Broken Dreams by Bill Dodd Read Free Book Online Page A

Dr Hill told me that if I was to get any movement back in my arms, it would come during the first six weeks.
    Each day I used to lie in bed with my arms spread out on two boards. I lay watching, waiting, praying—even though I did not really know how to pray. As the days passed I used to try and lift my arms off the boards. Each arm felt like it had a tonne weight placed on top of it. I never thought my arms were going to move. A few weeks later, when I thought all was lost, my arms actually made a mistake and moved. Now I found I could move them into my sides, but I never had enough movement to throw them back onto the boards.
    Today I realise I am bloody lucky to be able to move my arms. I have only a patchy feeling in the top part of the arms, but although my fingers don’t work, I still reckon I’m bloody lucky. Quadraplegics are the ones with courage: they cannot move their arms at all, but they never surrender the fight. So I can’t whinge and can’t complain. It doesn’t matter how bad you think you are—if you open your eyes you will always find someone worse off than yourself.
    I knew now, by the way my arms had moved, that what Dr Hill had told me was all true. As much as I did not want to believe it, I had to get used to the idea of being in a wheelchair, whether I liked it or not. I wondered how people would react when they saw my horse Four X replaced by that wheelchair. Time would tell.
    For the next two months I continued to be fed by the nurses. I found it hard having the nurses do those things that once seemed so easy to do for myself. I really appreciated what they did for me—I reckon nurses are very special people.
    I had a set of tongs put in each side of my head. Attached to the ends was a set of weights. The tongs were there to hold my neck straight while it mended. During these months in bed my skin became flaky and started to peel. The flaky skin made my face really itchy. I used to lie there putting up with the itchiness, and with my eyelashes falling into my eyes. While I was in hospital I was quiet and kept to myself; I was too shy to ask anyone for help. Apart from the flaky skin and the falling eyelashes I was feeling pretty good. Thirteen weeks later, Sister Pollock came around to release the tongs. Then I was allowed to have a shower, lying down on a trolley.
    Before trying to sit up in a wheelchair, I was placed on my belly to try to lift my head off the pillow. I tried hard for five minutes. My head felt like a dead weight, but I refused to give in; I was really keen to get in that wheelchair. At my first attempt to sit in it, after two and a half months in bed, I saw stars and blacked out. I also found that I had no stomach muscles to hold me up. I had to be tied into the wheelchair with a strap. This made me feel a bit down in spirit; I thought I would be able to sit up without any problems. After the first few days in the wheelchair, the pain in the back of my neck was unbelievable. I was having trouble holding my head up; I never expected to feel so much pain. But each day I fought that pain and I found that the longer I sat up, the less the pain became.
    Now it was time for my rehabilitation to begin. All the wheelchair patients had to be up and dressed and down in the gym by nine o’clock each morning. My physiotherapist was Diane Winterton, and my occupational therapist Sharon Steele. The time and effort they both put into rehabilitating me was terrific. They were easy to get on with, and the way they went about their work made things a hell of a lot easier for me.
    Sharon Steele looked after my hands. With her help Ihad to learn to feed myself, clean my teeth, comb my hair, write and type—all with the use of splints. The splints were necessary, because feeling and movement never returned to my hands and fingers. When it came to feeding myself with a splint, I found there wasn’t much food going into my mouth—but food going up my nose