by: Marty Chrisman
True to her word, Cindy came in the next morning after the breakfast trays were collected. Smiling at Luke who looked back at her warily, she said “First thing we gonna do is sit you up on the side of the bed for a little while. You’ll probably feel really dizzy at first but that’s normal so don’t worry about it. I’m gonna be standing right in front of you and I’m gonna have Bo stand behind you and neither one of us is gonna let you fall.”
Before Luke could object, she threw back the covers and grabbed his legs, glancing at Bo, she said “Bo, just get Luke’s shoulders and help him set up. On the count of three.”
Bo got into position and waited for her signal. “One, two, three…” when she reached three, Cindy gently swung Luke’s legs over the side of the bed while Bo held his shoulders and helped him raise into a sitting position. Immediately, Luke felt a severe wave of dizziness sweep over him. He was sure he would have fallen on his face if Cindy hadn’t been standing in front of him, supporting him and keep him upright. It took several minutes but finally the dizziness started to pass, leaving him feeling slightly nauseated. “How ya doing, Luke?” Cindy asked
“I feel kinda sick…” he admitted
“That’s okay. It’s because your body’s used to lying flat and not sitting up. It’ll pass.” She told him “Just let me know if you feel like you’re going vomit, okay? I don’t wanna have to change my clothes this early in the day.” Luke nodded slightly, ignoring her feeble attempt at humor. After a few more minutes of having him set up on the edge of the bed, she nodded to Bo to let him lay down again.
“Now, I’m gonna let you rest for just a few minutes, then we’re gonna get you up in the geri chair and take you down to therapy.” Luke laid his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes willing his stomach to stop churning. Sooner than he would have liked, Cindy was asking Bo to help get Luke into the geri chair. He felt Bo picking him up in his arms, then gently sitting him down in the geri chair. The foot of the chair was elevated and the back was reclined so that he was in a semi prone position instead of sitting straight up.
He kept his eyes closed as he felt Cindy fastening a seat belt around his waist. “Thanks, Bo” she said as she moved around to the back of the chair. “We’ll be back in a couple of hours.” Luke felt her pushing the chair out of the room and into the hallway. He opened his eyes, watching the lights on the ceiling passing overhead as she rolled him down the hall. He hated feeling so helpless but he knew that if he wanted to get better so he could go home, he’d have to do whatever Cindy told him to do. After two months in a coma, he felt as weak as a baby and his muscles were almost as useless. The only thing that still seemed to work the same as before the accident was his brain.
In the therapy room, Cindy adjusted the chair to a sitting position, forcing Luke to sit up even if he didn’t really want to. He fought back another wave of dizziness. She fastened a board to the chair in front of him making a table. She sat a plate, a glass and silverware on the board in front of him. Walking over to a small refrigerator in the corner, she came back with a small carton of milk that she poured into the glass and a container of chocolate pudding that she opened and spooned out onto the plate. She also laid some vanilla wafers on the plate. “Okay,” she said “Eat.”
Luke reached out and slowly grabbed the glass. He had to concentrate to make his fingers close around the glass. Slowly, he raised the glass to his mouth and took a sip, not spilling too much. The vanilla wafers he could manage without too much trouble, but his fingers refused to grasp the silverware, he kept dropping it. “Okay,” Cindy said gently before he got too frustrated “We’ll have to work on that a little more. But it looks like you can handle drinking out of a glass and eating finger foods.” She told him. “So, I’m going to talk to the nutritionist about changing your diet order so we can get rid of the feeding tube.” Luke rewarded her with a faint smile “Now, they’ll probably put you on liquids first, then soft foods and then normal food. We need to make sure you can keep it down okay after being on the feeding tube for so long. And I don’t think it’ll take long for you to get used to using silverware again, your fingers just need to get a little stronger and we need to work on your coordination a little.”
She put her hands on her hips and looked at Luke “Are you ready to get into the wheelchair for awhile?”
“No.” Luke said clearly, shaking his head stubbornly. Cindy saw the same fire in his eyes that she’d seen the night before when she mentioned the wheelchair. She was right, they were going to butt heads on that issue.
“Alright, we’ll work on something else for awhile.” She said “But you’re getting in that chair for awhile before we go back to your room.” She removed the dishes from the lap tray and replaced them with some wooden blocks of different sizes. For the next half hour, she worked with Luke on sorting the blocks according to size and color and stacking them. The exercise was designed to help improve his fine motor skills and his eye/hand coordination. It didn’t take her long to realize that Luke was the kind of patient who was going to get easily frustrated when he couldn’t do something that he could have done without even thinking about it before. And his way of dealing with that frustration was going to be getting angry and refusing to cooperate. She knew she had to gain his trust and make him see the benefits of what she was doing if she wanted his cooperation.
She put away the blocks and sat on a stool in front of Luke so that he was forced to look at her. “Okay, Luke….I know you don’t wanna be doing this…and that it’s frustrating as hell to you.” She paused to let her words sink in “But the things I’m doing right now are going to tell me how much you can and can’t do and what areas we need to work on so you can get out of here and go home. Now if something is really frustrating you or you really don’t want to do it, tell me and we won’t do it during that session. Okay? But I also want you tell me why you don’t wanna do it.” She smiled “Do we have a deal?”
“Okay.” Luke finally said with a smile.
“Hey, at least I got a smile out of ya.” She told him with a grin “I bet all the girls in Hazzard love to see that killer smile.” She saw the sparkle in those sapphire eyes and knew she was starting to make some headway. She sensed that Luke Duke was stubborn and used to being in control and the biggest thing they’d have to overcome was his anger at his present condition. She knew he really didn’t want to try getting in the wheelchair, not yet, so she decided to let that go and cut their session short for today. She had a feeling that spending the day with Bo was going to be more beneficial to him right now.
Luke looked mildly surprised but grateful when she told him that she was finished for now. She wheeled him back to his room where Bo was waiting. Turning his care over to his younger cousin, she said “Okay, you two…why don’t you go outside for awhile? I have a feeling that you don’t spend too much time inside at home.” She smiled when both boys flashed identical grins at her. They were both very attractive men and she was sure that the girls in Hazzard thought so too.
After she left to care for her other patients, Bo grinned and wheeled Luke out of the room and down to the courtyard. As they went outside, Luke sighed and leaned back his head, enjoying the warm of the Georgia sun on his face. This was the kind of winter weather he was used to not the cold frigid weather up north. It felt good to be back in Georgia and he hoped that he never had to leave again.