Wheelie for...Well, That Wasn't for Safety.

Hi there Rex!
as a PT i learned a lot from your postings!
Never seen a knee- scooter, or the peg-leg, but will point it out to our surgeon!

To return something, a piccie from my Sidi crossfire boot (this is the SM version but also the MX boot got it)


Metatarsal protection!, thick lump of alu where you needed it!

The surgeon was fascinated with the peg-leg iWalkFree thing, too--he took photos and said he'd never seen one before, and would suggest it to his more athletic patients. It's not perfect, but it has made work and travel and having a bit of a life possible. The scooter was also a really nice mobility aid, though I did fall off of mine 3 times (learning cuve, painkillers, jumping it off curbs... :) )

I am definitely in the market for some Sidi Crossfires, but I need to get to the point of wearing shoes again before I can buy--not sure what shoe size my new modified left foot is going to be. Also, no boot is a panacea; my fabulous GF has managed to break BOTH her ankles (fibula breaks only, coming off her DR650) while wearing her pair of Sidi Crossfires. :huh

I did 1.5 miles of 50% weightbearing crutching yesterday. Good exercise, but I can sure feel it today! Also doing ankle rotations, trying to curl my toes downward (the tendons are contracted and they have a long way to go), and doing my "grab the towel" exercise, in which I plant my heel on the floor and try to move a towel sideways and back by grabbing and sliding it with my toes.

glad you are healing ... was painful just reading this thread ... makes one think carefully what happens on get off's. convinced it's better to stay on your pegs... jump off and let your bike go down.

a local rider has pins inside his leg from a get off in South America .. he was wearing a good quality protective boot too.

Hiya Rex!

The progress you made is remarkable, but probably a long way from wearing whatever kind of MXboots, so maybe that picture is a bit premature in your case, but a lot of readers are scratching their head, reading about your small crash with big results.
Maybe they spend their money wisely.



I googled walk free and peg leg, came up with Capt. Hook, but can`t find a brand name, is there any info on the device itself?

For next season,
The Sidi`s got a replacable sole, maybe you can have a pair of them costumized to have more rocker built in, like the airboot you are wearing now.
Pivot pegs will also help a bit too,

Rex, been sporadically following along. Nice to see you on two feet, even for a short time. I have have really enjoyed your writing, and hoping you get a full recovery soon. Love the shooting pix!

Oh and +1 on the Crossfires. My visa bill hurts a bit, but have read too many broken foot stories, to wear anything else off road. They've been under the bike a few times since I bought them, and was glad I had them.

Glad to see you're healing up! I've been meaning to learn to wheelie on my dr350. It doesn't help seeing a friend ride it and pull a HUGE one no problem right in front of me. I had no idea it could wheelie that well before I saw someone else do it.

Have fun with those wheelies, man, just keep your head, keep that foot over the rear brake, wear good boots, don't chop the throttle or turn the bars! The DR350 will come up just fine with a little practice. Ask me why I know...

I intend to get a set of Crossfires, but no boot can protect our fragile human bodies from all the crazy perturbations of physics we riders throw ourselves into. My awesome and supportive GF is, in part, such a good support because she knows exactly how it is to be in my place: she has a pair of Crossfire TAs that she's broken BOTH ankles while wearing (lowsiding a DR650 in sand and thick, floury dust over hardpan will do that). Nothing removes all risk.

I am continuing to do 50% weightbearing, assisted by crutches. What a workout! My greatest distance so far is 2 miles...I intend to wear that dang boot right out. Doing all the PT's suggested exercises, of course. I swear it hurts a little less than when I started. A little. Also, with partial weightbearing the foot is less swollen; my theory is that the pressure of part of my weight on the ground pumps blood and lymph through the foot more efficiently. Either way, less swelling is a lovely thing. I've recovered, according to the therapist, 1 degree of ankle flexibility in 2 weeks. It didn't sound like much, but she says it's significant; 5 degrees past neutral allows for a normal stride.

As for the pegleg thing, it is called an iWalkFree, and it looks as if they just came out with a new, cheaper model, making it more accessible to the average schmo like me. Wonder if it's as good or better than the original?

The scooter has been passed on to a friend of mine with a non-bike injury; he just tore his achilles tendon at work. Poor dude, he needs surgery to re-connect the thing. Rough year on feet and ankles!

[FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica][FONT=verdana,arial,helvetica]I have been continuing to struggle with the medical bureaucracy at Highland...on my last visit, one of the interns or admins lost my chart (yep, they still use paper charts). My chart ended up in the neurology department. :eek1 I was forced to miss my physical therapy appointment while I sat and waited anxiously...and I didn't get seen for 6 hours. I was, as I have been several times, so frustrated I was near tears. When I did get seen, it was by some callow resident I'd never seen before. He looked at the X-rays, and stammered out (I'd have done the same, really) that he thought I should probably continue 50% weightbearing on crutches for another 3 weeks. Next visit? Dec. 18th.

As I get closer to well, the restlessness and the impatience take hold. I hold to the memory of the fact that this energy is a luxury.

Still, I got my PT moved, and asked her very specifically about swimming and other alternative forms of PT. She considered it, but said she'd prefer it if I waited; the bone has been non-weightbearing long enough that it is weakened and demineralized, and I need to build it up before moving on to more intense activity. She recently had a patient slip on the edge of a pool and re-break her healing ankle, and says that the edges of pools are a surprisingly high accident risk for folks like me who are recovering from injury.

I'll keep trucking along, doing isometric presses, ankle rotations, multidirectional pulls on the big rubber band, and toe-crunch exercises...and try not to chew my own foot off in the meantime.
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I was also finding that wearing a bra and using crutches for miles do not mix...the skin on my armpits/sides was getting really torn up. No fun in the least. I ordered a cheap pair of forearm crutches, and have started experimenting with those in the last couple of days. They are more minimalist and less painful than the regular crutches, but have hard plastic grips that bruise the hands. I crutched my way to the hipster bicycle shop on Piedmont Ave. and got some padded bar grip tape, which is a mercy for sweaty, slippery, bruised hands. A toddler tugged on his mom's sleeve, pointed at me, and said, "Look, mommy, he's got OWIES!!!" yesterday. Not sure whether he meant the crutches or just the evidence of my gimpiness, but it cracked me up!

I've done at least 1.75-2 miles of crutching each of the last 3 days; my strength and endurance are certainly improving. I am realizing how spoiled I was by the pegleg, though, particularly in terms of the ability to carry things. Getting into doors, getting items off grocery-store shelves and carrying objects is waaaay more difficult with two hands occupied by crutch handles. But getting plenty of good, bone-remodeling partial weightbearing in is impossible with the pegleg, so crutches it is. Grocery shopping today with a backpack on foot was just stupid hard; I almost gave up and left, but I was hungry so I persevered.

One thing that has been strangely life affirming is the self-defense class that T and I have been teaching. Doing something intense, and physical, and hell, even teaching a class of 30 has been rewarding. I'm able to use T and my ukes pretty effectively as body doubles, and while I wish I could really get in there and fight, it's pretty awesome to be able to teach while gimpy. [/FONT]

I was also, at last, able to rent a car and go visit my good friend Holly for Thanksgiving. 2 years ago, riding my bike to Prudhoe Bay was an adventure--now, driving a car on well-paved roads by myself for 300 miles is as big as adventure gets. Still--so good to have Thanksgiving in the company of great food and superlative friends.

Glad you are getting better. Measure progress in weeks and months, not necessarily hours or days.

In the meanwhile:

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Rex, thanks for sharing your story and hope you continue to improve. That is quite a serious injury, good thing you have a great attitude. Hang in there.

Walking.

WALKING.

WALKING!

The surgeon took a look at my foot and my x-rays today, and said, "good job, your bones are all healed." And he cleared me to walk, once again! He apologized for the hospital's miscommunication of last time, said he knew that getting to walk and then having it yanked must have been psychologically difficult. Well, yes.

Turns out I have lost all the padding on the bottom of the left foot, "just like little 75-year-old-ladies do," and have the 3rd metatarsal head dropped down so that it makes immediately painful contact with the ground. We'll see how much I am able to remodel bone and flesh; but in the meantime, he says, the solution is likely pain management, custom orthotics, and physical therapy. Except that, Highland being a public hospital, they don't DO custom or therapeutic orthotics of their own. I asked about private practice prices, and they're out of reach for now...$500 or so a pair. That is saddening and sobering, but something I can work on over time. The most important milestone, 234 days post injury, is simply that I get to stand and move on my own two working feet.

Such a precious thing, simply to walk, even to stumble along with sore bones and creaking joints and atrophied muscles. The best Xmas/Saturnalia/solstice present a girl could wish for.

Of course, I went to the physical therapist, too, and she and the surgeon have this sort of good cop/bad cop dynamic. :laughing Surgeon says, sure, bicycling is fine. PT, on the other hand, she fixes me with a withering stare and says, "what, you want to wobble along on your atrophied muscles and fall and get a malleolar fracture on top of everything? Why don't you wait?"

She also praised me for doing my PT so relentlessly--I have a visible tibialis anterior muscle now, and a tiny bit of calf definition, where before it has wasted and withered to the size of one of my arms. My strength is improved, and the foot's range of motion dramatically so; when I saw her last, I'd achieved a single degree of dorsiflexion (pulling your foot upwards towards your shin) above neutral. This time, I showed 10 degrees of flexion above neutral. She also cut some adhesive felt into a horseshoe, applied it around the dropped metatarsal, and assessed pain and pressure on a pressboard. "We'll see if we can't find you other options vs. expensive orthotics," she said, "when I first started here, I had to use cut-up magazines on people--we had nothing. I know how to do a lot with a little." Now that is appreciated.

She advised me that lots of people end up with fallen arches when they return abruptly to physical activity--she pointed out the force vectors on the bones and muscle, and how they get overwhelmed. So, she added arch-strengthening exercises, sort of squinching the big toe and arch upwards, and suggested that while walking around the house in a supportive shoe is fine, on longer walks I'd do better to use either the crutches or the cam boot. Arrgh. I'd thrown my back out horribly last week, and in a vicious circle, using the crutches exacerbated it. Still, I can reduce their use, if not completely eliminate it. But progress, one aching step at a time.

I kissed T wildly and exultantly in the elevator, and we went home; I put on an old hiking boot and tottered about, feeling all the strange pain and instability of walking after such a long, long wait. I have 2 hiking boots on now, in fact. And I can stand, and move, and look the world in the eye.
YES.

Good going Girl!! I'm really happy to hear this progress and wish you the best in the walking phase. These footbeds seem a little better than Superfeet for me. Maybe they offer a little more custom fit.
http://www.rei.com/product/752606/sole-dean-karnazes-signature-series-custom-footbeds-medium-volume

Yup, even the surgeon suggested hiking/athletic insoles as a possibility. An insole and the felt horseshoe got me goin' ok on a walk with a friend and her dog this morning--glorious day, too.

234 days between injury and really walking again, what a long strange trip it's been! I keep wanting these theatrical moments, but instead it is a slow, steady, sometimes unpredictable climb--a lot like life, I suppose.

Photos of the latest x-rays--looking sideways on, you can really see the dropped 3rd metatarsal almost in direct contact with the ground when I put pressure on the foot. That will definitely be a problem to work with. The plantar view looks darn good, considering it was, after all, what the surgeon calls a "pretty horrible injury." I have a perverse with that I could see how the bone looks after healing, though; if only I could lift up a flap and have a peek without all the blood and pain.

I'm no expert but wonder if the horseshoe might exaggerate the problem by pushing up on the surrounding structure. Can you make a footbed that is recessed for just the pressure point thus maintaining natural loading for the rest of the foot?

I agree--I just needed some relief from the intense pain of the dropped metatarsal contacting the pavement before any other part of the foot. It felt like walking on a knuckle. OUCH. The PT mentioned it as a concern as well, and so I tried walking without the felt donut after a couple of days. At first I could only stand an hour or so without it, but gradually eliminated its use.

Now my main difficulty with walking seems to be painful ankle instability--another thing the PT predicted. Unfortunately, when I was about to head over for my appointment yesterday, she called up exasperated and said that the new insurance provider (the Affordable Care Act has now gone into effect) ordered her to cancel ALL her appointments until they review and approve each patient. GAH. So no more PT until some faceless bureaucrat gets around to each of us and decides our fate. Fortunately the PT was able to give some good phone recommendations, and my GF has been very supportive about helping me get out and walk, which is the main thing I need to strengthen the eroded bones.

One truly amazing thing I experienced in the last couple of weeks, though: that pesky, dropped third metatarsal, the very one that gave me fears of permanent lameness and eternal pain management? IT MOVED. Seriously, it was very sore, but slowly moved back mostly into line with the other metatarsals, leaving only a slight bony prominence on the bottom of the foot. I'd estimate the motion at 5 mm or so, which is a fair bit of a ways for bones to go on walkabout! I'm astounded at the healing power of the human body all over again.

Next up--photos from our gimpy Baja and Anza-Borrego New Year's trip...

fuck ---- that looks painful

heal well !

Having too been a victim of my own stupidity once, also resulting in broken bones, surgeries, and PT, I anxiously read through your story hoping for a happy ending.

After seeing the initial pictures and x-rays, I was relieved to finally find that you are again walking and on your way to recovery. Great surgeons, nurses, and therapists aside, I'm convinced your recovery is due as much to your positive attitude, as it is to their efforts.

You have an infectiously vibrant spirit. Thanks so much for sharing, and may good fortune shine on you during your continued healing. Maybe I'll see you on the Pacific Crest someday.

Hell yeah! I'm seriously considering trying the John Muir Trail this summer/early fall, if I can swing it. We'll see what my cranky physical therapist has to say about that. She's been spot on with all her exercises, prescriptions and warnings so far, even if she doesn't want me to do NEARLY as much as I want to do just yet.

I took my sweetie (well, she took me, in her truck, though I can now drive a stick for short distances) to Canon Guadalupe in Baja for a Christmas-to-New-Year's getaway. We camped and shared meals with the cool folks who helped rescue my gf and I last year when she busted an ankle on the road in. Disaster can bring new friends! They were a great bunch of folks to camp with, and the springs were sublime. Our spot had its own hot tub, a rickety palapa, and a spot for a tent--perfect.

Moon from the edge of the palapa



Home sweet palapa



The campground is in the middle of a big, lush desert oasis up a canyon in Baja.



The view from our personal hot tub at dawn



All the rock scrambling was quite tough on my foot, and I slammed a great deal of ibuprofen controlling the foot and ankle pain. The whole foot, ankle and lower leg, as the PT warned, were malleable, unstable, stiff, and quite painful. But I was just careful enough, and pushed the envelope as best I could, and soaked that sucker in the hot spring while sipping beer when it ached too badly.

Barrel cactus, fruiting



Hiking among the cactus and granite boulders



There was an amazing, spicy-scented Torote tree growing from a nest of boulders at our campsite. Unforgettable scent, and gorgeous twisted trunks and foliage--turns out it's related to the frankincense shrub.



The mountains at dawn, looking almost bloody with sunlight



The Tooth, looming behind the campground. Someday I'll climb it.



T finally got a whole week to read, soak, and lounge about, instead of taking care of my sorry butt and working her own off.



Midnight at the oasis--we and our cool camp neighbors had a good ol' NYE.