CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY NINE: PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY NINE: PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE!

Here I am at the end of the first week of August in Key Largo, writing my first blog chapter while wearing my prosthesis. My right leg prosthesis is my best friend, well, best bud. I went to see Terri at Ortho Pro and she made another adjustment, so that I can try to put my full weight on my faux right foot without pain. All right, the Admiral and Barbara and even Terri say that much, if not all, of my hesitancy to put full weight on my prosthesis is based on mental, not physical, obstacles. I just have to believe I can do this, and I will do it. I believe! I believe?

In case you were wondering, I do not have a “stump”. I have a partial right leg, or PRL (you know, what oysters make). My PRL is great in the swimming pool, kicking up a storm and doing the scissors kick and also that other kick where you propel yourself on your back with the butterfly stroke. And remarkably, there is no nerve pain in the pool. Go figure. Swimming laps is my best all-around exercise, and I’m hoping that it’s strengthening all my muscles. Mary Jane and Marlea, you marvelous mermaids, you have known this for sixty years, going back to your Saucon Valley days. I have wanted to build an indoor/outdoor pool on my property in California for years, but there’s a stream that runs through the property, which prevents me from getting a building permit to build within a certain number of feet of the stream. I’ll look into it when I get back to Harper Canyon next year. Did I mention what swimming does for my mental health too? I can be a slugabed in the morning, but when I finally get up and go to the pool, my whole outlook (Weltschauung) on the day changes for the better. My sister Sue swims every day in her pool and really misses it, when she’s on the road and has no access to a pool.  It’s partly the floating, the lack of a gravity pull, which immediately relaxes all the muscles. But it’s also the aerobic exercise – I try not to get out of the pool until I’m breathing hard – which lets you know you have accomplished something. Whatever else I do this day, I have gone swimming and it was awesome!

I have an interview this coming Wednesday, August 12, with Catherine Vogel, the Monroe County State’s Attorney for a volunteer position. I hope she can tolerate shorts and a t shirt. It’s not office wear or professional wear, but it’s what I have at the moment. I called and left a message for the office manager (a former State’s Attorney), Mark Kohl, asking him about the acceptability of my casual attire, but have not heard back. The Admiral suggested a muumuu. Not a bad idea. Mr. Kohl says they are very careful about whom they “hire” for any position in the office. They had a rotten experience a few years ago where a maintenance person who cleaned their offices was “bought off”. A nefarious scoundrel (probably a defense attorney or defense investigator) gave the maintenance person money to copy the contents of the files that were available on the assistant state’s attorneys’ desks. Their entire work product went directly into the hands of the adversary. That’s why a background check is being done on me to make sure I don’t have a penchant for stealing files or contents of files from the office. That should be a far more important issue than what I am wearing. Mr. Kohl said they prefer to take on law students as volunteers, whom they then have the opportunity to evaluate for paid positions in the office after graduation and passing the bar. I get it. I’m not aiming for a paying job, however, and perhaps I can be useful doing appellate work and other post-conviction work, the kind of work that an assistant who is in court most of the day rarely has time for.

Okay, so of course you want to know: Are you walking? Are you jogging? Are you back on the boat? To those questions, yes (a little bit), no and no. I practice, practice, practice (thank you, Pat) as though I were going to Carnegie Hall, but so far, I’m still making baby steps. Seriously, the kind of lurching, stumbling, bumbling steps that a toddler makes who has just found her footing. I can walk from the bed to the door and back, a round trip of about 20 steps. I can walk up and down stairs which have railings on both sides, or at the least a railing on one side. It is not a normal gait – more like putting my PRL foot forward, then lifting my left foot for a second and putting it down hard a little in front of the PRL foot. Sometimes I accompany this with a flailing of arms, but the Admiral keeps reminding me to put my arms on my hips to avoid cutting them in the overhead fan. Don’t get me wrong – these first steps are very encouraging to me. And I visualize walking normally. I have finally committed myself to wearing my prosthesis as many hours as possible every day so that I get used to it and start putting more weight on it. So far it still hurts to do that (or, alternate theory, it’s all in my head). But as Terri keeps reminding me, my PRL is still healing, and I need to let it heal. At the same time, I need to put more weight on my prosthesis. It’s a delicate balance, well, perhaps not so delicate. It’s been four months, and I thought I would be walking freely and easily by now – I am disappointed – but Practice! Practice! Practice! Excuse me, while I practice what I preach.