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My right foot came down on the steps edge and I...

My right foot came down on the steps edge and I began to fallHad I fallen forward, the worst that could have happened was scratched palmsInstead, I jerked backward, heard a loud pop, and fellThe sound was so loud that Norman, who was a few feet in front of me, heard it, turned around, and caught me, or I would have been hurt far worse than I was An ambulance took me on the forty-minute drive to StMarys Hospital, a Catholic institution the White House medical team had chosen because it had an excellent emergency roomI was there for the rest of the night in agonizing painWhen an MRI revealed that Id torn 90 percent of my right quadriceps, I was flown back to WashingtonHillary met Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base and watched as they lowered me out of the belly of the plane in a wheelchairShe had been scheduled to leave for Africa, but delayed her trip to get me through the necessary surgery at Bethesda Naval Hospital About thirteen hours after my injury, a fine surgical team led by DrDavid Adkison gave me an epidural, put on some music by Jimmy Buffett and Lyle Lovett, and talked me through the surgeryI could see what they were doing in a glass panel above the replica hermes bag operating table: the doctor drilled holes in my kneecap, pulled the torn muscle through them, sutured the ends to the solid part of the muscle, and put me back togetherAfter it was over, Hillary and Chelsea helped me get through one horrible day of pain; then things began to get better The thing I dreaded most was the six months of rehabilitation, and not being able to jog and play golfI would be on crutches for a couple of months and in a soft leg brace after thatAnd for a while I was still vulnerable to falling and reinjuring myselfThe White House staff rigged my shower up with safety rails so that I could keep my balanceSoon I learned how to dress myself with the help of a little stickI could do everything but put on my socksThe medical staff at the White House, headed by DrConnie Mariano, was available around the clockThe navy gave me two great physical therapists, DrBob Kellogg and Nannette Paco, who worked with me every dayEven though I had been told Id gain weight during my period of immobility, by the time the physical therapists were through with me, I had lost fifteen pounds When I got home from the hospital, I had less than a week to get ready to meet omega de ville men's watches Boris Yeltsin in Helsinki, and a big issue to deal with before thenOn the seventeenth, Tony Lake came to see me and asked me to withdraw his nomination for director of central intelligenceSenator Richard Shelby, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, had delayed Lakes confirmation hearings largely on the grounds that the White House had not informed the committee of our decision to stop enforcing the arms embargo against Bosnia in 1994I was not required by law to tell the committee and had decided that it was better not to do so in order to keep it from leakingI knew a strong bipartisan majority of the Senate favored lifting the embargo; in fact, not long afterward, they voted for a resolution asking me to stop enforcing it Though I got along with Shelby well enough, I thought he was far off base in holding up Lakes confirmation and unnecessarily hampering the operations of the CIATony had some strong Republican supporters, including Senator Lugar, and would have been voted out of committee and confirmed had it not been for Shelby, but he was worn down after working seventy- and eighty-hour weeks for four yearsAnd he didnt want to risk hurting the CIA with further tiffany

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