How to Be New and Different

In 1993 I was into my eighth year as a single parent, had three kids in college, my youngest just became a teenager, my unmarried daughter had just given birth to my first grandchild, and I was about to break up with a very nice man I'd dated for over two years.  It wasn't the best year of my life, to be sure, and I was spending lots of time feeling sorry for myself. 

That April, a magazine I'd written some stories for, called and asked me to interview a woman who lived in a small town in Minnesota.  So during Easter vacation Andrew, my 13-year-old, and I drove across two states to meet Jan Turner. 

Andrew dozed most of the way during the long drive, but every once-in-a-while I'd start a conversation.

"She's handicapped, you know."

"So what's wrong with her?  Does she have a disease?"

"No.  She had to have both arms and legs amputated."

"Wow.  How does she get around?"

"I'm not sure.  We'll see when we get there."

"Does she have any kids?"

"Two boys.  She's a single parent, too.  Only she's never been married.  She adopted her two boys.  The oldest, Tyler, is about your age.  Cody's the younger one."

"So what happened to her?" 

"Four years ago Jan was just like me, a busy single mother.   She was a full-time music teacher at a grade school.  Taught all sorts of musical instruments.  She was also the music director at her church.  She told me on the phone that she and the boys spent weekends and summers camping, fishing and hiking."

"Must be nice.  We never go camping, fishing or hiking." 

"We hike in the park."

"That's not the same as real hiking."

"Well,  I just don't like to hike in the wilderness without another adult."

Andrew fell asleep again before I could finish telling him what little I did know about what happened to Jan.  As I drove across Minnesota I began to wonder how the woman I was about to meet could cope with such devastating news that all four limbs had to be amputated.  How did she learn to survive?  Did she have live-in help? I wondered.

When we arrived in the small town of Willmar, Minnesota, I called Jan from our hotel to tell her that I could come to her house and pick her and the boys up so they could swim at our hotel while we talked.

"That's OK, Pat, I can drive.  The boys and I will be there in ten minutes.  Would you like to go out to eat first?  There's a Ponderosa close to your hotel."

"Sure, that'll be fine," I said haltingly, wondering what it would be like to eat in a public restaurant with a woman who had no arms or legs.  And how on earth does she drive?  I wondered.

Ten minutes later Jan pulled up in front of the hotel in a big, older model car.  She got out of the car, walked over to me with perfect posture on legs and feet that looked every bit as real as mine, and extended her right arm with its shiny hook on the end to shake my hand, �Hello, Pat, I'm sure glad to meet you.  And this must be Andrew."

I grabbed her hook, pumped it a bit and smiled sheepishly. "Uh, yes, this is Andrew."  I looked in the back seat of her car and smiled at the two boys who grinned back.  Cody, the younger one, was practically effervescent at the thought of going swimming in the hotel pool after dinner.

Jan bubbled as she slid back behind the driver's seat, "So hop in.  Cody, move over and make room for Andrew."

We arrived at the restaurant, went through the cafeteria line, paid for our food, ate and talked midst the chattering of our three sons.  The only thing I had to do for Jan Turner that entire evening was unscrew the lid on the catsup bottle.  As I struggled with the tight lid, I remember feeling dumbfounded that Jan drove a car, carried her own food tray, pulled the dollars and change out of her wallet for the waitress and fed herself as if she'd been born with those hooks instead of hands.

Later that night as our three sons splashed in the pool, we single moms sat on the side and talked.   Jan told me about life before her illness.

"We were a typical single parent family.  You know, busy all the time.  On weekends we did all those roustabout things young boys like."  I winced when she mentioned  hiking, camping, fishing and hunting, remembering Andrew's comment in the car.  I'd never done any of those things with my own sons.

"We have dogs and we love the outdoors.  Life was so good, in fact that I was seriously thinking about adopting a third child."

Once again my conscience stung.  I had to face it.  The woman next to me was better at single parenting than I ever thought about being.

Jan continued.  "One Sunday in November of '89 I was playing my trumpet in front of the church when I suddenly felt weak, dizzy and nauseous.  I struggled down the aisle, motioned for the boys to follow me and drove home.  I crawled into bed but by evening I knew I had to get help."

Jan explained that by the time she arrived at the hospital, she was comatose.  Her blood pressure had dropped so much that her body was already shutting down.

By the third day, after many tests, the doctors told Jan that she had pneumococcal pneumonia, the same bacterial infection that took the life of Muppets creator, Jim Henson.  One of its disastrous side effects turns on the body's clotting system and causes the blood vessels to plug up.  Because there was no blood flow to her hands or feet she quickly developed gangrene in all four extremities.  Two weeks after being admitted to the hospital, Jan's arms had to be amputated at mid-forearm and her legs at mid-shin.

Just before the surgery she said she cried out, "Oh God, no! How can I live without arms and legs, feet or hands?  Never walk again?  Never play the trumpet, guitar, piano or any of the instruments I teach?  I'll never be able to hug my sons or take care of them let alone take care of myself!  Oh God, don't let me be dependent on others for the rest of my life!"

Six weeks after the amputations as her dangling limbs healed, a doctor talked to Jan about prosthetics.  She said Jan could learn to walk, drive a car, go back to school, even go back to teaching.

Jan found that hard to believe so she picked up her Bible, looking for some words of comfort.  The book fell open to Romans, chapter twelve.  Her eyes dropped to verse two: Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but be a new and different person with a fresh newness in all you do and think.  Then you will learn from your own experience how his ways will really satisfy you.

Jan thought about that.  Be a new and different person with a fresh newness in all you do.   She decided to give it a try and started to look forward to stepping into her new legs and taking those first steps.  Even though the skin on her limbs had healed after surgery, she wasn't prepared for the pain of the 100 pounds of body weight pushing down into the prosthetics. With a walker strapped onto her forearms near the elbow and a therapist on either side she could only wobble on her new legs for two to three minutes before she collapsed in exhaustion and pain.

Take it slowly, Jan said to herself.  Be a new person in all that you do and think, but take it one step at a time.

The next day she tried on the prosthetic arms, a crude system of cables, rubber bands and hooks operated by a harness across the shoulders.  By moving her shoulder muscles she was able to open and close the hooks to pick up and hold objects, dress and feed herself do almost everything she used to do, only in a new and different way.

Within a few months Jan learned that being different isn't so bad after all.  For one thing, she always wished she was taller.  So each time she got new prosthetics for her legs she had them made an inch longer.  She went from being 5'5" to 5'8".

Every year since she was a little girl, Jan said her hands and feet would freeze during the bitter cold Minnesota winters.  But now?  Jan giggled as she rubbed her short brown hair with her left hook,  "My hands and feet haven't been cold since 1989!   And I'm the only person I know who can take the food out of the oven without hot pads.  If  I step in a mud puddle by mistake, I don't even notice that cold, wet feeling on my socks and shoes.

"When I finally got to go home, after four months of physical and occupational therapy, I was so nervous about what life would be like with my boys and me alone in the house.  But when I got home, I got out of the car, walked up the steps to our house, hugged my boys with all my might and we haven't looked back since."

As Jan and I continued to talk, Cody, who'd climbed out of the hotel pool, stood close to his Mom with his arm around her shoulders.  As she told me about her newly improved cooking skills, Cody grinned, �Yup," he said, "She's a better Mom now than before she got sick, because now she can even flip pancakes!" 

The next day, Andrew and I visited Jan and her sons at their home where she demonstrated how she puts on and takes off her arms and legs each morning and evening.  She showed me how she washes her hair, using a washcloth with shampoo on it to rub onto her scalp.  She played with their five hunting dogs and laughed like a woman who is blessed with tremendous happiness, contentment, and unswerving faith in God.

Since my visit with Jan Turner in 1993, she has completed a second college degree, this one in communications and she is now an on-air announcer for the local radio station.  She also studied theology and has been ordained as the children's pastor at her church, the Triumphant Life church in Willmar.

Most importantly she's still the only adult in her household and loves every minute of her active life with her two boys.  Simply put, Jan says, "I'm a new and different person, triumphant because of God's unending love and wisdom."

After my visit with Jan Turner I was a new and different person, as well.  I learned to praise God for everything in my life that makes me new and different whether it's struggling through one more part-time job to keep my kids in college, learning to be a grandmother for the first time, raising another teenager, or having the courage to end a relationship with a wonderful friend who just wasn't the right one for me.

Jan Turner may not have real flesh-and-blood arms and legs, hands or feet, but that woman has more heart and soul than anyone I ever met before or since.  She taught me to grab on to every "new and different" thing that comes into my life with all the gusto I can muster and just put one foot in front of the other until I get the job done.