Friday (8/17/2018)

Friday (8/17/2018)

I just got home from my trip to the surgeon and prosthetist.  I didn’t come home with a finished product.  On Monday (8/13) my surgeon in Indianapolis gave me the okay to have the prosthesis built, so I headed to my prosthetist office in the metro area of Cincinnati.  Initially things went smoothly and we made great progress.  But my incision line was tender with any pressure and it was difficult to determine if the pain/discomfort I was feeling was from my leg being tender or from something needing to be corrected in the prosthesis. 

 Before and After Surgery Xrays (Before--top; After--bottom): Notice how long the tibia is on the first picture.  I was basically standing on that point.

So after going round and round, I finally decided to wear the temporary socket back home.  I’ll wear it and use it for the next couple of weeks, which should give me a clearer understanding of what needs to be done to improve the socket.  It will also give my leg time to mature a bit (push the fluids out and shrink some).  That means when we build the permanent socket it should las t longer because it will as tight as it can be.  My prosthetist is going for a “Zero Sock” fit.  No matter what, my leg will change over time and use, so I’ll need a new socket eventually anyway.  Every time I have another surgery, the “mature leg clock” starts over. 

Since this is a temporary socket, it’s not made as strong, so I can’t go pushing extremes with this one.  But for right now, I mainly need to walk, walk, walk, and walk some more.  Last night I walked for ¾ mile.  That’s the farthest I’ve walk in over a year!!!  Even with the discomfort/pain, while I was in Cincy, I was still walking over a total of 3 miles a day just taking it rather easy.  Again, that’s a vast improvement over what I was able to do.

My temporary socket:  I am able to reuse my pump and my foot.  The liners and sleeves (not shown) are a completely different style.  

Working with a prosthetist at a distance means that it’s a big trip and we try to shorten the process of fitting down to a week or two.  If I was doing this locally, it would happen with multiple visits over the course of a month or two.  This trip didn’t quite work as well as wanted; but I am walking better than I was already.  And we should be able to complete the process rather quickly when I go back down to Cincy in a couple of weeks.

It also looks like Rob will be able to fabricate a water leg for me fairly cheaply from all the spare parts that I now own.  My current leg can get wet; but only in fresh water.  All the pools that I frequent (and I have family at the Pacific and the Gulf coast) are salt water pools and my elevated vacuum pump can’t tolerate that.  So the water leg would be used for doing water therapy.  It is amazing how much resistance water adds to the easiest of movements.  My left leg is very atrophied and I need to swim, work out at the gym, do water therapy, and do a lot of walking to build it back up.  My left leg is so out of shape that I strained a muscle in it just walking up a small hill earlier this week! 

So things are going well.  Slower than I might wish for; but well none the less.  I don’t really look forward to driving back down to Cincy again in a couple of weeks.  With traffic and construction delays it took me eleven hours to get home.  That’s way too much time sitting in the truck.  But if I get out of the wheelchair and get to walk, well, that’s worth the drive for sure!