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SIX WEEKS LATER
Cole
“I’ll leaveyou to get used to it. Feel free to take it off and put it on yourself a few times to get used to it. Plus, this is a good time for you to get some practice walking around with it while you are still here and can talk to the doctor about any modifications you might want. Anything to make it more comfortable,” the nurse explained.
“How comfortable is it supposed to be? I can tell you right now it feels tight around the stump,” I told her. It felt weird referring to my leg as a stump, but I didn’t have anything else to describe it. That’s how it felt.
My leg had been taken from just above the knee, so with the prosthetic, I had to get used to the swing of the leg as I moved it back and forth. It really did look natural when I had pants on, but when I was just looking at it clamped onto what remained of my leg, I had my doubts I would ever be able to get used to it.
Raya, for her own part, sat in a chair on the other side of the room, listening to what the nurse had to say and taking note. She helped me coming to these appointments because she was able to remember the things I wanted to talk to the doctor about, as well as the things that the doctor told me to do when I got home.
I knew I ought to be able to do it on my own, but she often asked me why I would put myself through trying to do it on my own when there was someone there to give me a hand? And not in a way that made me feel like I was a burden, either. She promised me she would work with me and my truck when I had the prosthetic fitted, and together we would reteach me how to drive.
It would be a level of independence I would get back, and I looked forward to that. I hated being stuck anywhere, and I hated the feeling that without both legs, I was forced to be places I didn’t want to be. Raya was doing her best to give me as much freedom as she could, but I knew there was only so much that could be done in the first few weeks after the surgery.
For the most part, I had been leaning on her to take care of most everything. I had even moved into her apartment for the six weeks following the surgery so I could be close to her and she didn’t have to make the drive all the way out to my ranch when she had her own life closer to the City. I was even more surprised I was okay with living so close to the City myself, considering how much I hated the place most of the time.
But then, with Raya, things were different. With her around, I didn’t hate everything as much as I had before. I could make things work. I could compromise. After all, Raya had given up a lot for me. I didn’t care how much she insisted she didn’t. The fact that she was still with me despite the fact I was now an amputee and potentially still battling cancer told me that she really meant it when she told me she loved me.
She didn’t just say the words. She lived them out. And that made me feel on top of the world. I had never before met anyone who had the power to make me feel like I mattered to them just because of who I was. It always came down to what I was able to do for them in the past. Women would go out with me because they figured if I worked with horses, I must have money.
Or if I had a ranch, I must be a millionaire. They figured I was some knight in shining armor who also happened to have an unlimited checkbook, and that just wasn’t the case. I struggled with money just like anyone else, and now I had to add the fact I only had one leg to the mix. There was a time in my life when things were so much simpler.
A time when my world was so straightforward and so black and white, I didn’t have to stop to think about the day-to-day things I was doing and how they affected me or others. It was like losing my leg made my entire life do a one-eighty.
But then, Raya was there through it all.
She made it clear she wanted to be with me. She didn’t care about the leg. She cared about me and the life we could create together. It had nothing to do with my looks or my ability, and everything to do with the way we supported each other.
I might not be able to do as much as I used to, but I could sure support her in what she was doing. I didn’t need legs to do that. And she didn’t need anything but her own values to support me. I felt that this was drawing us closer together, and I was grateful for it. I never would have thought that losing my leg would be a positive in my life, but if it was what brought Raya back to me and kept her in my life forever, then I was willing to make the sacrifice.
I no longer felt like the burden I did when I was first told I had cancer, and I was more determined than ever to become as independent as possible. At the end of the day, I was just dealing with the loss of a leg. A lot of people went through that, and they went on to live very fulfilling lives. I didn’t have to be perfect in my own mind before I could be the man Raya needed. I just had to be the right man for her.
And if I was strong enough to keep going despite the fact I was fighting cancer and lost my leg because of it, then so be it. I would be that strong for her and prove to her I wasn’t going to let this get the best of me. I had broken up with her in a moment of weakness, and that wasn’t going to happen again. I didn’t care what we went through.
The doctor came into the room as I paced slowly on the leg.
“What do you think?” he asked with a broad smile. “I made sure to put a note that you were eager to be back on your feet again, and to design it to be able to move as naturally as possible with your lifestyle. It’s not perfect, I know that, and it’s going to take a while for you to get the hang of it, but I’m telling you right now, with practice and physical therapy, you’re going to be just as mobile as you ever were.”
“I think it feels weird not being able to feel the floor,” I admitted. “But I guess I ride enough horses that I know what it’s like to have an extension of myself reaching to the ground. But that wasn’t the only thing I was hoping you were here to talk about. Did you get the tests back yet?”
They had run more bloodwork on me the week before, and both Raya and I were eager to hear the results. Neither of us wanted to get our hopes up too far, but this was a test that would tell us whether I was cancer free – or if I was going to need more treatment.
The thought of that made me sick to my stomach. To go through this, then have to do radiation anyway… I just didn’t want to do it if there was a way around it. That would be even harder than what I was already doing, and I didn’t want Raya to have to go through that herself. I knew how hard it was watching a loved one suffer from the treatment.
I had watched my own mother go through it. I didn’t remember much, but I did remember how sick she was from the radiation, and I remembered how bad it made her feel. I didn’t want to wind up in the same situation myself. But that was out of our hands.
The only way I would be able to avoid radiation was if we were able to get rid of the cancer entirely with removing the leg. I felt it was a massive sacrifice on my part, so I damn well better not have any more cancer. But still. Life had a funny way of fucking me over sometimes, and I hardly dared to think about what I would do if he came in and said that I had nothing more to worry about.
And that’s what happened.
“Cancer is gone,” he said with a smile. “All the bloodwork came back normal, and you are officially in remission.”
“Remission?” Raya asked. “What does that mean?”
“It means there are no cancer cells left. We can’t say that he’s cured yet, that is something that comes with time, but right now, there are no more cancer cells present, and there’s no reason to think that it will come back. It was very much localized to that one place in your bone marrow, and while that was enough to really do some damage while it was on your body, now that you have it removed, it's not likely to return,” he said.
“So what’s next?” I asked.
