This is the third part of this trilogy and continues directly from part 1 and part 2.
It was a chaotic night that I fortunately have very little memory of. The first thing I really remember is waking up in complete blackness and a near panic. There was a nurse right in my room to comfort me and explain that I had both eyes covered so I wouldn’t move the injured one. Made sense to me sorta, so I calmed down.
The timeline is really fuzzy because they were giving me a shot of Demerol (synthetic morphine) every three hours. Which meant that I was basically out cold for 2 hours and 40 minutes, had roughly 20 minutes of semi lucidity and another shot.
Sometime on Saturday morning the surgeon made his rounds and was whistling when he walked in my room. When he told me who he was I had a moment of hope that somehow he’d saved the eye. He said he had great news for me. “No brain damage”. No right eye, either.
2 days. I got to experience total blindness for two days. Those two days would set the stage to my protecting my left eye at all costs.
By Saturday my friends started hearing that I was in the hospital and coming to visit. It didn’t take long and there was somebody there for my 20 minutes of awareness every time. My parents had to go in shifts, too many kidlets for the whole clan to be there, but my friends set up a schedule to have somebody in that room when I was awake. My buddy Spencer brought a short dog of Jack Daniels during the middle of the night. 3 hours later somebody showed up with a huge cheeseburger.
The nursing staff in the trauma ward is something special. By Sunday they had eased back a little on the Demerol and a nurse sat with me and gave me the play by play on the TV football game.
Monday started my rehab. They dressed my right eye with a metal appliance to protect it and removed the patch on my left eye. I can’t tell you how good it felt to be able to get up and go to the bathroom all by myself. Little victories.
Also Monday when I could see there was a packet on my ‘table’ from the US Navy. It included my Honorable Discharge and my DD214.
The also issued me a wheelchair so I could prowl the floor on my own. I got that taken away when I wrecked it on some stairs Tuesday morning. Turns out I still couldn’t see very well.
By Tuesday morning the surgeon decided that I could be on ‘demand’ for pain meds. He also told me that 24 hours after my last shot of Demerol I could go home. I told him to start the clock.
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So by Wednesday afternoon I was home. For a couple of days I just slept and broke glasses until my mother served me entirely with plastic. You see, I had no depth perception and particularly water glasses were in jeopardy.
Friday, a friend of my Mom’s came out and brought me a stupid good present. She was a book club member and had just finished reading James Michener's Centennial. She left it for me to read. It took me 4 days and the headaches were phenomenal but I knew I could read.
That Saturday I recruited my kid brother to go for a ride with me, I wanted to see how driving would work. We took my Barracuda and headed out on the back roads in the area. We drove about a 20 mile lap, didn’t see a single car. When I parked I said “That worked better than I thought.” To which he replied “That was completely fucking awful. I was scared shitless.” He worked with me on my driving every day for two weeks, until we were both more or less comfortable that I could,
I was only two years out of high school and pretty well known, so I got the goofy idea that I could rehab physically with the Basketball team. The coach was glad to have me, I was tall and skinny and could jump like a kangaroo, it wouldn’t hurt his kids to practice against me.
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What I failed to account for was that these Seniors had been sophomores when I was last there, and remembered me pretty well from football. The just beat the crap out of me for a couple of days. Then I started to get it. I gave as good as I got and several of those guys are good friends today.
I haven’t told you the whole story. Why I KNEW from minute one that this wasn’t going to stop me, or even really slow me down. You see, my uncle Del got a new shotgun for Christmas when he was 15. He and my Dad took it out to shoot some pigeons in the horse barn. He put a round in each barrel and proceeded to sneak over some hay bales to maximize his shot. He hooked both hammers on a wire and lost his right arm at the elbow on the only two rounds run through that gun.
He was right handed but lettered in Baseball THAT SPRING and in football that fall. He played some war ball at about the AA level. By the time I knew him he was an avid bowler who carried a scratch average, an enthusiastic golfer (I was a better golfer. But he got the hole in one that I never did) and ran his farm quite well, thank you. He was great to play catch with when I was a kid….
Did I mention that his wife had MS? That I never knew her outside a wheelchair? Life could not have been easy for him, and I never, ever once heard him bitch,
The day that Gunner went to the Navy and I didn’t was a very hard day. I got really good and drunk, a pattern that was going to repeat itself often.
All photos in this post are properly sourced and licensed.
All words in this post are mine. For better or worse
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