Chapter 7: Lusiadas: Voyage of Discovery (End)

Following surgery, I had to spend a minimum of eight days in Lisbon before the doctor would consider approving air travel. Since I needed a certain level of medical and practical care, my best option ended up being to stay at Lusiadas Hospital for a week of impatient recuperation. Eirik and the kids stopped by to visit me on their way from the beach to catch their plane back to Strasbourg. The moment they shipped out, it felt like a macro zoom lens was applied to the Portuguese tile mosaic that had been my previous life. There was nothing before, nothing after and nothing outside the tranquil, all-encompassing, azure square of hour-to-hour existence in a parallel universe of nurses, medical assistants, serial roommates, medicine and meal delivery, enclosed by four thick lines of grout.

Life at Lusiadas had many upsides, and I felt genuinely lucky to be there. There was my elated fascination at learning Portuguese from studying the closed captions on TV, chatting with nurses during injections, and getting pronunciation lessons during wheelchair rides through the hospital for tests. My Spanish-tinged, me-Jane-you-Tarzan speech pattern gradually morphed into short sentences and even a few simple conversations, helped along by Google translate. There were incredibly sweet gestures, like a nurse’s tender blow-drying of my hair one day following the hurdle of my daily bathing routine, and another’s gentle massage of my unbathed, swollen-beyond-recognition Franken-foot. There were funny moments like when a nurse arrived at my bedside with the improbable offer of “ice cream,” by which she actually meant “ice pack”.

Of course, it was not all rosy. There were the mildly disconcerting visits of Luis, the suave, mustached and highly flirtatious physical therapist who optimistically suggested mid leg-lift that I move to a hotel where he would visit me regularly until I could return home. There was the no-good-very-bad day when my temper flared on being awakened by a nurse for the second time in a row when I had finally found fleeting comfort. My disproportionate outrage opened the floodgates to a solid hour of tears over the unfairness of it all, and especially about losing ballet again for an extended period, just when I was regaining my joyous footing at a serious studio with live pianists in Strasbourg. So mostly, I busied myself at Lusiadas with crafting a written chronicle of my misadventure—which, it turns out, is somewhat fitting, since Os Lusíadas is a famous 16th century literary masterwork about Portuguese travel adventures.

When it was finally time to emerge from the Lusiadas microcosm, I was reluctant to face an all-new adventure for me: dependency. Since the age of 7 when I started boarding cross-country flights alone, I have prided myself on travel-savvy self-reliance. Deposited by a taxi driver in a vague airport queue where I was ignored in my wheelchair, leg in the air and arms full, while other travelers filed on ahead of me to the agent, I felt frustrated. Parked alone in the crowd a fair distance from the gate as the call for those needing special boarding assistance came and went, I helplessly waved my arms like a traffic conductor in a bid to be noticed. The labyrinth of airport back-alleys followed by the two behemoth specialty vehicles and the sheer number of staff devoted to transporting and lifting me into the jet were eye-popping (especially considering that I probably weigh about the same as an overstuffed suitcase and that I have zero qualms about scrambling up a few stairs on my rump). With plenty of assistance (at turns generously offered and firmly demanded), I made it home intact and was overjoyed to greet Eirik at the airport.

Alas, the voyage home was only my introductory lesson in the humiliating dependency of people with impaired mobility. With an 8-week moratorium on even the slightest weight bearing, followed by several months to a year of gradual rehab, my family and I are getting a crash course in help, patience and fortitude. But I guess that gives me ample time to rebuild trust in myself and my ability to do simple tasks like successfully walk down a flight of metro steps. In the meantime, I will be holed up in my Strasbourg abode looking for more adventures to write about. Thank you, dear reader, for accompanying me on this personal Portuguese voyage of discovery.