ChezLark

I had completely forgot, but Laura pointed out to me today that it is the two-year anniversary of my having gotten creamed by a car. The one-and-a-half-foot titanium rod and four screws reinforcing my right leg are now a sort of distant novelty most of the time. I get aches in my hip when I’m sick sometimes, but I can run, jump, squat, and land jumps on my snowboard directly onto my right leg, so life is good.

It always seems abstract to hear this, but take it from me: life is short. Hug someone you love. Go out and do something you enjoy. Enjoy your time here!

It’s been a year and a half today since I got hit by a car while minding my own business on Laura’s motor scooter in downtown Seattle. Today, my bionic leg is feeling great, to the extent that I have no plans to have the titanium hardware removed. And, of course, I have a beautiful little girl to come home to each day, in addition to my lovely wife. Plus, it’s snowing in the mountains!

So, things are pretty good. Just in time to stare down my 30th birthday, arriving soon.

I saw a surprisingly good movie last night: Murderball. Somewhat surprisingly, I thought, given the title, this is not a horror movie, but rather a documentary about quadriplegic wheelchair-rugby players. The movie is sad but also very funny, and documents various people involved in the Canadian and US wheelchair-rugby teams in the time leading up to their confrontation at the Paralympic Games in Greece, in 2004.

The quadriplegics in the movie had generally acquired their handicap through accidents; the captain of team USA, for example, had fallen asleep in the back of a friend’s pickup truck, and was hurled out of it when his friend, driving drunk, made a sharp turn. Part of the movie shows the ordeal of a recently-injured young man, Keith Cavill, as he completes his (10-month!) physical rehabilitation process and returns home in a wheelchair. One resonant detail for me was that Keith was injured in a motocycle crash.

It was in the segments about Keith that I was struck by a relatively small detail: earlier in the movie, one of the Team USA players mentions offhandedly that everyone, when they are first injured, clings to the idea that they will walk again, that they will run again, and that they will somehow manage to recover and be as they were before the accident. Of course, for someone with permanent spinal damage, this is impossible. There is a segment where Keith meets the captain of Team USA, who comes to the medical center where Keith is recovering to do a presentation about wheelchair rugby and encourage the quadriplegics there to consider the sport. During the Q&A period, Keith asks the team captain if he would be kicked off the wheelchair rugby team if he recovered enough to walk again.

It was a brief moment in the film, but it reminded me of how I felt as I was recovering from my own, much less serious, accident. When I was in the hospital, and later in a wheelchair and going to physical therapy, I realize now that the idea that I would make a complete recover was essential to my sanity. I asked a lot of questions about whether the hardware would cause problems, because I needed to believe either that I would never notice it, or that it could be removed to fix the problem. I focused on getting in shape for the 2004-2005 snowboarding season, and was on the slopes as soon as there was snow cover.

15 months or so later, my leg still isn’t quite the same, and it may or may not ever be exactly as it was before the accident. Obviously, I was very lucky, and I’ve made my peace with the idea that some minor annoyances and pains may be the price to pay for being alive and otherwise intact and healthy. Having gone through a traumatic accident, though, I can’t imagine the amount of willpower it must take to get through the day when you know that things won’t get back to normal, that you won’t ever walk again, and that your arms and legs will never function properly.

So, I have a great deal of respect for the rugby players in this movie, and pretty much everyone who manages to carry on under the weight of severe injuries. We should all be thankful for what time we each have to enjoy good health and an able body.

I forgot to post this when it happened; somehow, it seemed significant…

A few weeks ago, we got confirmation from our lawyer that it would be OK to dispose of Laura’s scooter, that had been sitting in our garage since the accident. Laura found someone who was willing to buy it and haul it away to use it for parts.

So now there’s a big empty space in our garage where the scooter had been lurking for more than a year. I completed the deal by throwing out the banged-up helmet that I was wearing when the accident happened; the visor got sheared off in the crash, and there were some pretty convincing scratches and gouges all over it.

One more step towards a world where the accident could just as well not have happened…

Yesterday, May 15th, 2005, was the one-year anniversary of my having gotten creamed by a car while I was minding my own business tootling around town on Laura’s scooter.

Everything has changed for me, and nothing has changed. Today, I can walk, run, jump, hop and climb pretty much as I could before the accident. I got in as much snowboarding this past season as could realistically be managed, given the abysmal conditions. This past week in Utah I probably walked at least 30 miles over broken ground.

On the other hand, though, I’m pretty sure there hasn’t been a single day since my accident that I haven’t been aware, in some way, of my injury. The IT band in my leg still snaps across the top of my femur sometimes, and my right hip and knee ache when I push them hard. My leg gets stiff if I sit for too long, and the area where the largest bone chip is floating around hurts under pressure. Although I don’t imagine anyone could tell by watching me walk, my right leg still doesn’t feel quite right, at least some of the time.

Also, my outlook is different. I feel more fragile, and older. I’m aware that my body will never be quite the way it was, even if I have it cut open again to remove the titanium rod and four screws that have been holding my leg together. I’ve learned that medicine is only approximate: there’s no way to really make you “as good as new”, only mostly so. And, of course, there’s no way to get back lost time, or to choose to not go through the experience of a hospital stay, being confined to a wheelchair, using a walker, crutches, canes, etc.

And then there are the other reminders. Laura’s mangled scooter is still stashed in our garage, waiting for legal wranglings to conclude. There’s still a placard for disabled parking in our car, even though it’s expired. I still have the REI cane / walking stick I used in the last phase of my recovery, in case it comes in handy on hikes.

But then there’s the fact that the accident made me realize how important it is to experience each moment, since you’re never quite sure what will happen next. In fact, I think my takeaways from the accident so far boil down to:

• Don’t worry
• Also, be happy

I pass this wisdom on to you, no charge.

I saw an orthopedic surgeon about my hip this morning. They took some X-Rays, and nothing is wrong with the IM nail hardware, so that’s good. Of course, my hip still hurts. The doctor’s take was:

• My hip pain is likely due to the protrusion of the two anchoring screws at the top of my femur, particularly since my body has been depositing bone caps over them, as well as the top of the titanium rod (this is fairly normal). The protrusions irritate the IT band and other soft tissue around the hip.
• Removing the hardware would likely relieve that irritation and the associated hip pain
• The intrinsic risk (anaesthetic, complications) of a surgury like this is minimal (much less than 1%) for a young, healthy person
• However, the surgury involves a recovery period of a few weeks while the incisions heal.

Basically, surgeons are like engineers: they like to fix things. The hardware seems to be causing trouble, so the logical response (for a surgeon) is to remove it.

It’s generally understood to not be wise to remove an IM nail less than a year after its installation, so I have at least until this summer to think things over. I have begun mulling.

Over the past few days, a sharp, highly localized pain has been developing in my hip when I move in specific ways, namely when I walk up hills. I don’t like this new development one bit, and plan to get it checked out.

I went jogging around Greenlake, in Seattle, with some friends today. This little exercise reminded me that I’m not really 100% healed yet; in addition to being generally out of shape, I found that I had trouble running for more than a few minutes at a time without my hip hurting. It’s just a sort of ache, but it looks like it will still be some time until I can start pretending that I was never clobbered by a car…

I was discharged from physical therapy this morning. Woo hoo!

In truth, my right knee still bothers me a little; I have somehow developed tendonitis on the inner side of the knee where various muscles cross the knee assembly, but it has been getting better with time.

Aside from that, though, I can run, jump, hop, squat, and walk with very little trouble. I estimate my function at 90 - 95%. Wh00+.

Ran 1/2 mile today, nonstop, on a treadmill. This is easily the furthest I have run since the accident. It would appear that I’m now limited mostly by stamina, not structural problems with my leg. This means I’m approaching the point that my broken leg is fully functional.

Just in time for snowboarding!

Laura and I are in Toronto on vacation; a good friend of ours up here is about to have her second baby; we’re very excited. I’m trying to keep up the physical exercise even though I’m away from my physical therapist. This morning I ran the length of a short city block in a single uninterrupted burst, after a number of shorter, warm-up runs of a dozen or two yards.

Part of the difficulty in running is psyching myself up enough to put that much weight through my leg; it’s very scary to let myself land hard on it after the months of weakness and pain. I run with a noticible assymetry, or “hitch”, which I’m trying to erase with practice.

Ran again briefly today on a treadmill at a running-shoes store; they videotape your feet striking the treadmill to figure out what type of support your shoes need to provide. I managed another 15 seconds or so at a light jog. It’s encouraging when you mention to people that you broke your leg and they ask which one it was because they can’t tell from how you’re walking around…

I ran for the first time on my broken leg today; my physical therapist had me try running, on a treadmill, for just 20 seconds or so to see how my gait looked. I noticibly favor the broken leg, and I can’t sustain a running pace for very long just due to the effort involved, but it was encouraging nonetheless.

Walked up Capitol Hill again, in the rain this time. It’s becoming routine.

Another first: I was feeling energetic this evening after work, so I powered up Capitol Hill to make it home, on foot, in about 40 minutes! I walked continuously, stopping only for traffic lights. It felt fantastic, although very tiring.

For over a week after the operation, the furthest distance I could cover, using a walker and tremendous effort, was about 5 or 6 feet. When I got home this evening, it occured to me that I had walked approximately 1,000 times that distance completely unassisted.

Walked to work again today. It was much less difficult than the last time — I made the walk (about a mile) in almost exactly 30 minutes, which means I was maintaining a pretty normal walking pace.

I now have periods where my leg feels almost normal, which is terrific. However, I seem to have developed a sort of pop in my hip, and being the obsessive worrier that I am, I’ve been a little concerned about this. I’ve read of people complaining about the feeling of muscles or ligaments sliding unevenly across the screw heads (which protrude a little from the femur), and I’m kind of worried that that’s what this sensation is. We’ll see what happens.

Went for physical therapy again this morning; my therapist is ramping things up aggressively now; I’m scheduled to go twice a week for at least the next two weeks.

I’m down to a slight limp now, and since I can walk and stand on my broken leg, my therapist has started adding balance and agility exercises; she has me balancing on rocker boards, walking along narrow foam spines, standing on one foot, etc. All to try to build my legs back up so I can snowboard by winter. It’s helpful to have that specific goal as a target; it gives me an excuse to push harder to get in shape.

In a way, it’s more frustrating to be at a fairly-normal level of functioning than it is to be badly incapacitated: I can now keep up with people walking, but I can’t run. I can walk up and down stairs normally, but I can only squat down with great effort. Every morning, when I’m getting dressed, I’m reminded that I have trouble balancing on the broken leg with my leg even slightly flexed. After sitting at work for more than an hour or so, my leg gets stiffed and has to be stretched out a little before I can walk properly.

In short, many little things constantly remind me that I got clocked by a car. I’ve made enormous progress, but the last 20% or so may take a while to get ironed out…

Today was my first day completely unassisted — I left the cane at home, ran errands, went to work, took the bus, got coffee, etc, walking entirely on my own!

I still have a bit of a limp, and the broken leg doesn’t feel quite normal; it’s shaky, and what with all the exercises I put it through every morning and evening, I can feel sore muscles in it every time I walk. However, it’s great to be walking pretty much normally again!

Next stops: power building in my quads and knees so I can squat, then agility, twisting, and running (!).

On track for full power by first snowfall!

Went to physical therapy this morning. Counterintuitively, the therapist has me coming in more frequently as my leg gets stronger, since they can do more and more extensive exercises to build it up.

Good progress since two weeks ago: my limp was very pronounced then, and I couldn’t balance on the broken leg without shifting my hips considerably to compensate for the fact that my hip muscles are weakened. Now, at least when I’m well rested, my limp is very slight, and I can balance on the broken leg almost perfectly.

My physical therapy now includes stints on the elliptical rider, stationary bike, and a weight machine for hip extensions. I’m also using ankle weights for my hip-building exercises. This is a far cry from when I had to use a hook to move the broken leg around because I couldn’t so much as slide it across the bed!

After physical therapy, I took a walk to work and reflected on how far I’ve come so far. Only 3 1/2 more months till snowboarding season!

I set a new land-distance record for myself since the accident today by walking from my house to work. The distance involved is a little over a mile; I took the better part of an hour to walk it. I tried to not use my cane the entire time — I ended up using it to rest at streetcorners and to cross streets, where speed was important. Other than that, I limped along unassisted the entire way.

Needless to say, by the time I got to work, my leg was pretty sore.