September 27 is a different kind of birthday.
Today is my birthday.
Not the one printed on my driver’s license. That one comes around every year with cake, cards, and another number attached to my age. September 27 is a different kind of birthday.
Three years ago today, I went into surgery because there really wasn’t another choice. Gangrene had taken hold. I was septic. My heart had decided atrial fibrillation sounded like a good addition to everything else going wrong. Dr. Fry removed my left leg below the knee, and somewhere in the middle of all of that, the objective became very simple.
Keep me alive.
I spent twenty-eight days in the hospital and rehabilitation. There were two blood transfusions. There was a fuzzy protective boot over what remained of my leg that I absolutely hated. There were people helping me learn how to move through a world that had suddenly changed while I was still trying to understand exactly what had happened.
Then came MRSA.
Oddly enough, the MRSA was somewhat separate from the amputation. Years earlier, I had undergone double bypass surgery. The infection became encapsulated around material left from that sternotomy, which meant another surgery, an open wound, repeated dressing changes, wound care, infectious-disease appointments, a PICC line, and sixteen weeks of IV antibiotics.
Surviving September 27 turned out not to be the end of anything. It was simply the beginning of a very long recovery.
By December I received my first prosthetic leg. That was when the real work began. Ellen worked with me through rehabilitation. Mark, my prosthetic technician, fitted that first leg and helped teach me how to stand on it and eventually how to walk on it.
Standing sounds like such a small accomplishment until you have to learn how to do it again.
Walking does too.
For a while, I was doing pretty well. I never became one of those inspirational stories where the guy gets a prosthetic leg and six months later climbs a mountain. I had no interest in climbing a mountain before I lost the leg, so there was no reason to start afterward. My goals were considerably more ordinary. I wanted to stand. I wanted to walk. I wanted to go into a store. I wanted to get from the truck to wherever I was going without having to calculate every crack, curb, patch of gravel, or uneven piece of ground along the way.
Lately, things have gone backward a little. My hip has been bothering me, I have fallen several times, and I have spent far more time in my wheelchair than I ever intended. The walker has become more important again. That is frustrating because I know what I had worked my way back to.
But three years ago today, nobody was promising me easy.
They were trying to keep me alive.
So I suppose September 27 really is a birthday. It marks the day I began learning how to live in a different body and navigate a different version of ordinary. It marks the beginning of three years filled with hospitals, surgery, antibiotics, rehabilitation, prosthetics, walkers, canes, wheelchairs, falls, successes, setbacks, and a great many things I never expected to become part of my vocabulary.
I am still working toward ordinary.
Three years later, I am still here to do it.
Happy birthday to me.
