Saturday 14 June 2014

A broken bone, a painful boot - and how I plan to act towards the older me

It put the injury I’d sustained in a whole new light. My neighbour looked down at my foot as we stood in the elevator and gave me a pitying look.

“Yes, it’s easier to do that kind of thing as you get older,” he said. “And it starts to take longer to heal.”

It was the first that I’d thought of the misfortune of the broken bone in my foot as anything other than simple bad luck. I broke it, I think, in April and limped around all May in varying degrees of pain. Since the injury was finally diagnosed on June 3, I’ve been lumbering around in an orthopaedic boot, desperately hoping for the injury to heal.
My favourite conveyance, next to one I
dislike intensely: my bike and my
orthopaedic boot

But the moment I thought of my misfortune as a kind of memento mori – a portent of my steady progress away from birth and closer to death – I couldn’t unthink it. My injury made me, I realised, temporarily a person far older than my 44 years. It’s made me realise how apt my fellow New Yorkers – and I myself – am to judge someone by a superficial change to their appearance such as the sprouting of an ungainly plastic boot. It’s an insight that I hope to retain after the blessed day when the boot comes off and my bike once again leaves its resting place by the living room closet.

But I’d still far rather none of the sorry mess had happened.

It started with a dull pain I noticed in my left foot while cycling. It hurt when I put the foot down during stops at traffic lights. I assumed that, like most such aches and pains, it’d get better. Then, on the visit to Michigan that I mentioned in a previous blogpost, I walked around, putting weight on it, and found myself hobbling in agony. That pain was alleviated only when I returned to New York, resumed cycling and found the pain receded to a minor irritant. Then I went on a second cycle-less trip, to Colorado, resumed my agonised hobbling and realised I’d need to get it properly checked out.

The second doctor I saw worked out what was wrong.

“You’re broken clean through there,” he said, pointing on my x-ray to a bone that I now know to be the proximal phalanx in the fourth toe on my left foot. His colleague ten days before had pronounced the x-ray “normal”.

Is that car stopping or going? It's a question that's grown
more stressful for me lately.
The doctor produced an intimidating-looking boot and, over my protests that I’d cycled to the appointment, told me I’d be wearing it for at least two weeks.

It transformed my sense of myself. Now I was unable to do it, I realised how light and easy cycling feels to me. I feel much of the time as if I’m skipping round town on my bike. I suddenly felt slow, lumbering and foolish. I didn’t even have a heroic story. I don’t know for sure – beyond thinking I might have carelessly kicked a kitchen chair in bare feet – how I broke it.

That was before I even tried crossing the street.

When I approached crosswalks, I found all the things I normally took for granted – the ability to get across quickly, a confidence in facing down cars, an ability to take evasive action – had diminished. My stress levels rose in ways they never normally did over decisions about whether to cross when the right countdown clock showed, say, 10 seconds.

Even worse, I found some motorists seemed not only less solicitous than normal but actually less patient. When moving more slowly, I seemed to represent a greater possible obstacle. I became someone motorists were even keener than normal to have out of their way.
 
An odd kind of pain relief: my orthopaedic
boot, complete with inner tube lining.
On the subway, my boot seems to be invisible when I'm standing and need a seat, but to become hyper-visible if I'm delaying someone on the stairs.

I in turn have found myself growing still crankier than normal. The air sacs in the boot I was given turn out to be prone to puncturing. With the air sacs deflated, the boot rubs painfully against my ankle. The pain is like chilli powder rubbed into the open sore of my bad mood over needing the boot in the first place. The only comfort is that I finally hit on the solution. I’ve put a bike inner tube inside the boot and now use it to keep the boot comfortable.

The most shocking street-crossing incident came as I walked my son to school one morning, him on his bike and me hobbling on my orthopaedic boot. At a crosswalk near his school, I waved and shouted in frustration at a van whose driver barged through the crosswalk as we tried to cross. That served to irritate a driver behind, who lent out as I crossed to shout at me, “Why were you shouting?” When I stopped and turned round to answer him, he drove his car towards me to get me to move.

The crosswalk run-in chimed with something I’d heard from an older neighbour who cycles but is currently injured after a fall from his bike. He’d been impressed one time recently, he said, when a motorist had been unusually tolerant in letting him cross a crosswalk. But the driver then lent out of his car and shouted, “Walk faster!”

There’s a malice about both incidents that goes well beyond New Yorkers’ focus on those using their own means of transport or an understandable desire to get about as fast as they can in a city that often doesn’t facilitate it. It topples over at times into a bullying impatience with the weaker based on what seems like contempt for their weakened state. It’s something that I imagine less mobile people in other big cities also experience. But I have a feeling it might be especially acute in New York City, a dark negative to the city’s remarkable, positive get-up-and-go energy.
 
Less dodging through blocked crosswalks for me
once this boot's off my foot.
The two-week minimum period the doctor prescribed for me in the boot concludes on Tuesday. I’m already picturing myself, if a new x-ray is clear, ditching my orthopaedic boot, rushing home and heading into the city on my bike. I will, I’m sure, feel a new appreciation for the privileges of being able to cycle in one of the world’s greatest cities, taking in the view each morning from the Manhattan Bridge and enjoying the feeling of speeding away from the traffic lights on Allen St.

I’m planning to be more solicitous once I’m free, however, of the needs of people who can’t get about as easily. I won’t be on the subway as much in future – but, when I am, I want to be one of the people who’s given me a seat, rather than one of the masses of people who’ve sat and watched me balance on my boot. I’m acutely conscious of how the boot seems to have changed how people react to me, without there having been any significant change in my personality.

In the hurly-burly of the city, I probably won’t live up to my intentions all the time.

But I should bear in mind my neighbour’s remark in the elevator. I’m fortunate that, for the moment, being less mobile is only a temporary state for me. Yet, barring some unforeseen catastrophe, I’ll one day be so much older that the effects are obvious all the time. I want to fix in my mind how, when I’m impatient of older pedestrians’ slow walk across a crosswalk or down a street, I’m demonstrating a bullying callousness I don’t want people to show the older me.

16 comments:

  1. Oh, the indignity of getting older, and slower and needing the kindness of strangers in a cold world. The times when I've been on crutches and needed a seat on public transit, I have not given a second thought to telling someone "I need to sit down, you'll have to vacate your seat." when no one offered a seat to me on a full trolley.

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    Replies
    1. Rusty,

      Congratulations on your forthrightness. Being British in a decidedly unbritish city, I perpetually hope that looking mildly disappointed in people's direction will humiliate them into being nice to me.

      You can see how that's working out.

      Invisible.

      Delete
  2. So sorry to read this. Please accept my sincere prayers for healing. And for whoever had such ugliness in his heart so that: "...he drove his car towards me to get me to move."

    In any civilized city, such a person would be charged by police with Assault with a Weapon. But this being NYC... sigh...

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    Replies
    1. Kevin,

      Thank you for your kind words. I go to the doctor again tomorrow. I'm hoping I'll get released from this boot - but it's still a little sore, so I'm fearful I won't.

      People get angry on the roads. I was pretty upset about the guy who drove at me and he was ready to start yelling at me again when I got out of his way. But the woman in the car with him told him not to, which was something.

      We need to be more solicitous of each other, however. That's for sure.

      All the best,

      Invisible.

      Delete
    2. I'm convinced a cast or crutches warps time, making the time spent in/on them much longer than it actually is. Hope you're back on the bike soon.

      Delete
    3. Rusty,

      I'm champing at the bit, I can tell you. I'm back at the doctor's on Tuesday morning and I could, in theory, get released then.

      I fear, however, that the doctor's going to think I haven't looked after it well enough.

      All the best,

      Invisible.

      Delete
  3. Sometimes we have to go through an unpleasant experience before we can learn a valuable lesson in life. You really don't know a person until you walk in his shoes (no pun intended). I feel sorry about the bad things you encountered but I also have to applaud you for the way you handled it, Instead of throwing a pity party for yourself you chose to take ith as something that made you look at the world in a different angle and use it to improve yourself. I'm so glad you will be able to ride your bike again very soon.

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    Replies
    1. Toni,

      Thanks for your kind words.

      I was slightly throwing a pity party for myself last night after three separate people on the A Train outran me to seats on the subway. But I'm off to the doctor's this morning and hopeful I'll be able to remount my bicycle.

      All the best,

      Invisible.

      Delete
  4. I'm glad to report, readers, that the doctor says the break has healed. I'm about to see how I get on cycling again.

    Thank you for all your good wishes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm REALLY glad to read that you're healing well. Perhaps, while neither of us are teenagers that are made of rubber any more, we've still got a few miles left.

      Delete
    2. Glad to hear you have self-repaired. I'm getting into that "elderly" age group (as witnessed by getting the senior citizen discount without requesting it last week) and yes walking is a bit slower than it used to be. I THINK the slower bike riding has more to do with the aerodynamics of the front-loading cargo bike I ride now and less to do with getting older.

      Delete
  5. While we may not be teenagers made of rubber anymore, your quick healing gives us hope we've still got some bike miles left!

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    Replies
    1. Steve,

      Thank you for your kind words.

      I am happy, relieved and thankful that, despite my hauling my broken foot off to sundry different parts of the United States, it's sorted itself out fairly quickly.

      I do need to be careful, however, so I'm trying not to take off from traffic lights at quite my normal rate. But I've ridden 11.4 miles so far today and I'm in no real pain, which is the first time I've been able to say that in two months.

      The podiatrist also says I've got to wear my supportive shoes. So, before I set off, I wrote on one of them, "You're doing a great job!" On the other, I wrote, "If I weren't beneath you, I'd be 100 per cent behind you." It's a big improvement.

      Actually, I'm just wearing sneakers, rather than leather-soled brogues.

      Isn't it a marvellous thing to ride around a city on a bicycle?

      All the best,

      Invisible.

      Delete
    2. "Isn't it a marvellous thing to ride around a city on a bicycle?"

      Yes it is! I vividly remember when my parents first let me go cycling through the city on my own. I was 9 years old. What freedom. A bicycle is a freedom machine for children.

      Which is why I support the Campaign for Childhood Freedom. See:

      http://www.childhoodfreedom.com/

      Delete
    3. Kevin,

      I also have vivid memories of learning to cycle round as a child (recounted here: http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2012/02/why-family-for-me-is-bit-about-bike.html). My son currently cycles along the sidewalk to school each morning. The Campaign for Childhood Freedom sounds like a very worth endeavour.

      All the best,

      Invisible.

      Delete
  6. That's great news that you healed up quickly and got out of the boot! I see your boot was the Presta type...

    Several years ago I had an impatient-to-turn-right driver honk at me as I was slowly walking my bike across an intersection (with a walk signal in my favor) on my way to a therapy appointment after a back injury. Apparently whether a specific disability is obvious or not (my slowness had no clearly visible cause), the impatient reaction can be quite similar.

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