From Gangrene to Self-Pity

“I smell gangrene. I smell gangrene in this house.”

The voice was that of my Grandmother Randleman. She had just come in the back door and was climbing the few steps into Mom’s kitchen.

Gramma had arrived from the farm in Peckham. She had come to accompany my mother and me to visit an orthopedic surgeon at Children’s Hospital.

Nostrils flaring, Gramma stormed through the house, sniffing out the source of the odor, an aroma she probably remembered from her own childhood in Missouri.

Finding me in the bedroom my brother and I shared, Gramma announced to the whole world, “This child has gangrene.”

She sniffed me until she pinpointed the source of the smell, which was emanating from the plaster cast which had been installed along the full length of my right leg after a surgery.

Gramma was outraged. But she agreed with my mother that since we were going to the hospital to get the cast removed anyway, finding the gangrene could wait an hour while we drove to Denver.

Meanwhile, I myself had already figured out the source of the aroma, but I sure wasn’t going to admit to anything until there was no alternative.

The plan was to remove the plaster cast during a visit to the basement treatment room at Children’s Hospital.

A technician brought out a fearsome tool with which he proposed to cut the plaster. It was about the size and shape of an electric hair clipper, with a circular saw-toothed blade mounted at one end.

My first impression was that the blade would rotate. I strenuously objected when he approached. No, the man comforted me, the blade just vibrates to cut the plaster, it doesn’t spin around.

That calmed me some – but then I realized the secret source of the odor was about to be revealed.

I had been told not to poke anything down into the cast next to my skin. Oops. It had seemed like a perfectly safe place to keep those Crayola color crayons . . . until some of them got beyond range for retrieval.

With the buzz of the plaster saw, the evidence was soon there, right before our eyes, black, yellow, red, and grass green crayons. Buried in pus. Now I knew what Gramma meant by “gangrene.”

No one in the room was particularly happy with me. Silence prevailed.

“Gangrene,” Gramma had said. “I smell gangrene in this house.” Obviously, I lived. Thanks Gramma.

Self pity?

Getting dressed for school one winter’s day, I sat on the floor near the furnace vent, having difficulty lacing my shoes and fastening my leg brace.

The brace (I still have it) was a complex device of leather and stainless steel, hinges, rivets and shoe laces. It was quite a contraption, complex for this spoiled little boy. Lacing it properly was eluding me.

In frustration, I cried out, “Why me? Why did this happen to ME?”

Wham. My own dear Mother smacked me in the left ear. Then she did it again. Hard. Mom had a mean backhand. Bang. Ouch.

Then she grabbed my beautiful little face between her hands and held me so that I couldn’t move, I could only meet her gaze. She said, “There will be no self pity in this house. Understand?”

Then, abruptly, she released her hold on me, went into her bedroom, shut the door, and sobbed loudly for what seemed like about eight hours.

I think I got the point, Mom. And thanks.

The exercises

Somewhere in my “files” at home, I have the original list of “Exercises for Tommy.”

A physio-therapist had taught Mom what the words meant on that list, and how to put those words into action.

Every morning, every day of my life, from the point when I was released from the hospital through grade school, Mom would exercise me.

She’d lay an old white and green blanket on the dining room table and run me through everything, from the rocking horse to the leg lifts, right and left.

Every day.

No matter what else Mom might have had on her agenda, she attended to me and my exercises.

This strengthened me, and loosened up my atrophied, paralyzed muscles.

Mom has quite an investment in me, even if all that counts is her time. Thanks Mom.

The bicycle!

Dad wheezed and puffed as he followed me along the gravel street, downhill from the Fulton Ditch bridge toward our little stucco house on Seventh Street.

He was holding on to my bicycle seat, steadying me while I learned to balance this strange and unwieldy new contraption.

His breath smelled of Lucky Strikes and there was a general aroma about him of Mentholatum mixed with sweat. Puff, puff, puff, he ran along with me.

Eventually, I did master the bicycle, and it set me free.

I was able to go to my first day of first grade on that bicycle. Some of the more fortunate kids had bikes, but most walked.

It was six blocks from our house to Fort Lupton Grade School. At that time, I could not have walked six blocks. One block would have been about my limit.

Dad supplied me with a padlock, I bought a black rubber mud flap with a red reflector for the rear fender, and off I went, arriving independently. I did not want to be brought to school in a car, like some crippled kid. Good idea, the bicycle. Pretty smart, Dad.

The bicycle became an important part of my life when I was six. I have a bicycle to this day. Bicycles have been quite useful to me throughout my life.

Thanks, Dad.

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Word of the week: Atrophy. It’s from the Latin and Greek, Atrophia, a wasting away. In English, it also means a wasting away, especially of body tissue, an organ, or the failure of an organ or body part to grow because of insufficient nutrition. In polio, atrophy is caused when the bloodstream insufficiently feeds the bones and muscles. To this day, my hip joint is the size of one found in a six-year-old boy; it failed to grow, to thrive. Atrophy.