summer Summary
'A doctor examined me in the emergency room. He told me that I'd been in a horrible accident and that my left leg was almost certainly beyond repair. Suddenly I understood. I was no longer mad. I was scared.'
Editor's note: John Burbee, Kansan assistant campus editor, lost his lower left leg in an automobile accident. May 5. Burbee, a pedestrian, was pinned between two parked cars. During the summer, he wrote a series of columns about the accident and his rehabilitation. This semester, the Kansan will cover trials related to the accident. Burbee will not make any decisions about the Kansan's coverage of the accident nor will he see any of the stories before they are published.
L. A. Rauch/KANSAN
I never saw my blood. It was dark. I was lying on Stewart Street long before dawn May 5. I didn't think I was hurt bad. I was
Part one — The wreck
My mind kept things from me that I shouldn't have known. I didn't remember the crash, when the front bumper of one parked car was knocked into the rear bumper of another, catching me in the middle. I didn't feel much pain. When I glanced down, I didn't realize that I was pumping my life away through what remained of my left leg.
A doctor examined me in the emergency room. He told me that I'd been in a horrible accident and that my left leg was almost broken. I thought I would be dead, but I was no longer mad. I was scared.
They loaded me in the ambulance and speed me to Lawrence Memorial Hospital. I had a
Commentary
I had always wanted to ride in a helicopter. But that morning, still before dawn, all I could see was a starless sky through the windows bouncing above me. I was sick to my stomach. I hurt a little.
final exam in the morning and a busy week ahead, I was mad. I asked the paramedics to turn around, find the guy responsible for the accident and beat him up. We sped on.
The hospital called my brother, who called my parents. They were soon on their way to Kansas City. I was, too. A Liflight helicopter flew me to the University of Kansas Medical Center.
ROAD TO RECOVERY
Friends met me at Bell Memorial Hospital in the Med Center. Most were staff members of the University Daily Kansan. They held my hand. They prayed for me. They told me to get everyone's name down and spell it right so I could write about it later. They helped. But as the sun was rising on May 5, I belonged to the emergency room doctors.
Buzbee, Hutchinson junior, wears an external fixator on his right leg to keep the bones straight. On his left leg, he wears a
I was lying on my back, staring up in a hazy half-consciousness, as scurrying doctors spun a web of tubes around me. They pricked me with their needles. They didn't say much, other than "This is going to hurt."
The doctors did tell me that my lower right leg was badly broken. They told我 my lower left leg was almost gone. Then they pushed a knee to nose and asked me to sign on the dotted line.
Essentially, the form stated: Yeah, it's okay with me if you guys cut off half of my left leg. They told me I could make an X, but that didn't seem appropriate. I signed on the line and they put me to sleep.
I was scared — the lights flashed, the needles flew, the doctors talked about me in Latin and Greek. I felt like the lead actor in a movie. But when the lights came up and I awoke late that morning, the movie had just begun.
I remember lying in an intensive care unit after surgery. A doctor was near, and I asked him whether they had amputated my left leg. He said, "Yes." I had two knees and one foot. I also had the support of my friends and family, who arrived soon and stayed with me from then on. I still didn't hurt much. I was putting away a lot of medication.
I took morphine pills for pain and antibiotics to fight infection. I took vitamins. I took a little pink pill called a mood elevator. I called it a happy pill, although it didn't really make me happy. I wasn't really sad anyway, except when they talked with me about my left knee.
Two days after my accident, a doctor sat beside me and told me about infection. If too many bugs were living in my leg he, said my knee would have to go. I looked at the end of my left leg, eight inches below my knee. I looked at my knee. Then I looked at my midsection and wondered where they'd stop cutting
Part two — Support
I learned that they had already stopped. My left leg was bug-free. I left intensive care. And after a skin-graft a few days later, I was finished with surgery. I met other hurdles in the weeks ahead, but I didn't tie them alone.
If you're in a nasty accident, people say wonderful things about you. They say you're determined and courageous, and all you had to do was be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then you just smile.
It's easy to be tough. You just lie in bed and smile, and if you have tubes sticking out of your body and monitors taped to your chest, people will say you're brave.
Early on the morning of May 5, phone calls woke my family. Within minutes they were on their way to Kansas City. They told me later that they were badly shaken. I never knew it. When they reached me, they gave me strength. They couldn't touch me for fear of infection. They didn't have to.
Surgery wasn't hard for me. The doctors at the University of Kansas Medical Center didn't even ask me to count backwards from 100. I rested during my three operations, unconscious and dreamless.
My family and friends had to sweat it out. They had to sit in a waiting room crowded with their grim imaginations. They had to wonder and worry while I caught up on some sleep.
During my stay at Bell Memorial Hospital, I often had it easier than those around me. One night I had a fever. I remember the nurses gave me an electric cold blanket. I remember they turned it off and on during the night. I don't remember much else.
My brother Bill does. He stayed up with me. He sat in my dark room while I quivered and rambled senselessly. Once, in the middle of the night between nurses' visits, he drifted into an uneasy wake. A crash woke him. Objects tumbled to the floor. I had swept my arm across my bedside table and knocked everything away.
My temperature dropped by morning. With the help of codeine and a good breakfast, I looked ahead to the day. Bill took a while to recover from the night.
Friends were with me at my accident and they stuck close. They visited. They called. They sent cards and letters. They made absurd get-well posters that covered the walls of my otherwise sterile room.
New friends wrote. I got letters from accident victims who had recovered from their injuries and continued their lives. A senator who I'd only read about sent me a note via Federal Express. It arrived the day after my accident with a telegram from a high school teacher. My first grade teacher wrote. A Hutchinson doctor made me seven tapes with the top rock 'n' roll songs from my high school years. I still haven't met him.
Others brought gifts. Some presents, such as cookies and candy, I immediately put to use. Others were more perplexing. I received an inflatable snake, which I placed over my bed to scare the nurses during their nightly visits. It did.
I got a whistle, a bag of freshly ground coffee and a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap. Novels, magazines and newspapers began to accumulate in my room. If those had become boring, I had two tablids with headlines screaming of sex and aliens. I had "The Saggy Baggy Elephant," which, the publishers say, is an ideal introduction to the world of reading.
I got a job offer. I couldn't take the summer reporting internship that I had planned on, but my employer wrote to tell me that I was welcome when I was ready.
I got an extension on my finals. One professor sent a substitute exam to my hospital room. It had questions directing me to remove my appendix, write a piano concerto and estimate the significance of the development of human thought.
Humor is vital to healing. I smiled when possible and tried to be funny. I couldn't have without help. When I was surrounded by cheer and good wishes, it was easy to be touch.
A team of health care professionals looked after me. The resources of a modern metropolitan hospital were available for me. But my family and friends had no doctors to care for them, no technology to lean on, no medication to ease their pain. They had to rough it out on their own. Even so, they gave the support I needed to get home.
But I hadn't fully recovered. I spent the next two months in a wheelchair as my legs healed and my perspective changed on the handicapped.
I put a few miles on my wheeclair during my stay at the University of Kansas Medical Center. The halls of Bell Memorial Hospital were often crowded as I rolled around to get exercise and fresh air. People usually made way.
Part three — Wheelchair
I couldn't use my legs. With the help of four wheels, I could get around on my own a little. People with good intentions tried to take that away from me. I would resent it when I first left my room. Then, after a little travel had worn my arm muscles and my pride, I appreciated it. But I still wanted to ask for help before it was given.
Doctors had installed what looked like a TV antenna in my leg. They call it an "external fixator." Six metal pins go into the bone fragments and hold them in place until they heal together. The pins stick straight out. They are connected by two metal bars that run parallel to my leg. It works like a cast. But it looks a lot worse. At least, they'll take it off in a few months.
Some were indifferent. Others tried to help. Wheelchairs invite assistance, whether wanted or not.
Other people were probably shocked when they saw me. My legs extended in front when I sat in my wheelchair Half of my left leg was raised and the right leg had metal pins sticking out of it.
When you're in a wheelchair, people get out of your way — if they see you. But they don't always see you when you are scooting along with a third-grader's view of the world.
Every night, my external fixator and I have "in pin care." To care for my pins, I push away and clean the skin that grows up them. Pin care hurts.
Otherwise, my external fixator is painless. But it looks like something from the Spanish Inquisition. Some people shudder. Some smile and inquire about it. Little children
temporary prosthesis that will be replaced in four to eight months by a more advanced prosthesis.
stare. Everyone who sees it gets out of my way
I didn't know a lot about the handicapped before my accident. I knew that I shouldn't park in the wheelchair spots at the mall. I knew that handicapped people didn't like the phrase "confined to a wheelchair."
I don't think I would have liked anyone saying that I was confined to a wheelchair. But I felt confined.
I rolled out of Bell Memorial Hospital 19 days after my accident. I slid into the back seat of the family car and my parents, my grandmother and I left Kansas City.
A few hours later, we pulled into the driveway of 4 Crescent, Hutchinson, I was home. But I couldn't get up the front stairs. My parents had to call a friend to help them pull my wheelchair into the house.
Our shag carpeting made travel inside rough going. Eventually, after regaining confidence and strength, I could crawl out of the wheelchair and scoot around the house. I could make it up the stairs. But I never made it to bed. And I felt confined, restrained and frustrated.
My wheelchair ramp helped a little.
Friends built it a week after I got home. It allowed me to get outside on my own, although there weren't many places to go.
But I did have a few fun nights.
We went down to the local Fourth of July celebration, listened to the band and talked. She told me she'd danced with guys in wheelchairs before. Now way, I said. Forget it
My physical therapist at the Hutchinson Hospital asked me to a street dance. I thought she was joking. Maybe she was. But I didn't let her off the hook.
During my three years at the University of Kansas, I've made extraordinary efforts to get dates. I never thought I'd have to sacrifice a foot. But it worked.
I didn't deal with my wheelchair well. I never accepted it. I gained great respect for athletes who used their wheelchairs like others used running shoes and for other disabled people whose successes and failures were determined by their abilities, not by their method of transportation. Unlike them, I never escaped the mental confinement of being in a wheelchair.
After two months, I escaped the physical confinement.
We also went out to eat. I felt liberated. I slid out of my wheelchair into a normal seat. Everyone else in the restaurant was sitting down, too. I felt like a human being.
Part four — New leg
I wanted to pace back and forth as I waited in Bell Memorial Hospital on July 22, but I couldn't walk. That's why I was waiting.
As I sat with my mom and dad, I could hear machinery in the room next door. I thought I heard a saw, a sander and an air gun. I peeked in when an employee pushed open the swinging door connecting the rooms. All could see was a pile of plaster legs.
I was waiting for an artificial foot and the iwas waiting that would connect it to whatremained of my lower left leg. I was anxious.For more than two months I had beenpreoccupied with the thought of standing up ona fake foot and walking.
After my accident, I was rushed to the Lawrence Memorial Hospital emergency room. A doctor told me my left leg was almost certainly beyond repair. I felt sick and scared. He then told me that recent technology had greatly improved prostheses, or art limbs. I had visions of the Six Million Dollar Man.
Two months and 17 days after I arrived at Bell Memorial Hospital via a Lifelight helicopter, we went to the prosthetics department to get my leg. Shortly after 9 a.m. my leg guy tookus to the room where we then waited for the unveiling.
He brought out my leg in pieces. The first part was a peach-colored fiberglass shell like a plastic milk carton with both ends cut off. It fit under the carton of my left leg. I tried to slide it on, but it was too small. He sanded it down until it fit.
The other piece is a fiberglass cup that fits over the end of my leg. A steel tube connects it to a foot, which is made out of a spongy rubber-like material.
The foot looked friendly when he first brought it in. A familiar Nike fit over it, ready for action. When I pulled it on, it felt great. I kicked the floor solidly. He took it back to connect the pieces.
The final version of my knee consists of the two fiberglass parts connected by two medal bars. In the middle of the bars at my knee are joints that lock when I walk. I have to walk with a stiff leg to protect my knee until it becomes stronger. When I sit, I unlock the joints and my lower leg drops down. It looks a little comical. But it works.
The first time I stood, pulling myself up on the parallel bars, I wasn't concerned about the joints. I forgot all about my Nike. I wasn't giving a lot of thought to walking. I just hurt.
The leg didn't quite fit. It was too small. pinched and pulled my skin. And since I had been sitting for $2 \frac{1}{2}$ months, my blood rushed toward my feet like a waterfall. I was suddenly a little less anxious to walk.
But I did. I went to the end of the parallel bars, paused, turned around, went back and collapsed in my chair. It was a start. The leg was after some fine-tuning, I took the last home.
My fake foot is fairly basic. It has no joint in the ankle; it springs up and down to simulate regular motion. In a few months,
when my upper leg is stronger and its swelling has gone down, I'll get a new leg and foot. As the doctor at Lawrence Memorial promised me, technology will give me a boost.
I probably will have a selection of feet. A magazine a friend gave me has ads for the different kinds of protheses available. My new foot will not only be functional, but it will also be fashionable.
"Now, since the European shoe manufacturers started sending their greater variety of fashionable shoes to America in one-inch heel lifts, up-to-date gals like Michelle have come to request a corresponding interchangeable foot," one ad reads.
I don't think my Nikes have one-inch heel lifts. But it is nice to know that option is available.
For now, my basic foot is working fine. I left the parallel bars for a walker after two days of physical therapy and I graduated to crutches a day later. Eventually, I will be able to walk without even a crutch.
Part five — My limb
My new leg returns to me much of the mobility and independence I lost in my accident. But I wondered what doctors did with my old leg after they cut it off. When I found out, I was floored.
Fairness isn't an issue in freak accidents They just happen. I can complain that my accident was not fair. I have to accept it.
My left toes are gone, but they still hurt. My ankle sometimes itches. My left leg ends eight inches below my knee, but my left foot still gives me trouble. Doctors call it phantom pain. For me, it's real.
Phantom pain is different. It just isn't fair.
They can take away my lower left leg, or they can leave it and let it hurt. But if it's gone, I shouldn't feel it anymore. I do.
Sometimes my left foot feels hot and sometimes cold. Sometimes it just hurts. It often tingles a little. Even then, it's not too bad. I can fall asleep despite it. Still, it's just not fair.
Some people have told me that the phantom pain should last only a few weeks, and others say it will go on for years. One doctor told me that phantom pain begins in the toes and gradually moves up until it stops at the amputation.
I imagine that the phantom pain will gradually fade and then flare up only occasionally. Then, one day several years from now, I imagine that I'll feel a brief twitch where my lower left leg used to be. After that, the pain will be gone for good.
The sensation of my lower left leg will be gone, too. While it may take years for the feeling to leave, my leg was physically cut off in an instant. It was nearly severed in the accident, and doctors at the University of Kansas Medical Center soon finished the job. The feeling of my leg will leave without a trace. The physical part left something to be remembered.
On May 5, while most of me was recovering from my amputation on the second floor of Bell Memorial Hospital, the rest was down on the first floor in surgical pathology. My lower left leg and I had parted ways, and they were working on us on two different floors. I'm expecting two bills. I hope we're both insured.
They patched most of me up and sent me home in a couple of weeks. But the rest, well, they tell me they were kind. Mark Morelli, a spokesman at the Med Center, said the guys in surgical pathology treated my lower left leg with reverence as they took a tissue sample from it.
Tissue samples are important for cancer patients. For me, I guess, it was just a souvenir. For whatever reason, I'm not partially on ice in some freezer deep inside the surgical pathology department.
After they were through, they reverently carried what was left to the anatomy department. Then, the anatomy guys put that pudgy limb with ugly toenails into an incinerator and cremated it. But they didn't burn it along with used bandages, orange rinds and other garbage. They saved my ashes and turned them over to the hospital chaplain.
The chaplain is keeping my ashes, along with those from cadavers donated to the Med School. Morel told me the chaplain doesn't "segrelate" the ashes. He just has one big urn, I guess, or maybe a lot of Tupperware. Once a year or so, he takes the ashes to Oak Hill Cemetery in Lawrence. He then conducts a service and buries them.
That will put me in a quandary next Memorial Day. Should I visit? Should I bring flowers? Does Hallmark make an appropriate sympathy card? If I do stand over the resting nest of my lower left leg, on a rainy spring day, what should I say?
I will be standing, at least. The chaplain's next service will be in September, and I should be able to walk to it with my artificial leg. If I do visit the cemetery, won't that be like taking the new wife to grieve for the old one?
Before the morning of May 5, I had sometimes wondered how I'd deal with a crippling accident. I wondered whether I'd make the best of it or let it tear me up. I still wonder.
I get out of bed in the morning with the same plans and goals I've always had. I move slower but even that's temporary. Sometimes soon, my injuries will be a hassle, nothing more. I still wonder how I'd deal with a crippling accident. I think I'd do okay