Yesterday his prosthetist told us we could customize his sockets with any fabric design we want. So today, we made our way down to Joanns fabric store in Temecula to pick something out. The store was ridiculously busy. After finding the perfect roll, we grabbed a number at the cutting table to have our small amount of fabric cut off the large roll. As I pulled number 99, I looked up to see they were only on number 15! Surely this wasn’t correct, so I asked several people standing there waiting. Sure enough, there were 84 people ahead of us waiting to get their damn fabric cut. Nick and I reluctantly sat there for fifteen minutes and watched them only take numbers up to 23. After fifteen minutes there were still 76 people ahead of us. This just wasn’t going to work. He was very uncomfortable sitting there and his tailbone pain was getting worse and worse. But if we didn’t get the fabric now, there was no other time before Monday morning to get it. Just as we thought about giving up, Nick spots a woman he knows from Canyon Lake. Like a saint, she offered to switch numbers with us. She had number 25. We were loading up into the car, with our two yards of fabric, only five minutes later.
And how did we even find out that we could custom design the sockets in the first place? Nick ran into an old friend from Jr High school at the prosthetists office yesterday. He lost his leg, above the knee, in a bad car accident two years ago. He took pride in showing off his new custom designed socket. The office failed to mention that we could provide our own fabric for it until we saw his. And that brings us full circle.
We run into somebody Nick knows almost everywhere we go. It’s amazing! And people always seem very genuinely happy to see him. This wasn’t the first time, or the last time, that a friendly familiar face randomly helped us in a stressful or uncertain situation.
Here are a few bonus fun factoids from yesterdays leg fitting. After Nicks first attempt, he mentioned that it was much easier than he thought it would be. He also said that he can feel where his foot is placed on the ground below him. Strange that he can sense that already. His legs were a little swollen yesterday and the right one barely fit in the socket to click down the minimum amount. He has to wear his shrinker socks a lot more this week to keep the swelling down so his legs will fit properly. We found out that Phil didn’t make the arm for the champion surfer girl after all. Instead, he actually made the arm for the drummer of Def Leopard. He finally had a prosthetic made more than ten years after he lost it, because his wife made him get one. See, fun little bonus factoids!
Nick Fener 