My Journey With Weight Loss – Taking The Opportunity To Learn

Ok, the last weekend of my holidays. I’m not really sure how I did it but I still managed to meet my goal this week of exercising 5 days. Admittedly there really hasn’t been anywhere near as much as I usually do but still I did it. After tomorrow I am back on a better eating plan and will be starting to up my training to get to my 1/2 marathon goal by the end of June. I know within a few weeks I will be back to at least where I was before the holiday season started.

Yesterday I was at the prosthetist’s with my brother as he received his permanent prosthetic. I have to say while it was devasting for him to lose his leg this has been a great learning opportunity. It is not just about learning to live with an amputee but this amazing process that has brought my brother where he is today. I should note where he is at is really impressive. As my husband said to him today when my brother walks you really can’t tell which leg is the prosthetic because he is walking so well and unaided.

The process of physical rehab from an amputation is not for the impatient. There are many steps you must go through and each one needs to be completed before you can move on to the next one. It starts with things that fully able bodied people take for granted, being able to stand, transferring from a bed to a chair, transferring from a chair back to bed, etc. All of those have to be mastered before you can even begin to think of being released from hospital. Then it is on to physical therapy where you start strengthening muscles that will soon be asked to perform work they were never really meant to do. In the meantime you are waiting for your stump to shrink and be molded into the necessary shape. It is only after all of this happens that you get your 1st new limb.

I was quite surprised at how long a temporary leg would be necessary for my brother. However, it takes months for the customized ‘permanent’ leg to be made. But, once you have the temporary leg that is when you start learning how to walk and balance. It starts off with using a walker until your body understands how to walk on a prosthetic. Then, it is on to using 2 crutches, then 1 crutch and finally a cane. Normally in order to perfect your gait you need to use all of these mobility aids but my brother managed to skip using the cane, that is how hard he has worked at learning to walk.

When we met with the prosthetist yesterday she did many ‘tweaks’ on the permanent leg. I can honestly say I did not see the things she noted before she made the adjustments and some of them she told me were things most people wouldn’t even think about in their gait but it is important for a leg amputee to walk as if they still had that leg so the prosthetic needs to be as close to perfect as possible. Then she had me watch my brother walk and pointed out that he walks just with his legs meaning the rest of his body is as stiff as a board, no hip, shoulder or arm movements. She explained to us that this is absolutely normal and that my brother’s body had put itself in protective mode holding everything tight to avoid getting hurt. She gave us a simple solution to teach his whole body how to walk properly, my brother is to start taking walks using hiking poles. This, she explained, will force the rest of his body to move when he walks and she assured us it won’t be long before he is walking normally again.

All of this has been fascinating to learn (though I wish it was something that I didn’t have to learn). I think using this as a learning opportunity has actually helped me to adapt to all of this. Now I am no longer hopeful that my brother will be able to do pretty much everything he did before the amputation, I am absolutely certain that he will.