Jan. 17 of 2001 was a never-forgotten date. In January of that year we moved from Pengda to Fenghuayuan and some pieces of daily living equipment were still in the original living room. The 17th was already 23rd of the twelfth month of the lunar year，which meant the spring festival was soon coming. Riding a motorcycle, I carried Meilan Zhang to Pengda to fetch some bowls and plates. It was about 3 pm when we were riding down the overpass and turning a U turn in the direction of our apartment. Although the turning speed was slow, the motorcycle fell down with both of us. My right leg was pressed by the cycle. When I stood up, I felt that it didn’t matter and went on riding.
On that day, the Linshu County Printing Factory of Shangdong Province sent the books to us we asked it to print. I went to Mr. Shihua Li and waited there. It was not long before I had a strange feeling in my thigh, which made me think of my falling minutes before. I told Mr. Li and came back to Pengda. When I stood on the ground and tried to make the motorcycle also stand up I fell down. Meilan Zhang came out from our living room and with the aid of my neighbor I went in with one leg. I discovered that I could not lie flat on the bed and had to lie on the left side. It seemed a big problem. I phoned Li Song and asked him to come. In a moment a car arrived and carried me to the nearest hospital, the fourth hospital of Xuzhou. I had an X-ray film taken and was told the neck of thigh bone (femur) was broken and had to be operated on.
My god! Why such a bad thing happened to me? What is the neck of the thigh bone? I had heard of the head of femur and never heard of its neck. The film came and I could not read it. By the doctor’s explaining I got to know the the femur head was the highest part of the thigh bone (femur), which was supported by the neck of the femur. I thought when the femur neck was broken, it would affect the blood supply to the femur head, leading to its death. The doctor said if it grew quickly after the operation, the supply of the blood would not be affected, otherwise, such a threat would exist. There was another way to solve the problem, buying an artificial femur head with the neck to replace the injured one. However because of the life span of the artificial one, it would be worn and its longest life would be 14 to 15 years. I was 56 in 2001, and it meant that I would buy another man-made femur head when I get to the age 70. Too terrible.
The whole night of 17, Jan. of 2001 saw my sleeplessness. In the big ward there were 8 beds and I could only lie on the left side, feeling unbelievably sad. Normally, you would turn over again and again before falling asleep and during the whole night, you would also turn over even if you were sleeping. When you experience such a bitter experience you would sigh how happy it is to be a normal person.
By exerting themselves of Song Li and Xu Li, I was moved to a small room of the ward when the patient in it left hospital. There were two beds in it and the nurses said that they would refuse to accept another patient as possible as they could so that my escort could also rest during the night.
The operation was in a queue, and the urgent patient was allowed to jump the queue. I was pushed into the operation room on the morning of 21, where man doctors in charge of the operation were talking in fun with the nurses. There were some trainees standing by honestly, saying nothing. Accepting local anaesthesia, I could hear all that they were saying, causing me to have a feeling that they were not working seriously. I did not know when the operation began, but when the doctor made holes in my bone with a drill what I felt was as if the decorator was drilling a hole in the wall or wood. One hole not in the right place, another one was drilled. Screwing the bolts followed. Suddenly one bolt was broken and the doctor asked the nurse to fetch another one, who responded that three bolts were prepared and no bolt of the same size was available. So another bolt longer than planned was screwed into my bone. They had not expected the bolt would be broken and such a bad thing happened to me. It was about 9 o’clock when I entered the operation room and the operation began at 10. I estimated that it would last about two hours and the operation could end at 12 o’clock. It did not go so smoothly and the doctors were working hard to reach the ideal result. I felt that it lasted much longer than I expected. I didn’t dare to make any comments on the operation and said about my worries that the waiters outside, including wife, sons, daughter-in-law, brother-in-law, nephew and etc. were anxious about the result of the operation. The nurses said it was soon to be finished and the doctor was ready to sew the cut. When the sewing was finished, it was about two pm. I was ashamed that it had lasted so long and all the doctors and nurses went hungry. I asked Li Song and Li Xu to invite them to lunch. One nurse replied that they often experienced such a case and asked us not to be so mannerly.
Three bolts were drilled into my bone, fixing the neck to the head of the femur, and I could lie flat. But I was asked to always lie flat. The right foot was wearing a cloth shoe with a wood plate across the sole, causing the right leg not to move at all. After a while I could not endure such a unique pose of lying, with either side of the waist of the back in unbearable pain. At the moment when people usually went to bed my operation cut began to outbreak, aching so badly that I had never experienced. I made noises the whole night. A doctor on duty came to me and recognized me immediately, who used to be a student of the Zhengji Middle School. He said that the anesthesia pump could be adjusted a little but too much drug would cause toxic side effects. The cut was so long and the pain was unavoidable. He asked me to clench my teeth and get over hours, the pain disappearing gradually. Liangliang Song had come from Beijing and accompanied me with his mother the whole night, unable to sleep because of my noise. It was not easy to see the day broke and my operation cut’s pain was easing. However, either of the waist of the back was sore and I wanted to turn over very much, but it was not permitted at all. I had no choice but to ask Meilan Zhang to use the tip of one finger to withstand my waist. In a moment she got tired and my pain was continuing.
I began to worry about two things: one is the defecation and the other is the pain in either of the waist of the back. I didn’t dare to eat enough food, trying to decrease the defecation. It is very happy when you can defecate every day. Once you don’t go to stool normally and the feces become hard, it’s not easy to drain, which was called constipation. There was a bedpan in the wardroom. When it was put under my buttocks I could not exert. How I wished I could suffer from the diarrhea. We turned to the doctor for help and got the response that suppositories glycerol might be used to lubricate the anus. Was that the retribution of the heaven? How was I punished that way? I could not endure to do such a thing by others. I was ashamed to let my wife give me such a help let alone my son. There was no choice. No food, no shit, which meant the end of one’s life. I began to live such a life, urinating and defecating in the bed. The third evening after my operation was the lunar new year’s eve and those patients who could leave hospital went home, there being very few patients in the ward. Wife and children carried dishes to the ward and spent the eve, watching the Spring Festival Gala Evening. I was unable to watch TV and unwilling to listen to it. Everyone becomes a glutton before the Gala Evening. What had happened caused the unrest to my family. The children didn’t not reach the age of 30 and the father lay in bed and needed their care, which made me experience the sore taste.
I couldn’t leave hospital until the stitches were removed. I stayed in hospital for two weeks. Li Xu’s parents lived closed to the hospital, and they often sent me food, dish and soup; a student of Meilan Zhang’s, called Lin Zhang, lived also not far from the hospital and she often cooked delicious dishes for me. I had a heavy burden in my mind. Further, it was not convenient for me to eat, lying in bed, which caused me to lose interest in delicacies. I appreciated their help very much. The operation cut was quite long and the removal of the stitches took three days. On the day I left hospital, Liangliang Song had gone to Beijing. Considering that four persons were needed to carry the stretcher, Meilan called her brother and nephew, and one of my colleagues, Mr. Sun also came. The four persons were all tired out to carry me from the ground to the third floor of my home. Li Song was out of breath. Finally, I was at home and lay in my own bed, easy in my mind and paying undivided attention to recovery of the injury and the wound.
When I came to home, the spring term of the school began and Meilan Zhang had to have her classes. When she went to the class, I was left alone at home. Cordless phone was by me and I got touch with the outside. The heads of the school came to see me and I could only talk with them by phone because I could not get up to open the door, letting them come in.
I lay flat for so long time that I could not feel any pain in either side of the waist of the back. However, a lot of things worried me in my mind. Before the operation I was checked normally and discovered my blood glucose with the empty stomach reached 9mmol/L. The doctor said that I suffered from the diabetes. I had zero knowledge of the blood glucose and was at a loss, the complication caused by the diabetes being terrible for me. Especially when I was rechecked for the first time after I left hospital, I was told that the broken femur neck was not seen growing at all. The Chinese saying “it takes 100 days for the harm of the tendon and bone to recover” was not suitable for me. I had to continue to lie flat in the bed and my emotion got to the trough. A Chinese bone “specialist” from Chuxiong of Yunnan Province sold his medicine in the Mining Hospital of Xuzhou, boasting that his medicine could make the recovery of the bone injury much faster. One small porcelain bottle of liquid medicine cost 150 yuan. I drank one bottle a day, for 20 days, almost every day I swallowed a bike (a common bike cost 150 yuan). I spent every day, reading books, listening to the recorded novels and watching TV. What I admired was to sit at table to eat and in the toilet to defecate. I was wondering how long it would last before I could live normally. I was anxious to sit up and could operate the computer, writing with the keyboard and making the difference between the daytime and the night. Another three months passed and it was now in the summer vacation. Once more I was carried by an ambulance to the hospital to be checked, anxious to see the effect of the Chinese medicine. The reply was that the broken femur neck kept the same and I had to continue to lay flat. The doctor allowed me to sit at the bed side for a while every day. I slowly put two of my legs down from the bed and tried to sit up when I discovered that my waist had lost the function to bow. Quilts were used to raise my head and I lay across the bed, with two legs down the bed. I got to know when I didn’t feel the pain in either side of the waist of the back, it meant the waist function was lost. In order to recover the waist function, Meilan Zhang drew my hand, making me sit and then let me lie, training several times every day. I finally could sit at the bed side for a while. The quilts were put at my back, so I could lean on them when I was tired, being able to exercise myself now, and prolong the time of sitting as possible as I could. I had my computer moved to the bed side, the keyboard in front of me. I could type for a moment, able to write, meaning that I could fight against the injury for a long time without the feeling of loneness.
Since I began to write the computer English, I had been learning to operate and writing the books as well, which meant I learned how to operate and finished writing a book as well. In 1997 I began to learn how to surf online, namely how to log on the line, how to browse and how to search. At the beginning I didn’t know how the network worked. Once online I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t believe the email could reach everywhere in the world. I had an email address of an organization in the US which helped the Caterpillar English Training Center employ American teachers. I tried sending a letter to it and its head, Ms. Wu, a Taiwanese lady, replied to me in days, which made me very excited. I had experienced the power of the web myself. Online I found the help on the Yahoo website about how to surf online. I read it very seriously and knew that online we could find the information we want, take part in varieties of activities we like, and upload our own information to the right place of the web to let others to share. I practiced what I had learned, made notes to the difficult points and translate the whole help into Chinese, which I contributed to the magazine “English Learning” of the BFSU. The editor in chief responded very quickly and told me the magazine designed a column called “Learn the Internet” and appeared the articles I wrote one after another. From January of 2000 to August, 8 articles were published. In October of 2000 I took the 8 issues of “English Learning” to Mr. Derun Liang, the vice chief of the publishing house of BUAA, saying that I would enlarge them to a book called “Web English Course”. Mr. Liang nodded his head in agreement. Because of my bone fracture, the work was stopped and now I could continue to write it on the bed.
Web English course published by the publishing house of BUAA
The small book “Web English Course” finished, I began to search online for the information about the terms of the computer and the Internet and translate them into Chinese. I edit them in the alphabetic order and discovered some of them were so professional as to be beyond my capability. I asked Liangliang Song to help me and he invited his girl friend to take part in the job. I promised to pay them some remuneration to encourage them. When the draft was soon to be finished I asked the middleman to help. The book was named “Internet terms in English and Chinese Translation” and its size was 550,000 characters. It was published in edition binding in China Financial and Economic Publishing House.
Hardback of "Internet terms in English and Chinese Translation"
It was at the beginning of the seven month after the operation that I began to walk with the aid of two walking sticks. I could finally sit at table to have meals and at the toilet for convenience. When the femur neck could grow well, when I could use one walking stick, when I could replace a walking stick with a cane and when I could walk without any aid were out of sight. In the summer of 2000, I enjoyed the journey around the Bohai Sea Gulf and I didn’t know when I could re-enjoy the fun of the travel. I had to wait bitterly and patiently.
June 9 of 2011 in Xuzhou
Proofreading on March 22 of 2012, in Chicago
Uploading on Aug. 7 of 2023 in Xuzhou
