Moving forward after tragedy

Kathleen Centore, 35, shows off her biceps to her occupational therapist after the two greet each other with a hug on a recent sunny morning.

"You look amazing!" Milena Alicandro exclaims. It's not until Alicandro, 45, of Middle Village, holds Centore at arm's length to get a better look that it becomes evident that Centore's left leg is held just a little more stiffly than her right.

Centore walks briskly, very briskly for someone whose right leg was amputated just below the knee in the winter. As she leads her visitors through her spotless ranch in North Valley Stream to the backyard, where a large oval pool shimmers in the sun, she exhibits only a bit of a limp.

It was on a Saturday morning, Dec. 12, when Centore says she awoke and "felt fine, had my tea" - then suddenly had a "shooting pain" in her left calf. "I took a shower; I thought that it would just get better," she says.

When it didn't, she and Steven, her husband, went to Franklin Hospital in Valley Stream, then to North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset for surgery that night.

Operations follow

The diagnosis was a deep-vein thrombosis, or blood clot. The first operation aimed at removing the clot; less than a week later doctors would try to save her leg with a bypass, taking an artery from higher in the leg to try to restore blood flow to her lower leg. But neither procedure worked, and on Dec. 21 Centore's leg was removed just below the knee. The surgeon, Dr. Mark Kissin, she recalls, "was upset he couldn't save my leg, but I was glad he could save me."

After her 17-day hospitalization, there was the obvious need for the mending of her limb and physical therapy as well as a pressing need for occupational therapy.

She was one of Alicandro's first patients in January, when Alicandro joined the Visiting Nurse Service of New York. Alicandro's interest went beyond Centore's leg - to her upper body strength.

In 45-minute sessions two to three times a week, Alicandro helped Centore approach her daily tasks as a series of separate movements, using her upper body as the engine. "How would she clean the house, go grocery shopping - as an occupational therapist, my goal is to make a person competent in their life," Alicandro says.

After relearning daily, rudimentary tasks, Centore wanted to relearn how to have fun: play on the floor with the household's three dogs, Tango and Cash, a pair of Cairn terriers, and Gizmo, a Yorkshire terrier. And as winter began to break in late March, gardening.

"Milena told me to compile a list of what I would like to do, and gardening was on the top of my list," Centore says.

"She took me out in the backyard, and she showed me how to get down from my walker on to the ground. I used a plastic bag to keep myself from getting dirty. Then I got back up again."

Centore presented a challenge, Alicandro says, because "she was so dangerous."

"The hardest part was to help her to slow down," she says, "so that she could be safe."

As planting season arrived, Centore got a rolling cart and pressed into service a reach-extender tool and a canvas gardening caddy. She started by planting yellow tulip bulbs - a birthday gift in April - and then geraniums and marigolds.

Planting again

She spent much of the spring filling the planters and flower beds that line the patio, pool and perimeter of her backyard. She put purple, yellow and white mums, tiger lilies, white, pink and purple impatiens and black-eyed Susans into beds already planted with hydrangeas, hostas and caladiums.

In June, once her surgical wound had healed, she got a temporary prosthesis from A Step Ahead in Hicksville. She has since resumed all her gardening and yard work except mowing the lawn, and later this year she hopes to be ready for a permanent prosthetic, one that will be waterproof.

And she credits Alicandro with restoring fun to her life.

"I was worried, feeling disappointed that I wouldn't be able to garden," says Centore, an administrative assistant at Deli Design Inc. in Copiague. "But Milena showed me - that's why I call her my 'gardening angel.' "