Everyone was rooting for me to resume walking after limb loss. Except me.
By Nick DiMartino
Although I have had athletic habits at times in my life, I am not by nature an athlete. Before I lost my leg, I used to walk down from the campus branch of the University Book Store in Seattle and swim a quarter-mile three times a week in the pool at the University of Washington. For 20 years, I ran two miles every morning down the Burke Gilman Trail from my apartment in the University District. My concerns were more health-driven and weight-driven than competitive. I don’t compete well. I always sympathize too much with my opponents.
When I moved north to the Maple Leaf district and Covid closed down the University of Washington’s campus, I began a program of walking to Reservoir Park, around the loop and home. It was during that period that, on St. Patrick’s Day of 2021, I got up from reading in my living room armchair to go meet a dear friend at the Reservoir loop and, without warning, fell over. I managed to reach my cell phone and asked her to come to my home, where she convinced me to phone 911. I was rushed to Northwest Hospital, where a blood clot was discovered in my right leg. It had come loose from behind my knee and blocked blood access, killing the leg and necessitating its amputation.
Unlike many of the amputees in my support group at Harborview Medical Center, I did not have to decide on amputation. I awoke in the hospital with only one leg. I was there for six more weeks and six more surgeries, attempting to save the knee, during one of which I had a heart attack and had to have three stents inserted into my heart from surgery complications. My right knee was removed in the last surgery. My brother kindly let me move into the ground-floor unit of his fiveplex in the Ballard district, and it was assumed by everyone, including me, that I would quickly resume ambulation with the help of a good prosthesis.
My surgeon recommended an excellent prosthetist, Sanjay Perti, and my brother arranged with him to begin coming to the apartment for regular visits. Sanjay started me on a basic prosthesis, then advanced me into a state-of-the-art device with a computerized knee. He lobbied to get me admitted to the Harborview amputee rehab program, where Dr. Janna Friedly arranged for me to meet with a superb trainer, Jordan Cabrera, for my physical therapy.
Rather than fight traffic to get downtown to Harborview, I ultimately transferred to a location for physical therapy closer to home. My new therapist was much younger and not as savvy as Jordan, and this was where doubt first entered my mind. Although everyone in my amputee support group at Harborview wore prosthetic limbs and discussed all the adjustments, refinements, and accidents that come with mastering an artificial limb, I was not as enthusiastic as the others. In the tight confines of my apartment, walking on my wonderful new leg was more of a precarious balancing act.
There was no problem with the socket fit. Sanjay knew exactly what he was doing, and the fit was perfect. I wasn’t plagued with skin problems like several other members of my support group. There was no necessity of layering with sleeves. Although getting up the flight of seven stairs to the front lobby to get the mail was challenging, it wasn’t impossible. Admittedly, the leg was heavier than I expected and not particularly comfortable, but I suppose I could have become used to it.
But other than getting about in the limited space of my small apartment, it was more of a dead weight. I felt safer traveling from room to room in my wheelchair than heaving myself up onto my new bionic limb. There was a constant fear of losing my balance and falling. It was cumbersome stuffed under my desk while I was reading or writing. I was always more than ready to take the heavy thing off. Practicing walking became a tiresome chore with few benefits. In the back of my mind, I could always hear well-intentioned family and friends encouraging me, “You can do it, Nick. You can do it.”
Life interfered with my progress. The man I was living with, a former heroin addict who had gone ten years without it, relapsed. After several nightmarish months, I told him he would have to choose between life with me and heroin. He chose to move out and was found shortly afterward, dead from an overdose of heroin and fentanyl. Fortunately for me, his much-abused best friend at the time, Lawrence, took over helping me and ultimately moved in, becoming first my diligent caregiver and then my loving partner.
It became slowly clear that in my one-legged life, my most consuming activities—reading, writing, and watching movies—were not improved by wearing my artificial limb. I dared to confess that I wasn’t struggling to walk on a prosthesis for myself. I was doing it for all of my encouraging family and friends. I found myself dreading the moment each day when I would have to strap on my prosthetic leg and practice walking. As a straight-A student in high school who got C’s in gym class, I dreaded the mere echoing sound of a gymnasium and never looked forward to physical therapy. The drive to the gym each week was like a punishment, a return to the dreads and self-doubts of yesteryear.
The last time Lawrence took me to physical therapy should have told us all we needed to know. We sat there waiting for the young trainer. She came at last and stared at us in amazement. “Where is the leg?” she asked. We had become so comfortable simply using the wheelchair that we had gone to therapy completely forgetting my prosthesis at home. That was my last physical therapy session.
Finally, a pretty young woman in our support group made sense of what I was feeling. “Everyone’s journey is different,” she said. “There are no right or wrong answers. You have to do what’s right for you.” Instead of using a prosthesis, I relied on Lawrence to be my right leg. The trade was worth it. At the end of my life, after choosing one bad boy after another as a partner, the right one had found me because of my limb loss.
Compared with the thrill of finally, in my late 70s, having a partner who truly loved me, my shortage of legs seemed unimportant. Lawrence has never once complained about loading the wheelchair into the car—in fact, he perpetually encourages me to join him whenever he drives anywhere. When I once dared to say that my life had become happier since becoming an amputee, one member of the support group remarked sharply, “Not all of us are lucky enough to find love when we lose a leg.” From then on, I learned to listen silently as members of the group talked about their phantom pain, their sores, their shrinking stumps, and the many long waits for their insurance programs to cover their prosthetic needs.
I now realize that, even though I’m approaching 80, choosing to live the rest of my life in a wheelchair is considered unorthodox in many parts of the amputee community, even though it’s the easiest adaptation to the needs in my life. Wheelchairs are often treated as the wrong answer, not only by other amputees but also by prosthetists, rehab doctors, and physical therapists.
I’ve made my own adaptations. Realizing I needed an exercise outlet to compensate for sitting all the time, I’ve started taking weekly yoga lessons. I now stand up 15 times a day, as well as perform religiously a ten-minute yoga practice in my wheelchair every day that has made me stronger and happier.
I certainly don’t stay home all the time. Every day I get to visit Salmon Bay Park, but now it’s a treat that I share with Lawrence as he first takes me to our local coffee shop, Mabel’s, half a block away, where we know all eight baristas by name, and then rolls me the four blocks to the park. I’ve come to know many of my neighbors, particularly those with delightful dogs. Several of the dogs put their paws in my lap and give me friendly kisses. Neighbors remember me as the friendly guy in the wheelchair, and so do the crows who follow us, hoping for some of the seed-filled bread we always bring along to share with them.
I can do everything I want using a wheelchair for my primary mobility. I had to give myself permission for this—to sidestep other people’s expectations that I’d resume walking, go through all the rehab, put up with the prosthetic aggravations, and so on. I am through judging myself harshly for not resuming full-time ambulation. Living happily with Lawrence, I’ve come to recognize that my new life in a wheelchair is the perfect adaptation for me.
Nick DiMartino is the author of 17 books. His most recent novel is Runaway Grandmother in Oz.
