On Sunday, practice ended at 6 p.m. A few minutes later, Hammer pushed Meyer, in his wheelchair, out of the Barnett Center and into a cold South Dakota November night. A walker was placed in front of his wheelchair and Meyer stood, leaning on the chair, his right hand in a brace. A doctor told him he might have a stress fracture from the strain he has put on his wrists since he lost his leg.
But he moved the six feet to a waiting car, turned slightly and lowered himself into the passenger’s side for the ride home. Hammer folded the walker and the wheelchair and set them in the back.
On the drive home, his car approached an intersection, and Meyer acknowledged that he feels nervous now when a semitrailer comes at him from the other direction.
After the car pulled into his driveway, Meyer used the walker to get through the door of his garage and stepped onto a hydraulic handicap lift that was built in his home. He worked out for an hour — leg lifts on a table in the living room — talking about his team, fretting that the Wolves must start playing better.
There is work to be done, with his team, with his body.
Later Sunday night, he lay in his bed and directed his eyes at the ceiling, and rested the stump of his left leg on a towel — a dark towel, which Carmen uses because of the blood. His wife pulled off the sleeve covering his left leg. The triangular-shaped wound, with the flap of calf muscle and skin pulled over the front, hasn’t healed, and may not heal for months. Meyer can’t be fitted for a prosthetic leg until the wound heals and the swelling goes down. (more…)
