It all started once we were seated for dinner in the fancy stadium suite that sat directly above home plate. The restaurant was one of those white tablecloth places that give you too many utensils. When Andrew announced he was going to the bathroom, I said, “Race you to the handicapped stall” and attempted to run like I actually had legs. My slow-swinging robotic knee caught the toe of my shoe on the floor, and I was suddenly eye to eye with the table leg next to my wife’s purse. The kitchen staff and our gracious hosts all ran over, but Captain Johnson encouraged everyone to give me some space so I could get myself up as he had made me do a dozen times in the MATC. In the swarm of concerned patrons, I waved everyone off and went to work getting my legs under me to stand again. As I squirmed to figure out which way to bend and straighten my legs to stand up, Andrew carefully walked around me to the handicapped stall. When you gotta go, you gotta go. Finally, I was experiencing that weird chaotic feeling of operating robotic appendages during a real fall. These things clanged and clunked against each other as I wallowed on the floor for several minutes. All the caregivers (including my mom and wife) laughed until everyone was in tears. I finally got my feet flat on the floor and decided on the “down dog” position to stand up. Now, I was right behind him. I would love to say that was the only calamity that day, but after a successful venture to the restroom, I found myself again with a lowly view of the restaurant, this time with my cheek against the wood floor because I had caught my foot on the floor divider between the restroom and the dining area. This restaurant was out to get me! This time was worse than the running attempt. Trying to remember the move I did last time, I had almost gotten on all fours when the door closed on me and knocked me flat. I tried to get my right foot flat, and the door shut on me again. Finally, I had to Army crawl out of the doorway, dragging my tangled heap of metal behind me. A waiter (who missed the fun earlier) rounded the corner and hurried to help me up, but by this time, the whole dinner party had been trained on amputee occupational therapy. As the young waiter leaned down, the whole table yelled, “Noooooo, leave him alone! He can get up by himself!” I did my ever-so-graceful maneuver to stand again (read: awkward as a baby horse walking right after birth), only to see my entire table in stitches. No one could catch their breath and I watched Paige release the tension that outings like this gave her, even if it was laughing at my expense. I’d take it all day long to see her genuine smile and hear her laugh. Only later was I informed that Captain Johnson was nice enough to take pictures—both times.
I was proving step by step that we could handle trips outside of the hospital. It was actually just as reassuring to hospital staff that I could fall and not hurt myself as well as get myself back up. I was excited about this because there were several adaptive sports trips that we kept hearing about, but we had been told I was not “healthy enough” yet to attend. I made it clear to my new battalion, the Warrior Transition Battalion (WTB) cadre, that PT was the most important part of my day. I was not willing to cancel or skip PT for any other appointments or meetings, because I was determined to find the right set of legs and get better at walking. I was going to play sports again. I was going to shoot hoops and take a trail walk and go swimming and climb stairs and maybe even try skiing. Nothing was going to stop me. All I had to do was get the right fit for my sockets. What a naïve thought that was.
I assumed the pain and discomfort from my first steps was from muscle weakness and not knowing how to balance on the new ends of my lower half. Boy, was I wrong. My legs were changing and morphing every time I wore the prostheses. What was left of my lower extremities was rigid with aggressive bone spurring that was still growing, a condition called heterotopic ossification. It’s where the body dumps massive amounts of calcium deposits in an effort to heal a traumatic bone loss. Except the bone formation doesn’t make any sense. For me, I felt extreme pain in my right hamstring, which called for X-rays. Seeing myself as a skeleton was already the weirdest thing I had ever seen, but when I looked at my right femur, a huge chunk of bone mass had collected where my hamstring muscle should be. Instead of a long, skinny leg bone, the middle of my femur looked like it swallowed a brick. I knew I had some of this bone growth, but nothing drew my attention to it like
