Those last three walking videos were shot in India. This next one is the first after I got home...also the first showing the utter ooey-gooey awesomeness that is the Alter-G treadmill.
Quote from: Joe2000 on July 12, 2016, 08:26:42 PMHey man,
Im watching those videos and Im getting this feeling that someone f.ucked up. I mean there is plenty of other videos where people walk during distraction and they walk much better on crutches. Im not sure whether its the fault of those 10 cm you did or the nailing method but this is definitely a quite bad state from the vids. Anyone im glad youre doing better,keep it up.
Hey Joe, [what happened to Slawek?]
Not sure if you have your facts straight.
- First of all, I don't know where you got the idea I "did" 10cm. Yes, I turned over 10cm, but that was so I could end up with [between] 7.2 and 7.6 of lengthening, after compression and pin bending. There was one guy with us who lengthened over 10cm (his diary is here) and he has had all the problems one would expect and more.
- The "nailing method" I had (LON) has been used thousands, if not tens of thousands of times...especially if you consider all the times it has been used for non-CLL (trauma/deformity).
- As far as someone "f.uck[ing] up", that's a pretty common stance to take. If you have a preconceived opinion of a doctor, of a lengthening range, of a country, of a nailing method, of tibs vs. femurs, of LL itself, you will probably seek out info that fulfills your confirmation bias. So if you want to point your finger, go ahead and choose Sringari, myself, my doing over 7cm, India, LON, external tibias, or the entire process of LL...or any combination therein.
- Haven't seen videos of other people on crutches or during distraction in a while, so I can't compare. Despite the light-hearted tone of the music, I don't post these to show how everything is all happy-happy joy-joy. I'm sharing my story to tell you how it is...at least from my perspective.
- I can't tell if you're a former/current patient, so I don't know if you're truly familiar with what walking on broken legs feels like...let alone broken legs, atrophied calf/thigh/core muscles, empty callus/non-union, and bone fragments in your ankle (from previous injury). If/when you do experience it, you will get an idea of how difficult LL can be on your body...but I hope your journey goes better than mine has.
Quote from: Joe2000 on July 12, 2016, 08:26:42 PMHey man,
Im watching those videos and Im getting this feeling that someone f.ucked up. I mean there is plenty of other videos where people walk during distraction and they walk much better on crutches. Im not sure whether its the fault of those 10 cm you did or the nailing method but this is definitely a quite bad state from the vids. Anyone im glad youre doing better,keep it up.
Hey Joe, [what happened to Slawek?]
Not sure if you have your facts straight.
- First of all, I don't know where you got the idea I "did" 10cm. Yes, I turned over 10cm, but that was so I could end up with [between] 7.2 and 7.6 of lengthening, after compression and pin bending. There was one guy with us who lengthened over 10cm (his diary is here) and he has had all the problems one would expect and more.
- The "nailing method" I had (LON) has been used thousands, if not tens of thousands of times...especially if you consider all the times it has been used for non-CLL (trauma/deformity).
- As far as someone "f.uck[ing] up", that's a pretty common stance to take. If you have a preconceived opinion of a doctor, of a lengthening range, of a country, of a nailing method, of tibs vs. femurs, of LL itself, you will probably seek out info that fulfills your confirmation bias. So if you want to point your finger, go ahead and choose Sringari, myself, my doing over 7cm, India, LON, external tibias, or the entire process of LL...or any combination therein.
- Haven't seen videos of other people on crutches or during distraction in a while, so I can't compare. Despite the light-hearted tone of the music, I don't post these to show how everything is all happy-happy joy-joy. I'm sharing my story to tell you how it is...at least from my perspective.
- I can't tell if you're a former/current patient, so I don't know if you're truly familiar with what walking on broken legs feels like...let alone broken legs, atrophied calf/thigh/core muscles, empty callus/non-union, and bone fragments in your ankle (from previous injury). If/when you do experience it, you will get an idea of how difficult LL can be on your body...but I hope your journey goes better than mine has.
I forgot one vid that should have been in that mix last week. This is my 3rd (and second to last) from India.:
Hey bigfaker how are you doing? Did you non union improve?
Hey Spartan. I appreciate you checking on me back in October. I did see your question and responded via PM. Did you get it? I didn’t get a reply, so you left me hanging, Bro!
And if y’all wondering why PM instead of posting in my diary, there are just times I try to stay off the LL sites altogether …or at least, as much as I can. I’m such an all-or-nothing type of personality that whenever I go on here, I would get sucked into reading every thread and multiple diaries that I’m trapped here for days, it seems. #OCDIsABitch
Damn, y'all. Been a while. I think I get a little self-conscious anytime I don't post for a bit because this kind of talk here:
Quote from: ShapeShifter on April 08, 2014, 08:35:35 AMBad things, it would appear. . .
Quote from: blackbear on May 27, 2014, 05:26:47 PMHeck knows what going on with bigfaker I was keeping track of this diary aswell. Man india for LL..... would never do it in a million years
and this noise here:
Quote from: Arche on January 06, 2014, 08:15:55 AMThis diary went from being really great to being really shady. I hope BigFaker pops in soon to prove me wrong!
Well, maybe with all the diaries flooding this place now, things have possibly changed. I don't really spend any time on these forums nowadays...at least, I haven't in a few months.
Anyway, as always, its daily life and work that hinders my ability to update. [I actually typed the preceding 3 sentences during the Rio Olympics, so that shows you how often I get around to this now]
Yet with a couple hours to kill, we journey on...but FIRST (since I had written this last year and never posted it)
Well I FINALLY ran out of 2014 videos...at least of the ones that I could find and that were already screened and edited. I guess I should make a comment or two. Well, here are two:
1) My walking was really goddammed f.ucked while I was in India.
2) My walking was still pretty f.ucked once I got home.
But I suppose y'all have grown accustomed to more detail from me. Lemme see what I can dig out of the dark memory corners of my skull:
IW (05/21/14): This was 34 days post-frame removal. Unlike most of my fellow Sringari patients, as well as many LON patients in general, I wasn't allowed to walk while lengthening. So other than walking my feet up the wall, I hadn't moved my legs across a flat plane in 5 months. #AtrophyIsAKiller
WTW (05/29/14): More of the same. I had gotten good enough to switch from walker to crutches...well, I think I DEMANDED that we switch ASAP so I could prepare for going home (which was less than two weeks away at this point).
WOB (06/01/14): Wanting to spend my last couple weeks in India at a nicer place, I had just transitioned to a new hotel (Leisure Inn West Gurgaon). Including the hotel in Mumbai, the hotel before surgery, the hospital, the guest house, the second hotel in Gurgaon, and this last place, that's six different places I stayed...wait, we stayed one night in Agra to see the Taj Mahal, so seven! My ballerina was getting steadily better at this point -- I could easily get my heels down while sitting, and press them down against the wall or while standing with the walker -- but walking was a whole different animal. When you have to take steps and actually walk, you can't just put all your weight on the leg to deal with the equinus. It's kind of hilarious when I look back and know that I would be practically flying on crutches eventually...and to see these infant steps when I had to literally think to myself "Right Crutch. Left Foot. Left Crutch. Right Foot..."
WLAM (06/07/14): The tiny little gym in the last Gurgaon hotel. This was after I had gone off of “The Wizard’s” $1200/month aftercare plan -- actually things had already collapsed the month before – so in addition to paying for/arranging my own room and board, I had booked the guys on my own to come for my twice-daily PT. Sounds rough at first, but they were only charging me INR600 (about $9 then) per day!
I had picked this place because it had a pool.
Well, it was about the 6th hotel with a pool I had looked at. The gym was an incredible pain in the ass because the elevator stopped one floor short of the floor the gym was on. So I had to butt-scoot up the last flight of stairs...and down another couple of f.ucking steps to get into the little crappy-ass gym that had like this one treadmill, a stationary bike and a couple dumbbells.
It paled in comparison to even my home gym in my garage...let alone the gigantic UFC where I'm a member.
WOS (06/30/14): HOME! Hooooome Sweet Hoooooooome! This was the first footage of my long (and ongoing) love/hate relationship with the Alter-G Antigravity treadmili. One thing you might notice is that my ballerina got worse after it had gotten better. FIRSTLY, I have it to attribute it to slacking off my in my last couple weeks in India. The Leisure Inn was pretty far for my PTs Harry and Nishar to get to, having to traverse across Gurgaon, usually during rush hour. Plus, I took a little time to get in my last-minute sightseeing, so it wasn’t always twice-daily near the end. Then, once I first got back home, it took a couple weeks to get an appointment with a PT place near where I was staying. Yes, I could have done more on my own, but I was probably overcome with many reunions with friends/fam/fiancé, gorging on comfort (i.e. non-Indian) food, and tremendous fatigue from getting around with no wheelchair.
In the first few days, I got a SERIOUSLY shocking slap in the face with the reality of my situation. I had about INR10000 left in my wallet that I needed to exchange. It was a Saturday, the nearest currency place open was in a local mall, so I went, thinking it would be easy enough. I parked in the structure and headed out into the outdoor mall. Of course, the exchange kiosk was at the faaaaaaar end of one of the mall wings. And (of course), I went down a wrong path at first. It was June, it was hot, I was sweaty, I was still getting used to crutches…let alone two broken legs…I was STRUGGLING. I kid you not, it took me an HOUR AND A HALF to get to this place…a walk that would have taken fewer than 10 minutes on healthy legs. Sobering…truly sobering. And this is what my feet looked after a day like that:
IWA (07/16/14): This was where I started getting to the doldrums of recovery. My L leg was not showing nearly the signs of rebuilding and strength that the R was. And my R ankle issue was starting to rear its ugly head. So the thought creeping into the back of my mind was that I was f.ucked…truly f.ucked.
DWA (07/27/14): A little glimpse of the nifty new Mobilegs crutches I bought. I can’t remember if my hunching over was due to duck ass or fatigue. I definitely did have the former, but there were definitely times when using crutches for long periods of time was wearing out my arms and shoulders. The Mobilegs exacerbated this, because they are designed to not allow one to lean one’s armpits onto the pads, so all of the weight is borne by the arms. I guess my little guns got a bit of a boost, at least. LOL
The slow incline walk I’m doing (around 1:42) was something I discovered after about a month of using the Alter-G. It was akin to the pushing on our feet that the PTs on India had done…but with this, I was able to put a good 70-80 lbs. of my weight on the stretch. I think this had a significant factor in fighting equinus contracture.
WOTS (08/08/14): Yeah, I was truly f.ucked. At first glance, one would think the alignment of my tibia and femur were totally off, but of course doing just tibias LON as I did, it didn’t make sense that my knee would point inward like that. What it turned out to be -– as I learned many months later -- was a combination of: the weakness of the L tibia non-union, plus the weakness of the hip flexor (not pulling the leg into place), in addition to the constant pain in my knees (from the nail insertion). As far as the piece-of-sh!t R ankle, I eventually (finally!) did have surgery on it February of last year, but sadly, it was not improved much. I’m able to get around and live my life okay, but most mornings when I’m cold and stiff (not like that! LOL) I limp considerably. The end of long fatiguing days are pretty bad as well.
We’ll be back soon with more Men On Film.
[none of y’all old enough to get that reference]
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