News travels fast. While holed up with Rachelle in a Seattle AirBNB, word of my broken arm spread across my academy. From there, it filtered out to our friends and cousin academies (academies not necessarily affiliated or under the same lineage, but close enough through friendship that we train there and they train with us; a cross-pollination of techniques and philosophies). On Monday morning, while learning to scoop up oatmeal with my off-hand and resting my broken and splinted arm on my leg, my phone started buzzing. Various texts chimed on the screen. At some point, I turned off the notifications. I sat, overwhelmed, a few thousand miles from Atlanta while staring at my wife. Most messages read the same – asking how I was, what happened, and the usual “You’ll be back soon” sentiments. A few stood out.
Alex Jutis, a (then) brown belt at Creighton MMA, sent me a name of an orthopedic surgeon in Atlanta. I called right away. I booked a consultation for Wednesday morning. That was still two days away. Right now, though, we needed to figure out how to get me on a plane. At least I had Percocet and Rachelle. Really the only two things I needed to drag myself back home.
I slept a lot on the plane. I slept a lot for the next week or so. I slept because I didn’t know what else to do. I recognized this response – a combination of boredom, but more so depression. It’s something I struggled with all my life, seeking sleep over confronting demons or negative emotions. It’s also something of a red flag, when I see myself sleeping or seeking my bed too often. Either I’m sick or I’m depressed. Sometimes I’m simply tired, but I have coffee for that.
I slept my way to Atlanta, periodically waking up to Rachelle sharing a snack with me and pushing ice water or more Percocet my way, before shutting my eyes again. I slept because I couldn’t formulate a plan. Yet. I preferred a plan, something to latch onto, a set of steps to guide my actions into the future. Instead, I simply didn’t know what the next day would bring, the next week, the next month. I didn’t know and that’s why I slept.
I asked Rachelle a million questions about surgeries. When could they see me? When would I be healed? When could I train again? What would the PT be like? All of these she didn’t know, or couldn’t precisely answer because of various factors we still didn’t know. I clung to her rough estimates. Maybe they’d cut me by the end of the week. Then we could count out 4-6 weeks before the cast came off and then maybe a few weeks of PT. Then who knows. It depended on the doctor. It depended on my swelling. It depended on factors outside our knowledge. Simply, we didn’t know. So I slept.
##
Dr. Chris Haraszti talked and moved with precision. His wide body sauntered through the hallways, sometimes with his head down like a linebacker zooming towards a QB. Around him, I felt small, broken like some sort of exotic bird. In the examination room, his cold left hand enveloped mine when we shook. Muscles bulged along his forearms. The sleeves of his medical scrubs strained at his biceps. When he unwrapped my right arm, his fingers moved quickly, but gently. He asked me to grip his hand. I couldn’t. He manipulated my wrist and probed quickly, but not so gently. I inhaled and exhaled in response. He worried about a dislocation. That complicated things. The break, not so much. He’d seen worse.
We walked me to the x-ray area. He asked me how I knew Alex. I explained.
“So you train?”
“Yes, that’s how I broke it?”
“A fall?”
“No. From half guard. My arm got trapped underneath.”
He nodded. “Makes a bit of sense.”
After the x-rays, I sat alone in the examination room. My broken arm rested on my lap like some wounded, resting animal. Bruising – purple and yellow and red – spread across my forearm. My hand hung at an awkward angle. I fingered the spot he did, trying to figure out what he felt. I imagined a million scenarios, pins, complicated surgeries, lengthy PT, and a hundred years away from the mats.
Dr. Haraszti returned. He slapped the x-rays on a light projector hanging from the wall. “You have a bit of biology background?”
“Yes,” I said.
He walked me through my arm. The break looked clean. I lucked out. No fractures or tears in the wrist, but it was dislocated. He’d have to push it back in place, which meant a larger incision. He felt confident he wouldn’t have to pin it. Elbow looked solid. It was either/or, the elbow or wrist being dislocated.
He looked at me. “You need surgery.”
“I know,” I said.
He almost smiled. “Sometimes people need to hear that.”
I thought about the doctors in Washington, at the ER, telling me it would take a year or more before I could train again. I asked the question bouncing around my head, “How long before I can train?”
His palms scratched against gray stubble on his cheeks. He looked over his shoulder. The door was shut. “How much do you train now, before the injury?”
“Five or six days a week. Sometimes two-a-day. Sundays off.”
“How much do you compete?”
“I’ve competed four times since I started. Not quite a year ago.”
“You do pretty well?”
“Usually gold, but got my blue belt a couple of weeks ago.”
He paused. He pulled out his phone and muttered to himself as if making calculations.
“I can get you in this Friday, around noon. That would put you about 4-6 weeks out. In that time, if you are healing well, we can go to a brace. Then you can do some drills or maybe just the techniques. No sparring. No competitions. Don’t be stupid.”
He never said a timeframe, but I understood. It was a lot less than a year or more. I felt relieved.
“See the front desk to book for Friday. My nurse will get you a fresh splint.”
A plan was forming.
##
Rachelle took that Friday off. She’d worked as an OR nurse for over a decade. It was a blessing to have someone versed in the language of operations – what to expect, what not to do, how strict they meant “no food or drink” (very strict). It was a blessing to have her in my life. If anything, this ordeal taught me that.
We woke around midnight, just to eat and chug some water. Then we went back to bed, even though sleep barely came. I propped my arm this way and that, hoping to find some comfortable spot. I hadn’t found one since the week before, but I continued to experiment like a scientist until fatigue overcame me. We kept up with Percocet, using a timer or phone reminders to keep the pain at bay. I didn’t work out much, maybe sat on the bike for 30 minutes before growing bored and going to work earlier than normal. Too many thoughts tossed and turned through my head and Friday couldn’t come soon enough.
That morning resembled a competition day when I hadn’t managed my weight. I didn’t eat. I didn’t drink. When I grew thirsty, I rinsed my mouth with water before spitting it out. Mental discipline drove through the physical desire for a burger or oatmeal or even some ice water. We started planning my post-surgery meal. This was exactly how I crawled my way through a competition day fast – thinking ahead to all the food I’d eat. Did I want a pizza? A burger and fries? What about sweets? Nachos? We decided on a local (to the hospital) Cajun bistro. Being new to Atlanta, still not a year there, we didn’t know much about the food scene. Proximity drove much of our decisions at that time.
We arrived to the hospital early. The orderlies and staff brought me back to a waiting room where I’d change to a thin gown before they stuck an IV in my arm. I asked if Rachelle could stay with me, explaining her occupation. They seemed amendable. We brought my Kindle, my iPad, my phone to the room. I couldn’t concentrate enough on one option or another. I wanted to jump in, get cut, and get to the other side. Again, the correlations to competitions struck me. There comes a certain point when I’m tired of waiting and want it over with, to bump fists and go, no matter the outcome. The wait becomes painful and tedious in equal doses. Yet we continued to wait.
The surgeon was running behind. He was removing hardware from a patient’s arm; a metal plate and screws much like he’d insert in my arm. I asked if that was common. Rachelle explained it wasn’t. Probably the patient had complications with the plate. When the orderly returned, I asked about that. They explained it was another doctor’s efforts and Dr. Haraszti was cleaning up shoddy work. That reminded me of the Washington option, leaving me in the same boat as the current patient. This thought reinforced this course of action; to enjoy our time in Seattle and wait for surgery.
While we waited, fatigue grew hold of me. I curled up in a ball, underneath a scratchy, wool blanket. I’m not a large man, in fact fairly small in both height and weight. I felt smaller then, weak and broken. I didn’t want Rachelle to see me like this, but I also needed someone near me. I didn’t want anybody else, so I kept her close. She rubbed my back and asked if I needed anything. I didn’t, except to be operated on. I was ready.
At some point they wheeled me back. I heard my heart rate rise on the monitors. I took deep breaths and let them out slowly. This was like when I weighed in, going through Gi check, waiting for the mat coordinator to call my name, knowing it would be soon, but not sure how soon that meant. It wasn’t long, being away from Rachelle in the back room. It felt like eternity, though, being away from her and not having anybody to ask questions. They cleaned and marked my arm with various codes and lines. They took my vitals and assured me it wouldn’t be long now.
They wheeled me to the operating room. This was like the mat coordinator leading me and my opponent through the other mats before lining us up beside the scorer’s table. They shuffled me onto the operating table – a thinly padded, flat platform. They arranged pillows under my head and arm. They asked my name and date of birth and what arm we’d be operating on. The anesthesiologist pushed drugs through my IV. It wouldn’t be long now before darkness came. I couldn’t wait. I closed my eyes and took a breath. Here. We. Go.
##
I woke in the intermediate room, where I waited before the surgery area. I heard heartbeats on a monitor, my heartbeats. I opened my eyes. A nurse smiled at me. I asked for Rachelle, the first thing from my mouth. “My wife,” I asked.
The nurse left to get her.
I waited there, rubbing my face and eyes with my left hand. My right arm still felt numb, heavy, wrapped in a splint. A wheelchair sat beside the bed. I assumed this was for me. I eased myself down and waited for the nurse and Rachelle to return. I remembered getting my wisdom teeth out, how my memory slipped in and out on the ride back to my dad’s house to sleep on a futon mattress. It took a few hours before my head cleared and I could remember events such as waking in a puddle of blood and drool, changing the gauze in my mouth, starting a load of laundry, showering, and finally eating some pudding.
This felt much the same. At some point, Rachelle helped me get dressed. I don’t remember where that happened, maybe while I sat in the wheelchair and wriggled around enough to get pants and a hoodie on. We left the hospital, presumably after checking out. We left behind the wheelchair, but I don’t remember when or where. She loaded me in the CRV, but I don’t remember when or how. I leaned against the cool passenger side window. I hugged myself, tucking my splinted arm against my stomach.
A grocery bag full of takeout sat in the back seat. Rachelle asked if wanted some. I did, but I don’t remember how much I ate. I remember gnawing on some cornbread, but losing momentum as we kept driving towards home.
At home, I curled up on the couch and tried eating gumbo and more cornbread and maybe some dessert that I can’t recall. I don’t remember how much I ate or if I even liked it. I wanted to sleep. That much I knew.
We set up an inflatable bed in the guest room. This is where I’d sleep for the next few weeks. It gave me access to my own bathroom and bed so as to toss and turn and start healing. I didn’t want the complications of two dogs and Rachelle, adding to my frustrations with sleep and pain. I changed to shorts and a t-shirt. Rachelle tucked me in and set an alarm for herself. To visit me in a few hours to load me up with Percocet. To keep ahead of the pain.
The world turned to darkness again and at least I was on the other side of surgery.
##
Sometime around midnight the meds wore off. My arm ached. A dull throbbing pain that pulsed with each beat of my heart. I adjusted my arm, propping it on a pillow or leaning it against the wall. I closed my eyes. The ache continued. I turned over and readjusted everything. It didn’t work. I called for Rachelle. She didn’t wake up. I sat up in bed, holding my arm in my lap. Bits of orange iodine disinfectant still flaked along my exposed fingers. I smelled like the hospital. The ache deepened to pain, as if someone cranked nine screws into my bone. In fact, that’s exactly what happened a few short hours ago.
I sat on the toilet to pee, my new form of relieving myself. I returned to bed. I didn’t want to wake her, but I knew I had to. I didn’t know how much Percocet to take or even where it was or if I should take any at all. But I hurt and it was getting worse. I deliberated for maybe fifteen more minutes – wide-eyed and curled into a tight ball – before giving in. I needed drugs.
I walked to our bedroom and touched her arm. She woke, pushed the sleep mask off her face, and asked, “You’re hurting?”
It was more of a statement, but one she needed an answer. I nodded. She sat up, stood, and led me to the kitchen. She pulled down a glass and filled it with water. She slid this to me before rifling through her purse. She came up with a muted orange pill bottle. She squinted at the label. “He upped your dosage. So we’ll start with one.”
I swallowed it before slinking off to the blowup bed. She followed me. I didn’t ask her to, but she did anyway. She sat on the edge of the bed as I folded myself under the blankets. I wanted her to lie next to me, to sleep like we grew accustomed to, these last 10 years or so. I knew she wanted that too, but we also knew it wasn’t the best for me at the moment. I needed rest and to heal.
“Can I get anything else for you? Are you hungry yet?”
I shook my head before touching her hand. I still hurt. The Percocet or maybe fatigue raced like two horses to put me under first. What I really wanted though, was for our lives to be normal again. “I’m sorry,” I said.
She folded herself next to me. She propped my wounded arm on a pillow before rubbing my back. “You don’t need to be.”
I fell asleep with her beside me. I woke a few hours later by myself. Not even the sun was up then, so I waited until the hurt got me out of bed.
I prepared myself for this to be par for the next few nights.
##
I wanted to shower. Our dogs sniffed my arm, my hand, my splint. I probably smelled of blood and iodine and hurt. One licked me while the other kept his distance. Either way, I empathized. I didn’t want to smell like surgery and a hospital and whatever my wound looked like under my splint.
We tried wrapping a plastic bag around my arm. We couldn’t find a large enough Ziploc, so we settled for a white trash bag that circumnavigated my arm multiple times. Water pooled in the folds and crevices, slowly making its way across the bathroom floor or closer and closer to my splint. We gave up and pulled me from the shower. I sat on the toilet, naked and dripping, as we started unwrapping my arm.
I imagined a scene in Frankenstein when the monster sees himself in the mirror for the first time, shocked and horrified by his own reflection. Or that scene in Batman (1989) when the Joker takes off his bandages. As we set aside the splint, then unwrapped my arm, bits of iodine flaked off my skin, falling to the floor in an orange-red snowfall. A long cut, sutured together, ran down my arm. My body hair squished against my shriveled, pale skin. It reminded me of Frankenstein’s monster, the stitched wounds crisscrossing his face.
I sat on the end of the bathtub as we ran the shower. We took it in stages, hoping the hot water would hold up. We washed my lower body. Easy enough. Then we started on my hair and face. We used a washcloth for my arms and torso. I helped as much as I could, mostly holding my useless arm above my head.
Drying off was easy. So was getting underwear, socks, and pants on. A t-shirt proved a little more difficult as we folded it above my head, inching it down over my arms before adjusting the cloth over my torso. I combed my hair, shaved my face, applied moisturizers, and what not. That stalled the inevitable long enough. It was time to re-splint my arm.
We started in the bathroom. That didn’t work. There was nowhere to sit, to brace myself, to find a good angle. We relocated to the couch where the dogs leaped up, sniffled at my arm and hoped to help me heal with their tongues and cold noses. We pushed them away before starting to wrap my arm. I relaxed, letting Rachelle spread the ACE bandage back and forth across my forearm, keeping my incision site clean and protected, providing my arm some padding from the splint. Then we slid the splint over my arm, elbow first, until my forearm rested in the semi-circular cast. The ACE-bandage caused friction, balling up and exposing my arm. That wouldn’t do. We backed out and rewrapped the arm. We pulled on the stiff ends of the brace, hoping to pop my arm in. It worked until the last bit, when Rachelle decided to shove at my hand and wrist to pop it the last few inches.
This hurt. A lot.
I swore at her and jerked my arm away. I wanted to cry in frustration, feeling betrayed by her thoughtlessness. Manhandling me like some awkward bit of furniture we struggled to slide through our small apartment door, bumping against the frames and scratching the upholstery. I needed a break, to take a breath. I probably lost it a bit. We needed to think this through, not add more muscle and sweat and stubbornness.
We slipped my arm back in, as far as we could without balling up the bandaging. I braced my elbow against my leg, grabbed my wrist with my left hand, and pushed with my right knee. This did the trick with minimal pain. By then, I was sweating, Rachelle was crying, and the dogs were hunkered in a corner of the main bedroom.
This is what it would be like, trying to figure out how to function, but also not damage me further.
I’d be hurting. She’d be hurting, in a different way. Neither of us knowing what we were supposed to be doing, making it up as we went along and hoping the days turned into weeks and the healing process would make it all easier.
##
Before the surgery, Percocet was my friend. The little pills bridged the days between injury and surgery. They helped me sleep. They calmed me down. Frankly they were too good to me. After the surgery, Percocet became my enemy.
It started that first night, when the meds wore off. Rachelle dosed me up and I fell asleep. I woke up feeling okay, but by the time I showered and ate, I felt the pain wearing away on me like the slow drip of a leaky faucet cutting through a porcelain sink. I sat with my head on my folded arms, waiting for the pills to take effect.
They did. I felt better. We could watch TV or simply chat. I felt giddy, though, like I couldn’t sit still. That I wanted to walk around or do something, anything, besides just sit around the house all day. I thought it was because I’d gone a week without strenuous exercise, the gym, jiu-jitsu.
So we bundled me up in a baggy hoodie and drove to Ponce City Market. We walked around, looked at shops, chatted. We went to the park across the street. We kept walking. My giddiness subsided and I started shivering despite the hoodie and hat, and the warm latte cradled in my hands.
We returned to the car where I curled into the passenger seat. My teeth chattered together as goosebumps spread across my skin. We blasted the seat warmers and heat. It wasn’t enough. I didn’t want to touch my coffee, thinking it gave me jitters or mixed badly with the Percocet.
We returned home where I slept on the couch. I woke up in pain and fighting flu-like symptoms – a headache, both sweating and shivering through a pile of blankets, dehydration. I couldn’t concentrate. Instead, I just wanted to be held by Rachelle. To have the dogs lay on me, feeling their warm bodies against my own. Anything to distract me.
We loaded me with another dose of Percocet.
By now, the morning faded to early afternoon. I didn’t want to eat. I only wanted to lay down, to sleep, to keep healing. I wondered what was wrong with me, why I kept shivering and sweating and couldn’t sit still and felt sick. Maybe we’d infected my wound by taking a shower. Maybe the surgery simply wore me out. Maybe I just needed sleep.
I didn’t know what I wanted. At any given moment I needed to pace around our 2-bedroom apartment and rub my hands across my shoulder or neck. Then I’d sit down, shivering and piled under blankets. I’d start curling into myself, asking for Rachelle to reassure me that everything would be okay. I wanted to cry, but the tears and the emotional plummet simply wasn’t there. Instead, I apologized to Rachelle for the botched trip and this day. Then I’d realize she was always there for me, as happy as she could be, and then I’d love her more and want to hug her with one arm. Then I felt I wasn’t good enough for her. That I was a horrible, shortsighted person who always thought of their own needs first. Around and around I traveled this emotional carousel. It was wearing me out.
Then the doorbell rang.
##
Jiu-Jitsu is a funny sport, especially as you get older. When you’re younger, you take it for granted when you attend soccer or football or volleyball teammates’ birthdays. As you get older, these attachments fray and thin to a tentative hold in the high school years. In college or as an adult, teammates are an oblique way to describe another weekend warrior who will suit up in hopes a bad bounce doesn’t lead to a sprained ankle or a torn meniscus. Maybe you end up as friends with one or two, going out to a few post-game beers or attending a ballgame together when the Mariners are in town. Other than that, though, adult sports feels different than when you’re a kid.
With jiu-jitsu, that changes. If anything, we bond tighter than any single team. We choose to put ourselves in harms way – chokes, joint locks, and random injuries – while a deep shade of empathy runs through our time on the mats.
So when a teammates goes down, broken and ailing, we feel it ourselves. I didn’t learn this until I broke my arm. It didn’t sink in until they knocked on my door.
Sam (my coach) brought two of my teammates to my tiny apartment – Matt Shand and Hannah Narcross. They carried in BBQ from a local restaurant I’d always meant to try, but was always dieting. We sat around my dining room table and for a few hours I felt like I wasn’t broken. That it would be okay. That I could heal and would be training with them soon.
We talked about Star Wars and board games and how I broke my arm. We chatted about life, graduate school for Hannah and politics for Matt. I couldn’t sit very long, as I still felt jittery, but the conversations prevented me from curling up in bed and staring at the wall. At times, I had to excuse myself to the bathroom to splash cold water on my face and keep from feeling ill all over again. Time passed much too fast before they had to leave.
By then, I was crashing and maybe looked it. The Percocet started wearing off and our guests had to get home.
After they left, I sat on the couch as Rachelle called the doctor’s office. She explained my symptoms. They doubted I would be infected, a possibility for my ailments. I searched the Internet for opioid information. This made more sense. I was reacting badly to opiods and crashing hard, leading me to chase the dragon all day.
We had a choice, keep chasing that dragon, hoping it never slapped me with its tail, or use Sunday to get clean. Sitting under a pile of blankets, I held out my hand and made a choice.
Rachelle dropped three tablets of Ibuprofen in my hand. We’ll travel this route. It wouldn’t dull the pain as much, but it would dull my struggles.
The choice was made. I could do this. I could recover, even if fighting pain, and I would be back on the mats with my team. I had Rachelle. I had my team. I had my stupid, stubborn self. That was enough.
