I have been plotting how to get out of bed this morning since about three. I had to get up and pee, of court, a big deal, and that is the toughest part of the drill. I probably came home too soon, but dammit, I wasn’t ready to have surgery, not the day it went down, anyway. But maybe you never are, and this gave me a lot less time to fret about it. No one else I saw at the hospital had been ready either.

Once Papa Doc Anderson told me how bad things were, I realized I just had to have it done and I am glad I had a chance. I am very grateful to Walter Reed. When I was last in the Cast Room at the old location in 2006 I had no idea I would be in the company of heroes again, and completely engaged.

So, Baby Doc looks at the leg and says she will go get the Papa Doc. Doc Anderson- distinguished older gent in a sea of young people looks at the knee and says: “We will get you admitted now. Surgery tomorrow,. He drew a finger down from north of my kneecap to south We will drill four holes in the patella and connect everything again.”

“Crap. OK.”

Knee injuries are very common among runners and cyclists, and these days, increasingly among soldiers and Marines who get blown up by IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan. And Iran, if things come to that this summer. Those accursed devices are part of something called “asymmetric warfare,” a concept by which the technically challenged bury big pieces of explosive under the roads, contaminated with chicken-guano and trash and detonate them below the HUmVees and other vehicles. The result is some really nasty contaminated wounds and shredded limbs and the only thing worse than the loss of limbs- the family jewels.

Mine? Stupid. Theirs? Terrifying, and something they deal with every day. It is the defining act of courage just to go outside the wire. Most of our kids do not die that way, but way way too many have been hit. I saw them at the Cast Room , like mine, were instantaneous though I was a victim of my own stupidity rather . However, they don’t usually occur in an instant, like a hamstring strain or groin pull, but commonly starts off as a twinge or niggle, and progress quickly to a debilitating sports injury that can sideline the best of us for weeks.

(The patella- knee cap- floats over the knee joint and connects things- you know, “Da knee bone connected to de Thigh bone.” Mine was ruptured just north of the patella. The Marine said Papa Doc had to reach up under the facia lata way further then they expected because I ignored the problem, and the strands of remaining tendon still attached were starting to fail, while the rest had pulled up like a window roller-blind and healed that way).

For those who aren’t familiar with Iliotibial Band Syndrome, let’s start by having a look at the muscle responsible for the problem.

The iliotibial band is actually a thick tendon-like portion of another muscle called the tensor fasciae latae. This band passes down the outside of the thigh and inserts just below the knee. That is what I ruptured, and that is what Papa Doc proposed to fix.

That is also how I found myself checked in to Ward 5 Central, room 16, bed B, in the old building adjacent to the ER, just before 1900 hours that night. I had to report to the Cast Room to be fitted for a brace that would go on the leg after the surgery, and would be part of me for three months. It was there that I was nearly overcome with emotion.

The Cast Room does mundane things like provide braces, but this is Walter Reed, after all, and thus the ultimate provider of prosthetic devices for the kids most badly wounded in our wars. It was not the first time I had been to rehab at Walter Reed. A pal used to write for the Traverse City Record-Eagle, and she asked me to look in on a local solider who had been maimed in Iraq. I visited him and his wife, who was living in the guest house on the old Walter Reed campus on Georgia Avenue. I was in awe then of his progress in rehab, but also of the tough bunch of amputees who were also in the room, viewing their wounds as something to be vanquished as thoroughly and completely as the dirt-bag insurgents of Falluja.

(Nick and Maria of Traverse City at the old Walter Reed in 2006. Photo Socotra.)

I sat in growing awe and embarrassment, waiting my turn. There were kids who were going about the business of betting better, or at least getting fixed to the extent that medical science can. Determined? You bet. Single, double and triple amputees filled the waiting area. I was embarrassed to be in the company of the greatest Americans you can imagine, on the edge of Memorial Day.

You hear a lot about the Greatest Generation as they pass into history. I am here to tell you that there is not one of those- this Generation is a proud successor to their grandfathers. You would be amazed, and I could feel the tears coming when I saw some of the wounds, or the image of spouses or parents leading a big kid who took the blast full on, rending limbs and senses in the massive concussion.

My problems? Zip nada in comparison, but when the nice lady in the Cast Room was done with me there was not enough time to get home and back before check-in, and considering what I had just seen, and the emotion and pride that I saw in these Wounded Warriors, I decided to just go with it. The enemy did not give them time, so my problem was so minuscule as to be irrelevant.

No dop kit, razor or change of clothes? So what. I wasn’t ready, and took the hour or two to fill up the Bluesmobile with regular, have a couple guilty cheeseburgers at the Mickey Dee’s drive through on base, and suck down some Marlboros in the parking structure across from the five-story surgical wing. Parking was easy, late in the day, and friends rallied to take care of me.

Damn, it is good to have friends.

The Team that was going to scrub and do the procedure was composed of Papa Doc, Baby Doc and The Marine. He came in to visit at rounds the day before the operation and introduced himself. Ladies, he is a young doctor to die for. Dark eyes, boyish smile, trim physique. He was wearing one of those goofy surf-print OR caps over his blue scrubs with a badge lanyard in Marine red with the letters “USMC” repeated over and over. I asked about it. He smiled. “Twelve years enlisted Marine, got out and went to Med school. There is nothing I would rather be doing than this.”

“Rifleman?” I asked. He nodded. “God bless you,” I said.

“Papa Doc told me to scrub for you. Said it might be educational for seeing a wound that had healed wrong.”

“Like if it doesn’t get fixed I won’t walk again?”

“Maybe.”

“A chance to cut is a chance to cure!” I said, laughing, and The Marine was off to complete his rounds.

I lay back on the hospital bed, and wondered exactly how this was going to go. One thing was for sure, I was in the company of eagles. I was not sure that I was worthy of the company.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com