Moving Forward: Learning to walk again for the first time - One Block at a Time (chapter 3) by Vern Beachy

Doug the pug is a good companion and he was learning to walk right along with me. He already knew how to walk, but Doug was helping me build my endurance.

I got Doug in December of 2006 so I had never really taken him out for a walk. The snow and bitter cold temperatures that ushered in 2007 kept me from venturing too far from my warm apartment. When he needed to go out it was just to the front steps at my apartment building and his world consisted of the confines of my unit and the occasional trip to the bushes in front of the building.

Doug was discovering new things while I was relearning. I was discovering them again for the first time. When I used crutches to walk (or, more aptly put, hobble) I had to think about what I was doing; Left, right, left again and then the right foot (repeat as necessary). The rather simple operation of walking wasn’t a natural act anymore, I had to think about moving my left foot forward, then the right and sometimes I would get confused and couldn’t go anywhere. It was during those times that I had to take a short break, try to clear my mind and then proceed with one foot in front of the other, all the while trying to maintain balance so I wouldn’t fall down. Falling down happened frequently, but less so after I started using forearm crutches. The forearm crutches provided much needed stability and I could use the metal crutches with the arm holders to keep me going in the right direction, even if it was for just a few feet.
The glue was annoying. I would try to move my legs but felt like they were in a vat of glue that was just on the verge of setting up. The glue would get harder as I moved. The consistency would be a great exercise regimen for someone who wants to build muscles in their legs. It would be similar to putting twenty pound weights on your ankles while you walked. After a few feet or yards, those weights would increase to 1,000 pounds. To me it just meant that walking was incredibly tiring and, at times, impossible to do.

My leg muscles, however, are great; I had been an avid hiker in New Mexico when I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The Sandia Mountains that bordered Albuquerque on the east side were beautiful and challenging. Sandia stands for watermelon in Spanish and if you are in Albuquerque at sunset you will find out why. At sunset the mountains took on a reddish color and, yes, it kind of looks like a watermelon and when you add the conifer trees along the ridge it bolsters the perceived image of a watermelon.

I lived on the northeast side of Albuquerque and my apartment was just a short walk from the foothills. If I wanted to hike up the 10,600 foot tall mountain I wouldn’t have very far to go. I tried hiking, short trips here and there. The vegetation in the southwest was interesting to me. I had grown up in Iowa and the vegetation in which I was very familiar was corn and soybeans planted in neat rows usually about a half-mile long in between the gravel roads that were laid out in squares to match the fields. Thistles and broadleaf weeds were common.

Boring.

There is a ski resort in Iowa which is really just the locals trying to fool themselves into thinking that Iowa is hilly and can offer anything an avid outdoorsman would want or need. Some brain trusts in the state government thought it would be great to spend millions of dollars to bolster Iowa tourism by creating a special state agency as a way to lure visitors in and, possibly, convince them to stay and spend money on taxes to help kick in for the tourism department and other garbage like that. In truth, the only way to keep people from leaving the state after they had arrived would be a barbed wire fence at the borders. Many native Iowans would see that as heresy, but only because they haven’t really been outside the borders of the Hawkeye State. I have seen the mountains and I wanted to climb them again, at least the La Luz trail in Albuquerque; nine miles up and back. 18 round trip. I always wanted to, but never hiked the Grand Canyon. I can, however, now envision a day when I can do that.

I wanted to hike again but right now I thought I would just start small and gradually work into an eventual mountain trek.

I set my sights on one block. Up and back would be my mountain for now. In Memphis my wife and I lived a block from a park and we would take our dogs for Saturday morning walks up to, and around, Sea Isle Park in the White Station neighborhood in East Memphis. We loved the early morning walks before it got too hot and humid later in the day in the summer. Several times when Melinda was at work I would wheel myself up to the park and back, which was a trip that would take me all afternoon to complete. The sidewalks had curbs, which were almost insurmountable in a wheelchair so I just wheeled myself up one side of the street. One hot summer day city workers were in our neighborhood making curb cuts and I imagined the workers were all wondering why they were told to do that job in 100-plus degree heat.

I wanted them to know why, so I wheeled myself up to where they were working and thanked them. They were sweating profusely as they took the cement cutter to each curb and laid the forms for a concrete slope. They didn’t say much to me but I just wanted to thank them for their work. I think they saw the benefit as I wheeled back to the house.

It is a big deal to someone in a wheelchair.

Curbs and steps are huge and—more often than not—insurmountable for someone in a wheelchair. Several years later a former co-worker commented that he didn’t like traveling by airplane because handicapped people seemed to get priority treatment, are always first in line and are usually the first ones out of the airplane when it landed. They would also get rides in those beeping golf carts to their next gate. I guess he thought that was unfair. I told him each and every one of those people in a wheelchair or using crutches would gladly trade places with him and be able to go to the back of the line or walk to their next gate even if it was on the opposite end of the airport. He may have seen my point, but probably not. He appeared shallow in that respect.

Melinda would always worry about me when we took a trip somewhere and the travel included hopping on an airplane. She worried the trip would be too exhausting and would try to get a non-stop flight to avoid any airplane changeovers. Melinda couldn’t avoid a changeover when we flew to California to see her sister and her family but quickly realized that airlines practically bend over backwards to make sure those with handicaps have a smooth and non-exhausting experience.

Airlines do it right for people in wheelchairs or on crutches. The rest of the service industry should take their cue from airlines when it comes to meeting the needs of the handicapped. Melinda saw that first-hand and she got to where she loved travelling with me because we were treated like royalty by the airlines.

One block is what I wanted to do and it was the length I felt I could deal with at that point. I spotted the stone entrance to a subdivision down the block and I thought I would go to it and touch it, go back and that would be my journey for the day. I am sure Doug wanted to go further, but that little journey looked like a marathon to me.

I started with my left foot…then the right…and then the left foot again all the while holding onto Doug’s leash and thinking I now have one hand free because I left my crutches at home. I had to stop halfway to that stone entrance because I was out of breath.

I looked back at my apartment building which wasn’t very far behind, but yet it was. It seemed like a world away, or at least a lifetime. I guess it was both because it had been what had seemed like a lifetime since I was able to walk and I was in a much different world now…a world I had taken for granted when I was in the ‘able-bodied’ population.

I had much further to go because I was only halfway to that stone entrance. I was getting tired but my journey was not complete. I thought it may be completed that day, but it was just the beginning.

The journey today would only take me to the end of the block and back but it was a long and difficult trip and it was a milestone. My wife, Melinda, and I have attended many multiple sclerosis seminars over the past few years and I was either in a wheelchair, using a walker or crutches. When I scanned the crowd and saw the chairs and walkers I thought this was my future. It was my present and I was convinced it would be my future too.

I had my sights set too low and now I had my sights on that stone entrance to the subdivision. I vowed to reach it and I was slowly getting there. Left, right, repeat. I felt the glue starting to set up but I wasn’t deterred.

I WAS WALKING!

I did start to shed a tear during the journey that morning. My wife, Melinda, was gone and I was going on this trip alone, but I know in my heart that she was with me. Had she been next to me I am confident she wouldn’t have offered an arm or a stabilizing shoulder as she had done so many times in the past because, at that point, I could do it by myself, no help was necessary.

I got to the stone entrance of the subdivision and I reached out to touch it. I had made it. I was there.

That day I saw only two footprints in the sand.