Chapter One
I had just turned twenty and was off on my own at college and totally independent for the first time in my life and just lovin’ it,.the campus was really small, so, as a result they had a lot of “off campus housing”, and as a freshman I got to live in one of those houses. it was nice, not great, it looked about like all of the other dorm rooms on the campus but was nine blocks from the school, so if nothing else, it was quiet. This is a good thing, when you carry a class load like they bury freshmen with. our little area had four houses in a cull de sac configuration, and the house I occupied with four other guys, was the first one you would come to when you drive into the cull d sac, and it was the only Victorian of the four, thus the name” Victorian House “. Well since I was the first one to move in, I naturally got first pick of the quarters, and due to the fact that I had a lot of stuff, I went for the largest quarters, which included an area in the basement with a lockable door and running water, a nice work bench, and great workspace lighting .This area was about thirty four feet by thirty six feet, seven and three quarters .inches long, I have the exact dimension because someone painted it on the wall rather artistically. This would be the perfect place for my hobbies, and after I build a plaster trap, I’ll be set ..The next house is one that the college moved in two years ago and it is a Tudor style, and as you might have already guessed, it is called “Tudor house” and rumour has it that these two houses have, in the past, hosted some really nutso parties . However the campus security has made it quite clear that a new zero tolerance policy has been put into effect this year and that, although we can still have parties, they just cant get crazy, which, to me is no big deal anyway because I doubt that most of the partiers would enjoy the way I party, in plaster, fibre and braces .
Now the next house was to be a girls house and to some this might have posed an opportunity that could have been unbearable, but as it was going to pan out, it became less of a problem, as we came to know each other better and better.
In the girls house was one girl who came about the same time I did, and as with our house, she got the choice rooms and a basement shop as well, which I assumed that she would use for storing extra stuff .A wise man once said “never assume anything as it only makes an ass of you and me
(ass u me),and so it did, as I was coming home from the grocery store, I ran into this woman as she was trying to carry her packages in, and trying to prove that chivalry was not quite dead, I ran over to lend a hand . her packages looked rather heavy and did not appear to have come from the grocery store .Just as I arrived she had dropped one of the bags and as it hit the ground it split open just a bit and the contents spilled out .I made the comment that she must have been an art major, and with a puzzled look she said “why would you say that ” and I said “because of all the plaster(it still hadn’t dawned on me at this point yet)at this point she said that was an amateur life caster and wasn’t doing it for credit, but as an extracurricular activity, you know like golf or tennis and so on, then she told me that I had an interesting form and that she would like to cast me some time and I said that I thought would be o.k. and finished helping her carry her supplies in and down to the basement .Well once we got to the basement she showed me her casting set-up and at last the light finally came on. She didn’t just do life castings, but, from the looks of things, she did all sorts of casts. Naturally my curiosity just peaked, so I asked when she thought she would want to do this life cast of “my form”? to my surprise her answer was “how about right now “, so thinking that I had zip to do for the next two days I said that I could do that and then asked her how long it would take, to which she replied “anywhere form 6 hours to 12,days, depending upon how well I was enjoying being casted, and or totally immobilized .At this point I said “we need to talk” and invited her over for a beer, and she accepted, so off we went over to my “shop” and I showed her what I had, she nearly flipped and asked if I could put her into one of those things, and I said o.k. which one and she pointed to a medium sized Milwaukee brace, saying that a girlfriend of hers had to were one for five years and before she could get a chance to try it on, her family moved away and this woman never got to try it out, but now with this collection, she could try all sorts of different braces that she has always wanted to try out or on .So we started to discuss it and came to the mutual opinion that we were not crazy and that there were others who had this same strange hobby, and that was going to be a very interesting year for at least us anyway and later that night she casted me from my nose to my toes .
After she was done wrapping all of the plaster, she told me that it would take about six to ten hours for the plaster to dry completely and that I shouldn’t attempt to force anything until then.
So for the next five days I just laid there and she took care of e v e r y thing .She had my arms reaching out from my shoulders and my legs were in a sitting position, sort of like, I was sitting on a Harley and was just frozen in time, or in this case, plaster .This position was quite comfortable and easy to deal with as functions go .and she would just sit and talk about her desires as they related to braces and casts, At the end of my first ever casting experience I was just a bit wobbly, and understandably so, after having been totally immobile for four and one half days so I had this bi-lat hkafo anyway and it looked like it might fit, at least be close enough, so iI donned them, and they fit near perfectly, so I grabbed a pair of crutches and made my way to the commons area of my house and waited and waited and to my surprise when she did finally did show up. She was sporting what looked like a brand new Milwaukee brace. Seeing this I just had to ask “where in the world did you find that brace” and she said “while I was asleep she snuck out, and went over to a brace shop she had found near here and asked them to build her a Milwaukee just for fun, they agreed and she had two of them made hers was custom from cast and mine, to measurement and they both looked just great, and when i asked “how much did you have to pay for them ?” She just smiled and said she called in a marker, and changed the subject matter back to my hkafo and where I got them and so forth. I helped her into her new milwaukee and adjusted it so that it was comfortable and then I had her walk, sit, stand etc. just to show her how to move about while in brace, and she caught on quickly .She then asked if I was going to wear the hkafo or the new milwaukee, and I asked what she meant by “or”?She started to respond and in mid thought, stopped and asked how I would wear both, so I showed her .I started by loosening the top unit of the l.s.o. and removed it, then I donned the milwaukee and re-tightened the rest of the top unit of the h.k.a.f.o. against the milwaukee and now we have what could be called a” c.t.l.s.h.k.a.f.o”.(braced from chin to toes )with the new Milwaukee and those hk’s I had an awesome combination, there was one small glitch that i hadn’t figured in to the whole system and that was hose damned drop locks, so when i stood up for the first time they dropped and I was immobilized until she came to my assistance and taped them up so as not to be a problem, and we started to head over to the campus for our public debut, her in her new milwaukee and me braced nose to toes unbeknownst to either of us a campus photographer was also on campus that day and he got someone really good pix of the show and sent them to us later with the question : can we print this in the college paper? We both said, why not and so it went into the university news fall edition. Shortly after the paper came out, we started getting calls, some cranks, but for the most part real calls from students that were really interested in rec bracing ..
After getting settled in for the year ahead we attempted to start, what boiled down to a brace club, but because it was on a Midwestern campus with rather limited value structure, we had to give it an ethereal name to make it sound like a “society “of some sort. So to pay homage to the doctor that more or less conceived this wonderful device we named our club “The Blount Society”, and only those” in the know ” as it were would even come to the meetings, and as for the rest, well they could never figure out why when we had a meeting, everyone there was wearing some sort of brace, granted some were for need and those folks were looking for tips on moving about, and barriers and so forth, but most of us were wearing braces for fun, a concept that escaped a lot of unknowing souls that probably would never know the joys and pleasures of recreational brace use, The next few weeks were quite interesting, to say the least and our society grew to around a hundred or so members with meetings every Wednesday and every other Saturday.
By the sixth meeting we found that we needed to rent a mini-store to hold all of our treasures (donations from the athletic department and stuff that other disinterested students would bring from home and so forth .One of the most popular donations was that of the discarded milwaukee brace, we had about fifty-six of them by Christmas break, students would wear them in high school and chuck them up into the attic and there they would just collect dust, so they would bring them to us . Callipers were the second most popular donation followed by various extremities and knees, elbows, and neck braces, everyone in the club would wear neck braces on the Saturday meetings and all sorts of other braces on the other days .W e even had four faculty members join the society and one of them was the orthopaedic wing Chair person. So aside from the club this girl who lived next door to me at college, and I, got to be best of friends and as a result can, and will share more of our adventures in bracing and casting
Chapter Two
As we were to learn sooner or later, the college “zero tolerance “policy on wild parties, was as we suspected a crock of b.s. .the third and fourth houses in our little cull de sac had one a week after Christmas break, and it got crazy, and security never showed . The next morning offered quite a shock to both Jana and myself when I finally rolled out of the sack and went down stairs to the commons area of my house I found seven or eight people sleeping on the floor, the couch, in chairs, all over the place and they all had several things in common a) they were recovering from a long, hard night of g&t’s and b) they were all going to feel very poorly when they did wake up and C) they all had some limb encased in pure creamy white plaster, and only three of them were casts that I did, and, I had no clue as to who did the rest of them, a quandary that would have to wait for coherency, which seemed like an eternity away, so I went back to bed .
Long about 3:45 p.m. I heard this clatter downstairs, and went down to see what was up, well the boys and girls had come to and were all curious as to how they ended up being casted and how and who and all the rest of it as well. Not having any answers except for the three that I did I decided that this would be a grand time to start dinner, so I retired to the kitchen and decided to let them soak up their new toys for a while No more than twenty minutes after I entered the kitchen, Jana showed up and inquired as to state and general condition of self, to which I just stood there and looked stupid, and she acknowledged with an in kind expression, until I sent her into the coms and she came back to the kitchen nearly in stitches and asked how in the hell did I do so well on all of those casts, and I explained that I only did three of them .she stopped laughing, and a look of near terror crossed her face .she attempted to speak but no words issued forth and after a significant pause came, mostly gibberish but the wheels were turning once again “if you…but … then… but who?… how in the …?
so where… but …oh nooooo, after about all of that I could stand, I attempted to stop her and explain that I in fact had no answers either, well when the rest of the casualties came back to life we held a group discussion in order that we learn the identity of the phantom caster, turns out, we had a bigger following than we knew, in that there was another group of enthusiasts on the other side of campus and as we did not have knowledge of them they had none of our group either. They called their group The Gypsum Board and they never knew that the Blount Society did what it does, and so, never made the connection, well anyway once they saw our setup and one of them had been casted they asked if they could use some of our supplies for the night and that they would replace them the next day. Evidently we agreed and that solved that.. Now that we know of the other group we were going to have a great time .We set up cast parties and other functions as well and our group discovered that some of those people enjoyed braces too, so the two groups eventually became one, and they liked our name better than theirs so, we just added “new” to the name, making it the New Blount Society.
After second semester mid-terms came spring break and Jana and I were planning on being casted together for the first time and had planned further to only stay that way for two days…..So much for plans. As she was biking back from work, some moron smacked her with his caddy .This changed more than our spring break plans .I had just gotten home from work and was settling down with a cold one, and the phone rings, so, I answered it only to find some doctor on the other end, and as soon as I had identified myself, he said that I should get over to memorial hospital immediately, then he dropped the bomb, saying that Jana had been hit by a drunk driver and was in bad shape, hearing that I hang-up on him and tore over to the hospital . Upon entering the receptionist (a fellow blount soc.member ) directed me to the E.R. where the doc that had called me, was tending to Jana, well when I introduced myself, he started to explain the situation, Jana had had her third cervical and thoracic 2-6 cracked, as well as her right femur and tibia and the left fibula and the right acetabulum and the right and left ulnas and left talus, so all in all she had thirteen fractures, so far and the x-rays all hadn’t come back yet .I asked what course of treatment was planned for the upper spinal, and the doc told me that he was going to use a new composite halo as it is radiolucent and won’t pose any problems in the M. R. I.or conventional x-ray machines and as for the other fractures he had planned on using fiber and I explained that she would prefer plaster, well it was at about this point that I had realized that I quite possibly had goofed, in relating that little tidbit of trivia and of course he looked at me in a rather strange fashion and asked me if I would care to repeat that, so figuring that the cat was out of the bag as it were, I explained the whole thing and he said that he had heard of us and was very supportive, and as a matter of fact his scrub nurse had just informed him that his casting tech was unreachable and now that he was armed with a new cast tech
we could proceed into the cast room .I looked at him and said “what new cast tech ” he turned and just smiled at me and pointed his finger at me, pistol style and just said “bang”.
Well this was going to be interesting, I thought, doing a real cast for a real reason instead of the usual thing .S o we went into the casting lab at the hospital and he had his nurse get me all set up and show me where all the stuff was, and the nurse, not knowing anything about what was discussed assumed that I would be using the slow set plaster so that I would have enough time to get it right, but I stopped her and requested that she show me where the fast set was, reluctantly she showed me and I got set up .About twenty minutes passed and the wheeled Jana in and she was out cold, mostly as a result of the hypo they had given her. The doc was to follow shortly and guide me as to how he wanted everything set and so forth, another doc had already placed the halo, and it was a beauty .So after stockinet and padding cotton and some felt I started to wrap her right arm .From the position of the fracture we decided that a lac would best serve the purpose, and on the other arm a short cast was o.k. Her legs were a different matter entirley, in that the fractures were high in the bone, I suggested a long torso type body cast to extend down to both feet and also that it be fitted with a bar proximal to the knee and a second bar distal from the knee and a third bar on the posterior aspect just proximal to the ankles, as one was broken anyway this would give very good support the doctor agreed and commended me on my casting prowess.
I finally finished the marathon casting session of nearly two and three quarters hours and I was beat. the doc (Doctor Ian Michael MacFergus) thanked me for filling in and again commended my work and asked when our meetings were and if he could attend one .I gave him the schedule and agreed to have him come as a guest lecturer after we came back from break, he acknowledged and then went in to check “our” patient and smiled and said he would be in touch
Chapter Three
Jana laid there for about a week before waking up out of a drug induced coma and when she started to talk she was all happy that she was inside of all of this plaster and asked when I was planning to let her out of it so that she could do the same thing to me, so I just told her that “we” decided to leave her in there for four to six months, and then take x-rays again to see how things were going .Jana told me that was too long and wanted out now, she even used our secret escape word, I figured she still had no idea what was up so, I filled her in on all the gory details, and her first reaction was that of disbelief, shock, etc, and then she settled down a bit and I further explained that I did have a hand in casting her injuries and further explained why and so forth. She was somewhat relieved, and somewhat upset that I didn’t consult her before proceeding with the casting, in order that she may have wanted something different, and I explained that she was in no condition to be making any decisions at that time and that she was indeed banged up quite badly, and out cold. So she said that she would forgive me this time and fell back into sleep for about an hour and when she came to again she started talking right where she left off, a bit bizarre me thinks, but the Doc told me that often happens with injuries of this magnitude and location.
As time ground on, certain casts came off, and Jana started to become more mobile and soon was walking, sort of, with a walker and sometimes crutches, Doctor MacFergus suggested that braces be ordered for her to help with walking and standing, so he wrote for a bi-lateral r/g hkafo, or in english, a reciprocating gait -hip-knee-ankle -foot-orthosis, for both legs. I explained that she already had one, and he just smiled and said “of course she does, I have seen her wear it at the park by the nature center, but I wish to have one built that offers a lot more support as she will be wearing this brace for quite some time “.Quite some time?I said “yes “he said, so I asked what he meant by that and he went on to tell me that due to the injury of the pelvis, hips and bones of the upper legs, that there was a great deal of instability and that this orthosis was required to stabilize the healing for a period of from one to possibly seven years depending upon how well she tolerated the brace and on how fast she healed, and that injuries of this sort were long healers .
So armed with this bit of news I went into Jana’s room and presented it to her, fully prepared to run for cover, when she started to throw stuff in anger, but to my surprise, she took it in stride and said that she would do what the Doc told her to as long as it involved braces of some sort.
A the six month mark Jana was not sporting any plaster but did have a really nice set of h.k.a.f.o’s that actually had some back support built-in in the form of a Knight-Taylor back brace with an extension that came all the way up and over her shoulders to a corset -laced front piece that held it all together, it did make sitting down a might tricky but she managed, and as I suspected she mended quit rapidly and as such only needed to wear these for about two years .As a result of the accident, we both dropped out of school until Jana was well enough to handle the rigors of academia once again .Somewhere during that time we married and have had a less than boring existence, more on that later, but for a few scrapes I have never had to be “in” the hospital and hoped to never have to .At 27 I thought I was doing alright with that plan, and was working on the house we bought, fixing the eaves, so the rain gutters would carry all the rain water to a cistern in the basement, for washing clothes and so forth, well any way there was this ladder, and a rather large fellow at the end of it, and, an unusual attack of gravity, like it doubled or tripled or something and then there was this rather disturbing thud, and well, you guessed it, there I was, “in” the hospital, at least that was what I thought it to be, but when I attempted to communicate there was no sound just this rhythmic whir-click-whir-hiss sound just out of sight range, which without my contacts was only about 4 centimeters but I could see lights blinking on it or something anyway. The next natural reaction was to find the button ……well that didn’t work either, so now what do I do, I can’t move, can’t talk, can’t see, all I can do is just lay here and think, and think I did and before the doctors walked in I had figured out what went so wrong that I ended up in here .Now I really feel stupid, for having reached for that last screw, instead of getting down and moving that damned ladder over a foot and going back up. One lousy foot !.oh well I am here and I have a pretty fair idea of the extent of my injuries and they don’t seem that bad from what I can tell, I can feel my toes move and my hands and fingers, and arms and legs, but this machine is breathing for me and I have no idea why. Now I have an itch on my forehead and can’t get my hand up there to scratch it, and about the time I going over the edge with this infernal itch, the Docs walk in and they look and poke and prod and murmur and one of them comes over to me and says, very slowly, I am Doctor Ryerstone how do you feel ?, well I feel o.k., but I can’t communicate with you at present due to this thing in my mouth, I thought .then he told me about my injuries and I was a bit off in my diagnosis, I thought that I had fractured both legs distal from the knee joint, and maybe an upper arm .all that had happened was, according to the doc, I had a sprained body I looked at the doc and just glared as if to say, “you’re kidding ” he must have understood what I was trying to communicate and simply said ” No I am not(kidding)” so I wanted to just ask what he meant by “sprained body” and he must have sensed that which was on my mind and explained that the fall didn’t actually break any thing, but that I had pulled a bunch of stuff all out of whack and that the only thing they could was to encase me in heavy plaster for from 6- 12 weeks and then into a total body brace for the next year or two .Swell first Jana, and just when life is getting less complicated for us I fall prey to a sudden attack of flash stupidity and a gravity increase as well or else I was just too lazy or tired to descend their ladder, move it over and return to the work position at or near the top for the last screw and …oh well there is no sense in beating myself up at this point, because all of that was now ancient history, and the current fact of the matter was that I was stuck here for the next month and a half to three months, in plaster, immobile, in mega pain, and now to top of the entire scene, I have this unbearable urge to pee.
Well when the doc was in the last time, he put the button into my hand, awfully nice of him, I thought, so I pushed it, and low and behold the nurse walked in and asked a bunch of questions and all I could was blink to respond to them, and after a brief trial and error period we determined that I needed to “go” and she then explained that all I had to do was …just…go as there was this catheter installed and it would take care of those types of things .So I went …and went…and went … and finally finished with a major sigh which she noted on a clipboard at the foot of the bed .She then left and returned a short time later with a covered tray and, just out of sight range set up a something or other and reached for the i.v. tube and the next thing I knew it was four days later and the machine was gone and I could talk…sort of .and the best part was I could partake of one of my favourite pastimes, eating, when the nurse came in to my room with the food tray I asked what day it was, I was rather shocked to learn that it was some nine days since the fall, and that I was recuperating at a rather astounding rate, or so the doctor indicated .
After about five weeks of this being absolutely immobile they decided to start reducing the cast dimensions and at nine weeks I was sent to p/t to get me back to viable once again. I worked very hard just to walk at first and after many sessions it all came back to me and I was walking, in braces, and quite slowly at first, but walking just the same .These braces were not the ones I had at home but were brand new and light weight, but very high strength and I liked them for the relative ease with which I could now ambulate and gain strength and stamina and at the 10 week mark the Doc came into my room and started out thus: “Tomorrow we get to get rid of you and get back to “normal” around here and you get to learn how to do a bunch of “new “old things all over again like stairs, the garden, house work, yard work, and all sorts of mundane things that you once took for granted ”
So with that he gave me a bunch of paperwork and left the room, while he was gone I looked at the paperwork for a bit and discovered that I had to see a p/t and a shrink, and a pain management doc and in six months I had to see an orthotist to get my braces re-adjusted or replaced .Well, Jana has been so supportive of me throughout this whole ordeal, and I was with her situation as well and it has just drawn us closer to each and other .We sort of decided to lay off the recreational bracing for a while, you know, until we were both healed up from our respective mishaps, and that we didn’t actually need the rec. aspect as we were both in real braces for real reasons and probably would be for some time .
We still hung out at our old haunts and still associated with our rec. brace friends, that will never change as they were the most supportive of any of our friends, and we have some pretty straight laced friends who would never think of rec. bracing because “those braces are made just for someone else and they might hurt you if you wear them ” (like we were going to catch polio or scoliosis) but to each his/her own I suppose.
Well, the big day has arrived and I am getting out of this place for the first time in eleven weeks, and damned happy about it at that .
As for the learning curve, well this is going to take some getting used to and as such will be somewhat of an adventure in and of its own accord, but the best triumph was the car and driving once again, Jana had taken me to the mall and we talked through the whole procedure and, finally it was my turn to front seat before, well she just about went into hysterics over the sight of me trying to get behind the wheel with all of this bracing and not being able to move the way I would “normally” but then, for what could possibly have been the next 3 years she was going to have to get used to it, as would I.
Although it took me a while to actually get used to these new braces, once I finally did master things like the car and stairs and the like, it was a breeze, until, I somehow managed to pop a joint bearing in the knee joint area, wow the whole world get cockeyed all of a sudden when the support that you rely upon so heavily, goes away, fortunately I was at home when it happened so I could get to the wheelchair and then to the van and on down to the orthotics lab for repairs, and relief. But what if I had been out, at work would not have been a problem, but say, what if I was in Chicago or Minneapolis, some place quite far from home, and this happened, then what ?So as long as I was at the orthotics lab I thought I would ask my technician about it and he indicated that there are labs just like this one all over the country and that if I did have any problems that I just find a lab and have the repairs made and have them bill this facility and it would be all good .And then he asked why I wanted to know all this, so I explained that due to the injuries and so forth we had acquired over the last two and a half years that we never had a chance for a honeymoon, and so we were planning one and Barry,My tech asked me if, when we had everything planned that we would give him a call and he would put a list together with the preferred labs and contact persons and all the rest of it, so if Jana or I had any problems along the way we would never be too far away from a lab that does the calibre of work done in this lab, that kind of help really sets the mind at ease .
So while Barry had my braces apart to fix the broken bearing he went ahead and replaced the whole compliment of that type of joints with a new and better joint, guaranteed to outlast the life of the current braces. And my six month appointment was moved back two months due to schedule conflicts…….