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He quietly explained that if they amputated they would fit me with a prosthesis, and I’d have to learn to walk with it.

Eva had no illusions about the extent of my injury or how long I would have to endure excruciating pain. She debated the pros and cons for several minutes and prayed silently for guidance. “I’ll sign the consent form,” she finally said.

The next morning, when I awakened after another twelve hours of surgery, I stared at what looked like a huge bulge under the covers where my left leg had been. When I uncovered myself, what I saw took my breath away. On my left leg was a massive stainless steel halo from my hip to just below my knee. A nurse came in and started moving around, doing things around my leg, but I wasn’t sure what she did.

I became aware of Eva sitting next to my bed. “What is that?” I asked. “What’s she doing?”

“We need to talk about it,” she said. “It’s what I agreed to yesterday. It’s a bone-growth device. We call it a fixator. It’s the only chance for the doctors to save your left leg,” she said. “I believe it’s worth the risk.”

I’m not sure I even responded. What was there to say? She had made the best decision she could and had been forced to make it alone.

Just then, I spotted wires leading from the device. “Are those wires going through my leg?”

“Yes.”

I shook my head uncomprehendingly. “They’re going through my leg?”

“It’s a new technique. They’re trying to save your leg.”

I didn’t know enough to comment. I nodded and tried to relax.

“I believe it will work,” she said.

I hoped she was right. Little did I know that nearly a year later I would still be staring at it.

7

DECISIONS AND

CHALENGES

Can anyone ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or are hungry or cold or in danger or threatened with death? (Even the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are being killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”)

ROMANS 8:35–36

One of the most difficult things for me—aside from my own physical pain—was to see the reaction of my family members and close friends. My parents live in Louisiana, about 250 miles from Houston, but they arrived the day after my first surgery. My mother is a strong woman, and I always thought she could handle anything. But she walked into the ICU, stared at me, and then crumpled in a faint. Dad had to grab her and carry her out.

Her collapse made me aware of how pitiful I looked.

Most of those first days remain a blur to me. I wasn’t sure if people really visited me or if I only hallucinated—and from what Eva and the nurses told me, I sometimes was delirious.

The hospital allowed visitors to come in each day, a few at a time. Even when they said nothing, their sad, pitying eyes made it clear to me how they felt. I write clear to me because I know how I perceived them. In retrospect, I may have been mistaken. I suspect I was so positive I would die—and I wanted to—that I saw in their eyes what I was feeling about myself.

Accurate or not, I felt as if they were staring at a mangled body and not a living person, that despite the assuring and comforting words they spoke, they expected me to die at any moment. I wondered if they had come to pay their last respects before I closed my eyes forever.

Though my pneumonia was gone, we still had to treat its aftermath. Nurses came in every four hours for respiratory therapy treatments. They beat on my chest and forced me to breathe through a plastic mouthpiece an awful-smelling, terrible-tasting stuff that was supposed to coat my lungs. This treatment would prevent the pneumonia from recurring and help restore my lungs. I’d wake up and see people coming in, and I’d think, Oh no, here we go. They’re going to make me breathe that stuff and pound on me and try to get the phlegm dislodged. As painful as they were, the treatments worked. Dr. Houchins, the head of the Hermann trauma team, came in several times a day. What Dr. Houchins may