A Fall and Great Help

Blankets for a Stranger, Total Hip Replacement after Tumble from My Bicycle, and More Aid along the Way

The Tumble and “KRR-UNCH”, Help from Strangers, and Other Benefits

Still cold in New Orleans, January 16, 2024, first venture with walker outside after Surgery to “replace” my left hip by the excellent Dr. Wesley Clark on January 13. Photo bv Maryse.

April 14, 2024

13 weeks ago I fell off my bicycle—now this is quick bike, a Cannondale-frame hybrid, red and black like Stendhal, generously assembled by Ivan of The Pedal Shop—and broke my left hip. Multiple fractures, there were, right at the point where femur nestles into its elegant socket. Laid me out, this broken hip did.

It was a Thursday evening, around 5:30, January 11, in the suburban Aurora neighborhood on New Orleans’ West Bank. Winter darkness had fallen fast as I was completing a usual 17-mile loop from Maryse’s and my little “Casa Tropicalia” house along the Lane-like Erikson Avenue. The route was unvarying as flat terrain of the Crescent City. East I stroked on the Cannondale through the Woodland and Sullen neighborhoods, to Patterson Road and the Chalmette Ferry landing—then I headed back, West, along Patterson and up to the paved “bike-path” that ribbons the Levee beside the Mississippi where that fabled River crooks and stretched a mile wide here—to my inevitable, often-timed turnaround beside the Algiers Ferry landing—and then East again, pedaling homeward, along bike-path and Patterson to the Southward turn onto the residential street named Chelsea and across General Maier to Eton and then to MacArthur Boulevard and closing push to my regular turn onto Somerset and then onto Erikson and our Turquoise—Orange—and—Dijon Mustard Yellow Casa.

I was more or less hooked on cycling. 100+ miles weeks were my norms. This evening I wore cotton gloves and black Magellan tights, top and bottom, a stocking-cap and for visibility white shorts and and a T-shirt . Temperature dropped into the low 50s as darkness fell.

Traffic of headlights ongoing, both East and West along MacArthur, kept me from crossing at Somerset. I pedaled West to Herald, the street that T’ed at Erikson in front of Maryse’s and my house. I crossed the Westbound lanes, coming parallel with the Boulevard’s median, and then aimed to flow with the Eastbound lanes till there was opening enough to cross into the far bike-lane and then make the one block for my turn to Somerset and home.

Cleats on my Vittoria shoes were locked into the Cannondale’s clipless pedals and I didn’t want to jerk one of them free with having to stop. I was impatient to get home in the cold and the dark.

Vot a Stupid! My left pedal caught the median’s Westbound curb. The Cannondale and of course my locked legs tipped. The split-second of “crashing” was like other moments of regret I’d known. “Damn, you fool!” I uttered while tipping downward to the hard ground and grass.

“Oow!” Impact to my left hip hurt. I was more angry than anything. I jumped up to grab the bike clear of MacArthur and traffic.

The bearing of weight by my left hip as I stood probably caused it to fracture, Dr. Clark and I later agreed.

My compounded mistake was instantly audible. The “KKK’RRUNCH” sound in cartoons is accurate. I fell face-first with a wailing groan. “Oh—Damn!”

For the next five minutes or so, I think, I wondered whether my left leg was broken. Trauma must have caused a kind of protective paralysis. At first—my right cheekbone resting against grassy earth, the rest of me feeling immobile—I couldn’t move my left foot. Relief flooded through me when protracted willpower began to wiggle toes of the foot that was of course stuck in the close-fitting Vittoria shoe. Maybe, I thought, the leg was not broken. Six times in the preceding two years I’d come out of falls on a bicycle, two of them at 20+-miles-per-hour, with only bruises, cuts, and road-rash scrapes. Nine times since age 20 I’d come out of automobile, truck or motorcycle crashes with no broken bones. I remained hopeful though helpless.

Over the following hour five passers-by and a New Orleans Police officer stopped to help on or beside the median, that January evening, where MacArthur Boulevard and Herald Street intersect.

The first who peered at my prostration was a lean, young skateboarder. Sage—Sage Oralta—was the name he told me—and he lived just a half-block down Herald toward Maryse’s and my house on Erikson.

Sage called 9-1-1 and my my wife’s mobile-phone and brought a blanketfrom his house. Two women in their SUVs stopped separately. One’s care went so far as to drive a Mile-or-so to the Planet Fitness, next to a Rouse’s Supermarket, where Maryse might be working out. A Nurse, Black and male, Don Harris, checked my pulse-rate and returned the bike to our house on Erikson, one block away. New Orleans Police Department Sergeant “Big Mike Reynolds” parked his cruiser with flashers on. A second Nurse, Erin Edmonson, also bent over to ask where and how I hurt. Don and Erin were cross-street neighbors on Norland Avenue, a few blocks away within the Aurora district. Each stopped to help independently.

Big Mike said, “Get him a blanket—he’s shivering.” Sage went to his house and returned with another blanket.

Maryse arrived in our Sierra truck. She too called 9-1-1. The Nurses advised us to West Jefferson Hospital for a nearby Emergency Department. Two careful attendants from Acadian Ambulance, Matt and Charles, loaded my ebullient relief (“He’s smiling now—that’s good to see,” Big Mike said) into the back of their wagon.

“West Jeff” in its Emergency and In-Patient wings—ground-floor and 4th-floor respectively—provided assiduous care. First X-Rays

in that room of the ground-floor revealed a smudge-like patch where the top of my left femur inserted into its hip-socket. In short, “You broke your hip,” said Dr. Rice, heading the Emergency Department in that evening-toward-midnight shift. Pain was steady and it twinged as if wrenched when the ladies in X-Ray forced my supine left leg to be straight for imaging. Sure enough: the second imaging confirmed a multiple fracturing of bone had occurred with that “C’rrrunnnch” as I’d tried to stand and grab the bike. I refused Morphine till my Blood-Pressure rose to 183, saying that “anti-inflammatories” and “muscle-relaxants” were what I needed. The rush from that injection doves lifting my body from brain through every limb—much like the Velvet Underground expressed such a rush. Relief was welcome, but that one dominating shot was all I wanted to take.

Contemplating new and inescapable realities.

Every Nurse in Emergency kept close watch. Jade attended to Maryse and me for three-or-so hours, Jade had run Sprints in High School less than a decade earlier. Gabriella Rodrigues—“Now is there a name more Latina than that?,” she said—checked in every two hours to the Room where I was subsequently wheeled that Thursday night. Another “Gabi”—Gabi Licordi of Italian ancestry—and the supervising Susan gave comparable care in the Morning Shift.

The Surgeon who consulted with me around 8:00 a.m. on Friday spoke softly and with meditative, understanding eyes. Smooth-shaven and trim, he looked young as a medical cadet as his 30s. Dr. Wesley Clark. I trusted him at once. We agreed that a “Total Hip Replacement” was the way to go. The alternative of a “stint” had a 30% chance of rejection by the old bone, Dr. Clark said. He scheduled the operation for the next day, Saturday morning.

I could rest. I could eat.

I was wheeled to a new Room, 4308, and a bigger bed on the 4th Floor of the In -Patient wing. Maryse joined me there with books that I’d requested and with home-made and shop-bought sandwiches. The Day Nurses—Tiffany Joseph and her Assistant Rae—and the Night Nurses—Shannon and her Assistant Kay Allison—“checked in” and adjusted the IV’s in my left arm and made the enduring immobility and procedures as comfortable as they could.

John Kesler, Physician Assistant to Dr. Clark, came around 8:00 a.m. on Saturday and reviewed the likely schedule for surgery. Christy from Mississippi was the new Day Nurse. The bounce in her step went with her diligence. Black aides wheeled me to an elevator and down to the O.R. Another Christy filled out Forms of seeming redundance with my answers. Anesthesiologist Mick and Chris and Dr. Webb joked that, “very soon” and “before you know it”, I’d receive a shot and travel to “Happy Land.”

So it was. I awoke that Saturday afternoon in Room 4308 with no memory of Surgery or Recovery-Room. Christy was replacing the I-V of fluids in my left-arm. Maryse was in a Chair to my left beyond Christy. So high and removed-from-duress was I that I sang of the Deer and the Bear in the Beer. Maryse laughed and played along with the imaginary Deer, Bear and Beer.

What about the the surgery’s “wound?” Well, pain-blockers and the secretion of anti-inflammatories around the six-or-so inches of incision into my upper left thigh were so potent that I felt only a numb lump there till Sunday morning.

One who sees—Maryse Philippe Déjean.

We waited on Sunday and Monday. I did exercises abed and tried the walker along the 4th-floor hall. Maryse brought more sandwiches—treats with peppers, mustards, meats and cheeses—enlivening between the Hospital’s nutritious but flavorless Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. I progressed in Nadine Gohodas’ biography of Dinah Washington and Gunther Schuller’s The Swing Era. Pain rose as the “Happy Land” of drugs receded. Twinges along my left adductor felt like pinches into my pelvis, near the bandaged, 6-inch-long incision that also troubled my hip-flexor. I gladly accepted the saucers of Ibuprofen and Oxycontin pills that Nurses set on my tray. A second I-V “supported” the first. Still, I could do more with the leg, Day Shift to Night Shift to Day Shift. Completing a round-trip with “Walker” the length of the Hall despite halts and wobbles and winces felt like a triumph akin to Joshua Slocum’s within this Hospital world. Karen, the Physical Therapist who helped me with Walker and gingerly, modest leg-lifts, knew “Big Mike” Reynolds of the NOPD and remembered my cycling the Algiers bike-path along the Levee nearby her house on Patterson Road. “You’re the gardener!” I exclaimed. “You were the gardener who waved!” Karen said: “I called you the Silver Streak.”

Dr. Bruce Wilson, the Daytime head of West Jeff Hospital (“He’s always jovial,” Christy said) discharged me on Monday, January 15, MLK Day, after a final review of exercises with John Kesler.

Leaving hold of the Walker and climbing into the passenger-seat of our 2002 GMC Sierra was another lesson in limitations and humility.

THERAPY

Every therapist who’s since assisted the “recovery” has been a model of caring and help.

The first few weeks at home, folks from OmniCare came. Their principals—Charles overall, Julie of Occupational Therapy, and especially Dion Lirette are direct as Springs water.

Dion is Choctaw and Houma and a physical-therapist for 27 of his 53 years. He also plays a Native flute to open performances by Grayhawk Perkins and Grayhawk’s small orchestra at Loyola University, the New Orleans Jazz Museum, elsewhere.

Dion might have excelled as a weight-class wrestler. About 5’ 7”, his torso is like a miniature zeppelin’s and his arms are like compact cypress barrels. Dion immediately “worked up” his “very nice program” of exercises to test and strengthen “the surgical leg.” Call them in their simple sequence: Butt-squeezes; Foot-paddles; Extensions of the lower leg while seated in a Chair; Extensions of the Leg while standing at a Counter; Walking sideways while holding to a counter, … Most strenuous were the leg-lifts to 45-Degrees while lying supine on the guest-room bed. Ouch, the regular twinge. How incapable I remained was gall to be accepted.

The leg-lifts grew higher. The reps increased. The round-trips-with Walker at home grew to 400 paces. “You’re looking good. You’re doing very good,” Dion said, and his encouragement was both glad and sincere. He “moved” me up to walking with a cane.

Dion Lirette kneeling in Casa Tropicalia front-yard.

Friends sent gifts and wished a swift recovery.

From Jennifer Maxwell and JAMBAR in the San Francisco Bay Area.

From students of the FEPE (Foyer Espoir Pour les Enfants) orphanage in Delmas of Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

From next-door neighbors John and Tiffany.

Four weeks to the day post-Surgery I could walk without that cane.

This signal step followed a first workout with the Therapists at Jefferson Orthopedic, the center for Doctors and Therapists one complex away from West Jefferson Hospital in Marrero.

Staff there made me at home. Fred Eitmann is an easy-going chief, solicitous and empathic enough to wince at mere word of pain.

Julie Tran became my main hands-on instructor. Stern in demanding fulfillment of the 13-or-so “Stations” in the little gymnasium’s Circuit for those recovering from Hip, or Knee, or Shoulder, or another kind of Surgery. Here again the exercises are simple, but they work. Standing on an incline. Bouncing gently on one’s toes. The “Runner’s Stretch” of pressing hands to a wall while bending one leg so that knee-to-foot-to-thigh form an elbow-angle while the opposite leg is slightly twisted so hip-flexor and quadricep stress the Prosthetic (“Little Packy” is now my fame for this titanium device, shaped like blade-and-stirrup, that has replaced fractured bone); standing 2:00 or 3:00 on a half-sphere meant to improve your balance; shifting sideways back and forth along a counter, while your ankles are constrained by crosswise rubber tubing, in the Monster Walk; working both legs’ hamstrings and thighs while flat on a table, prone or supine, thorough “curls” or more of straight-leg lifts; …”

Nine weeks now I’ve had with the expert hands at Jefferson Orthopedic’s Physical Therapy. Their and Maryse’s help have let me attend two shows at the upstairs Evolve space in Angela King’s Gallery in the French Quarter (climbing those multi-lit stairs!), seeing and hearing Big Chief Shaka Zulu’s and Aaron Reichert’s expositions among the crowds on couches there.

Big Chief Shaka Zulu of the Golden Feather Hunters gang among more than 30 such gangs of Black Masking Indians, in his 2024 suit of beads and feathers and 15 Monkeys.

Aaron Reichert’s portrait of ‘Johnny Cash, Folk Singer’ from his March show in the Evolve space of the Angela King Gallery.

Angela King Gallery.

Stairway to Evolve.

From March 7 onward I’ve been enabled to carry out three recording-sessions with the great Rivers Answer Moons band. The session on March 11 went 10 hours. Up and down and round and round from Iso-Booth to Big Room to Control Room. This past weekend I drove a new round-trip—from New Orleans to Abbeville and beyond in Vermilion Parish and back home—without any impairing moment.

“Little Packy” is now merely palpable. There, forever. “Two pounds of titanium”, Barney Klecker of Minnesota, my rival and friend 40 years ago in Marathons and longer races and three times a recipient of Total Hip Replacements, chalks it up. It’s a wonder, given how helpless I was on that January 11 night of the fall.

What I’ve learned with greater appreciation than ever—more than I could know as a observer of winners who thanked their “teams” at the 1991 World Championships of Track & Field in Tokyo, Japan—is simple as the exercises that were shown me over the past three months.

Everyone benefits from others’ support. Strangers can care for strangers. A warm blanket—two warm blankets!—can immeasurably help someone stricken in the cold. New Orleans and Louisiana are small worlds full of many who intersect over interests that owe to their spirit. Gratitude is good beyond pride. Consistency makes for results. “Little Packy” likes butt-squeezes.

with Tresheen Wilson, Amy Wilson, Amari Zeno, Benny Jones, Roger Lewis, DP, Maryse Philippe Déjean. Photo by Leslie Cooper.

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