Cane and Able 
Citizen Cane
It’s been ten years since I was shot and left for dead on a trip to Mexico City. Since that fateful night, my life has not been easy. But try telling me it hasn’t been blessed.
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Damaged nerves still locked in the swath of scar tissue send cockeyed impulses to my brain. My brain can’t make any sense of them, so the verdict comes back: That must be pain. But I don’t hurt where the bullet went in. The pains are called neurogenic and are “referred” to my feet and legs. They come in electric surges that first roam the left leg and then the right and stop my clock about twenty times a day, the one time I counted. The worst variety, which occurs only occasionally, feels like a firecracker going off inside my left thigh. Another kind so numbs the bottoms of my feet that in a car I sometimes can’t distinguish between the brake and the gas.
The most effective drug, which was initially developed and tested to ward off seizures, is called Neurontin. All the others I’ve tried either are so-so or entirely miss the point. The most humiliating one was methadone, which is also dispensed to heroin addicts during withdrawal. It did me no good, and Dorothy put a quick halt to that with an urgent observation that one night among friends I was all but slavering in my doze at a dinner party.
I could still go to the gym, lean the cane against the wall, wrap my hands, see my old friends, forget it all for an hour or two, and make the heavy bags pop. I even sparred a couple of times, with a kind and nimble gentleman of my years, to see if I could do it. (My footwork is, well, shot.) Dorothy and I went back to Mexico City once because I was writing a book about what happened (The Bullet Meant for Me). The surgeon who had stopped my perilous internal bleeding and then been so kind to her and Lila invited us to join a celebration of a baptism and the confirmation of his children. He said I had to get more help, the toll was wearing me down, he could see it in my eyes.
In fast succession two more lucky breaks came my way. My car was equipped with, and I was trained to use, a simple set of hand controls, thanks to the Texas Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services. (Bless their hearts. Who comes up with these tongue-twisting names of government agencies?) The officer at the Department of Public Safety who directed my volunteer driving test seemed a bit puzzled, having never been asked to do that before. She waived parallel parking but at once subjected me to the fierce traffic of one of Austin’s notorious freeway construction zones. “You are well trained,” she said and, with a curt handshake and a smile, gave me back my mobility.
Then, in the fall of 2006, I was writing a magazine piece about a famous neurosurgeon at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center who had been diagnosed with the dreaded kind of brain cancer he had helped his patients battle against throughout his career (“Physician, Heal Thyself,” December 2006). He was making himself the test case for a novel combination of therapies that showed great promise and would expand clinical research, to the benefit of other victims of the disease (sadly, he died two months ago). He was also an international authority on the treatment of pain. He exhausted me one day as I followed him on his rounds and observed a surgery. We talked and e-mailed until I had some grasp of the science of his undertaking. At the end of the last follow-up interview, I thanked him and said he’d next be hearing from a rigorous fact checker (who on that story happened to be none other than Dave, the one who’d weathered the outrage in Mexico City and given me that cane).
“Wait,” said the brave doctor, as I was about to hang up. “What can I do for you?”
I hesitated. “Well, this is about you. It’s not about me.”
“No. Tell me what’s going on.”
And so, over the course of several months, with the enthusiastic endorsement of my Austin physicians, I became the patient of that doctor and of his partner in most surgeries, an anesthesiologist who is also an acclaimed specialist in the treatment of pain. One morning in November 2006 they walked out to Dorothy wearing their scrubs and beaming smiles. Using a kind of anesthetic that enabled them to bring me back to consciousness during surgery and tell them what I was feeling in the most delicate part of the operation, they had found the “sweet spot”—about the size of a dime—where they connected the leads of a neurostimulator. An innovation resulting from decades of pacemaker research, it is an implant attached to nerve systems coming out of the spinal cord. The gizmo, as I now call it, doesn’t eliminate the rogue pains—I still dread whatever sets off the firecrackers—but its electronic impulses defuse many of them. They come and go without my being so consumed by them.
In the past year many people have told me that I’m steadier on my feet, that I take more confident strides. At first I supposed they were just being kind; I still think of myself as a stumblebum. The implant high in my right hip is about the size of the women’s cigarette cases that you see in old movies. At a recent party we encountered some friends who didn’t know about the new development.
“You can feel it,” said Dorothy.
“Where?” asked one of our friends, then she laughed. “I’m feeling you up.”
“Here,” I offered, taking her hand. “Let me help you.”
About Dave’s cane. The milagro long ago worked loose from the tacks and fell away, doubtless thanks to my constantly dropping the cane with a sharp clatter. (Try tossing one from your right to your left hand and catching it so that you can shake hands with someone. I’m good at it, but sometimes I fumble.) It made no sense to award myself a replacement milagro. I sanded and restained the cane periodically, bought a new rubber foot when the old one wore through. Twice I lost it in my usual supermarket. Red-faced and grateful to some other shopper and the lost-and-found department, I was able to retrieve it.
Last fall, after a wonderful vacation with friends at a rented villa outside Lucca, in Tuscany, Dorothy and I were preparing to turn in a car at the airport in the underrated city of Pisa, where the elegant tower leans. It was Sunday, and though gasoline was readily available, on this day the stations were all self-service. Our travel agent had cautioned us that if we failed to bring our rental car back with a full tank of gas, we would be charged but that filling up in Italy is complicated. You have to estimate the amount you need in liters, calculate how many euros that will require, and feed the pump with cash (receiving no change). When you reach the amount entered, the pump shuts off. By rules of anarchy, it seems to me, if you miss your estimate, you have to circle back to the end of the line. At the station a host of couples and families were also road-weary and eager to turn in their cars. There were shouts and curses in languages I couldn’t begin to identify. Why we all didn’t take our gouging from the rental car company, I can’t imagine. With Dorothy driving and puzzling over how many euros to feed the contraption and with me wrestling the hose and nozzle, we at last filled up our little car, and with grins of love and teamwork, we took off.
And that’s where I lost my treasured cane—hooked on a gas pump in Italy. I hope whoever found it there was entertained by the possibilities.
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