*Author's note: I work around a lot of retired Navy and Marine Corps F-18 pilots, and this story is based on something a retired colonel recently told me. He has a retired Marine friend who lives on Fleming Island in Florida who took a job as a teacher's aide several years ago. He didn't end up marrying her, but she did have serious mobility issues caused by complications during childbirth, and she deeply appreciated the many things he did for her.
*****
"Chelsea? I think the best thing to do is ask the county to hire an aide. I know how independent you are, but when I watch you walk, I actually hurt for you," the elementary school principal said.
"No, you're right. I hate to admit it, but it's true. Just walking from my car to my classroom takes me five times as long as it used to. And going up that flight of stairs is...awful."
"I'm so sorry. I wasn't sure you were coming back until the day yesterday, and by then everyone's rooms were set."
"I understand. I'm not complaining, Diane. It's just the way life is for me now," the younger teacher explained.
"I also know you don't want sympathy, but when I think about what happened, I...I have to tell you, Chelsea, I still cry."
Chelsea Tanner was 28 and the mother of a two-year old boy named Bryce. Her son was the only good thing to come out of the events surrounding his birth, after which his mother nearly died.
After some 30 hours in labor, her attending physician told Chelsea it was necessary to perform a C-section. After a brief moment with her husband they agreed to the procedure. During it, the doctor somehow nicked her uterine artery without noticing it until after she was sewn up.
The doctor left the OR and minutes later her blood pressure began dropping. By the time the doctor was called back and had scrubbed in, her pressure was so low the hospital's lawyers had been summoned. The doctor opened her back up, repaired the small tear, then re-closed the wound, angry at himself for having missed something so serious.
On advice from those attorneys and the hospital administrator, the doctor wasn't allowed to speak to the family. Instead the lead attorney delivered a carefully-worded explanation to the family outlining what had happened without admitting culpability. They tersely informed her husband and her parents that Chelsea was unlikely to survive, and if she did, there would almost certainly be complications. They wouldn't tell them what those complications might be, but everyone knew this was serious. Extremely serious.
After 48 very intense hours of waiting, hoping, and praying, Chelsea pulled through, but there was indeed damage. To everyone's relief, there was, at least from the initial tests they'd run, no damage to the brain, and she was able to speak normally although there were concerns with her short-term memory.
It was another three days before she was strong enough to try and walk, and that's when the most serious problem made itself known.
Chelsea's ability to walk had been severely impaired. At first, she could barely take five steps with the aid of two nurses and a walker.
More tests were run, and Chelsea was provided physical therapy at no expense, most likely in the hopes she might not sue the hospital for that, too, and with time, she saw slow, gradual improvements.
The truth was she'd never given any thought to a lawsuit. Her primary concern was for Bryce, who was, by all accounts, perfectly healthy. Beyond that her focus was on learning to walk again with the ultimate goal of getting back to the thing she loved most—teaching.
All she'd ever wanted to be was a teacher, so when she enrolled in Florida State University, the only decision for her was whether to major in elementary or secondary education. That too, had been an easy decision as she truly loved young children, and her hope upon graduation was to be able to teach sixth graders.
Most of her peers wanted to teach anywhere from Kindergarten through third grade with most dreading being assigned to a classroom with older children. But not Chelsea. For her, that age was ideal as the students were old enough to begin to understand things like sarcasm but still young enough to be sweet and polite.
Now, almost two years later, neither she nor her doctors fully understand why she'd lost so much mobility, but she had finally gotten enough strength back in her legs that she could walk short distances with great effort. She felt strong enough to return to the classroom, and although her principal was very concerned about her ability to teach, she was determined to do everything she could to give her the opportunity. Her two main concerns were the issues Chelsea told her she had with short-term memory and mobility.
Walking was an essential part of the job as elementary school children had to be accompanied by a teacher, an aide, or other staff member everywhere they went on campus. At no time could they be allowed to go anywhere by themselves. Yes, a student could be sent to the nurse's office or to another room, but at least one other student had to go with them. But when they moved as a class, they could never, ever do so without a staff member accompanying them. So while Chelsea could indeed walk, she simply couldn't go back and forth to the cafeteria and then to PE or music or the library, let alone up and own the stairs, day in and day out.
Walking was not only painful, Chelsea had no endurance. Never a runner or fitness nut, she'd never had issues walking any distance or doing anything most people could do. But that was no longer the case, and even short walks, like from her car to her room, wore her out. And that's where the need for an aide came in.
Over the roughly two years since giving birth, Chelsea had also lost a serious amount of weight. She wasn't a big woman to begin with, but she'd always joked about a small amount of what she called 'tummy flab' even before getting pregnant. She'd hovered around 130 pounds all of her adult life, and for a woman who was 5' 6" she was very much 'height/weight proportionate'.
Now, however, she struggled to maintain 110 pounds, and found eating to be almost as big a chore as the physical therapy she still attended two days a week. The only redeeming feature she had left that hadn't been decimated by the trauma was her face. While the rest of her body was rail thin, Chelsea still had a normal-looking face which was what people saw first, and the thing by which they decided whether or not someone that thin was possibly anorexic.
No one had ever thought Chelsea was beautiful beyond a kind of generic sense of the meaning in which a woman like her could be 'beautiful' for reasons other than having a gorgeous-looking face. She was by no means un-attractive, she just wasn't someone who turned a lot of heads when she walked into a room. But her positive outlook and cheerful disposition made her someone most people who met her wanted to have as a friend.
She now often joked about how she'd always secretly dreamed of being a size 2. Now that she was, the reason she'd gotten there made her long to be a size 10 again.
"So what do you think? Today is the first day back for teachers and that gives us four more to find someone. I've already talked with the Superintendent and she's willing to hire an aide, but we need to let her know because that money has to be taken from somewhere else."
"I'd like to say give me a couple of days to think about it, but just walking from my room to the cafeteria for the welcome-back meeting left me exhausted. I still have to get back up to my classroom, and just the thought of it is overwhelming. There's no way I could walk a class anywhere let alone to all the places they need to go each day."
"Okay. Then I'll call the county again and let them know we need someone," the principal said. "In the meantime, is there anything at all I can do to help?"
Still upbeat, at least most of the time, Chelsea said, "Do you have a spare set of legs?"
Diane Pokorney, her principal, tried to smile as she said, "No. Sorry. Fresh out, I'm afraid."
"Then I guess I better get going."
Chelsea stood up, steadied herself with the 'Hurry-cane' that now accompanied her everywhere she went, then slowly turned herself around.
She smiled and thanked her principal then began the long, slow walk back to her building and the dreaded flight of stairs.
*****
