I’m back from my trip to Washington. My husband and I had a wonderful time. If you’re ever in Tacoma, I heartily recommend the Washington State History Museum and the food at Viva.
Our road trip to Port Townsend was beautiful and the food at Owl Sprit Cafe was delicious. I also heartily recommend heated seats if you rent a car in November.
Monday, 25 November 2019. Hanger Clinic Day One: Casting
After I checked in at the Hanger Clinic, we were shown around. The main room is a gym, lined with doorways leading to offices, a casting room, a walking room, an adjustments room, and a closet full of shoes. There’s also a little snack/break room for everyone in training where they can store their belongings and stay hydrated and fueled. And coffee, several coffee stations throughout the building. A map of the world hangs on the wall with pins in it, representing ExoSym patients.
For casting, I sat in a chair at one end of a set of parallel bars. I got to hold and explore an ExoSym. It was way heavier than I thought it would be, big and bulky (probably for a grown man). I tried not to worry yet about getting used to wearing two of them.
On the floor at my feet were a container of water and a cast cutting saw. The “tickler” of my childhood. This nickname was supposed to make the noise and the blade moving toward my skin less scary. The vibrations from the saw “tickle,” get it? This thing terrified me as a kid, and I can remember crying in a panic when it was time to remove the casts for my AFOs, even though Ray (my orthotist) assured me that the saw would not cut me.
Ryan, the prosthetist at Hanger, came in and did a few quick (seated) strength tests. It goes something like this: “Bring your knee up into my hand. Push hard. Harder. Okay, now don’t let me push your knees together…” He asked me to stand up on my toes. Which I can totally do when I’m hanging on to parallel bars. A few minutes after these tests, I could feel pain settle into my right piriformis/SI joint area.
Then a woman came in with a laptop and asked me questions about pain and activities and what I wanted to be able to do. These are the same questions from the application, and she added to/revised my responses. I told her that I would like to be able to get back to where I was at about age twenty-five, before all the chronic pain started presenting itself. Also, I would like to have the confidence that I can get up from a fall by myself. (I’ve recently discovered that it is now VERY difficult to get up from the floor without something to pull up on, and that’s scary.)
The ExoSym program has been serving civilians since 2013, with about 4,000 patients so far. I asked how many applicants are not accepted. Somewhere around ten. Ten people who used wheelchairs most of the time and/or who didn’t have enough function to be able to really use the brace. And how many people try it out and then decide it’s not for them? I didn’t get an exact number, but sometimes a condition requires further surgery. Annika the Amputee, for example, tried the brace but was still in pain from the tumor in her foot.
First, I had to put two nylon socks on each leg. Ryan was very quick with casting.
He did my right side first, while I was sitting, and then I stood up while he did the left side. This surprised me a lot, especially since he could tell when I looked up or down while he was working. If the position of my head makes a difference, isn’t one cast seated and one cast standing going to be very different? My legs certainly felt very different.
Then it was time to cut them off. “Oh boy,” I said. “This was called the tickler when I was little.”
“Trauma?” Ryan said sympathetically. “Now we have these thicker plastic strips, which are probably a lot different than what you had.” It’s true. Instead of small rubber (?) tubing, he used strips that were flat on one side, with a groove on the top, and quite rigid. He made quick work of getting the casts off, “unzipping” them with the strip when they were nearly cut through.
After I put my socks and shoes back on, Ryan took us on a tour of the back, where the braces are made. Everything from start to “finish” is onsite. There really is no end, because we can order replacement wedges and sleeves as necessary and Ryan will make adjustments over months or years if needed for any issues, like “changes in mass” (weight gain/loss). He made sure to give me his number and take mine so I can text him with questions and updates.
So the first day was fine. Afterward, we went to Kopachuk State Park and I tried not to stress too much about what was to come.
Tuesday, 26 November 2019. Hanger Clinic Day Two: Test Devices
The next day, we are put into the same casting room so I can change into shorts. Ryan asks about shoe size. And then we wait. Finally we’re led across the gym to the walking room. There seems to be only one patient in the gym. He has two devices, one with the knee joint. I want to watch his workout. The PT sets up obstacle courses, and there’s a rope hanging from a track on the ceiling to hold on to; I can hear the rope slide along the track, but I can’t see what he’s doing.
Ryan has fitted “hundreds” of CP patients with the ExoSym. He tells me I will feel weaker in the beginning. I will need to strengthen my core and my glutes, use muscles that I don’t engage with my current gait pattern. It will take two years for me to achieve full potential function. This comes as a slight shock because other ExoSymers–with congenital conditions–have been told one year. Two years of working really hard. Okay.
He brings me a pair of new shoes and asks if we could lace them up. A full size bigger than my usual shoe, and extra wide. Then he leaves again. As I read on another blog: Ryan is busy. Seeing patients off who have completed their training, taking calls. He brings me a pair of sleeves to put over my knees. We put the braces on and he marks where to cut the excess off at the toes. Disappears to the adjustments room. I wonder if I have time to use the bathroom before he returns again. Just walking to the bathroom in the tight synthetic sleeves feels weird. Finally, he brings in heel wedges to put in the shoes, straps me into the braces, and finagles my feet into the shoes.
I pull myself to standing using the parallel bars. I let Ryan know it feels like there’s more room around my left calf (the cast I was standing for) than my right. He checks it and says it looks good, but adds that my body is valid in perceiving that sensation, or some such diplomatic acknowledgment. Perhaps it doesn’t matter that much because the area around the calf will be open on the real devices.
I take a step. Two. Heavy. Bulky. Cumbersome. Stiff. Like casts. Or ski boots. Like trying to walk in flippin’ ski boots–with cerebral palsy. No magic. No amazing shift or change. I had hoped I would feel the “energy return.” But the test devices don’t have struts, so that part is not there yet.
Very quickly, Ryan prompts me to take one hand off the bars, to try to glide the other hand. Hand gliding is not possible. He says he can see that I’m standing up straighter. Really? Isn’t that maybe because I’m holding on? He tells me to try walking heel-toe, use my core, take bigger strides. I clomp forward. I try. “Can you tell she’s straighter? Have you ever seen her walk heel-toe before?” he asks my husband. “Now this is only about thirty percent of what they can do,” he tells me. This doesn’t mean anything to me. I do not feel that they are doing anything but weighing me down. I feel, not just weaker, but more disabled, not less. I do not want seventy percent more of this.
He gets me a pair of trekking poles. I stay between the parallel bars as he adjusts the poles and tells me to try them. It’s not that I’ve never thought about using poles before. I’ve always hesitated because–how much stability can they give me if I’m the one holding them? They seem to just complicate things.
So I stand there in my mock braces, holding these poles, and I can’t move. “I don’t even know how to start,” I say. But somehow I do, I take steps toward the door. I have to turn around when the bars end. Turning is ridiculous. Ryan watches and says he has pointers, but he wants to see how my body responds, how my brain problem solves. He says I’m doing better than he thought I would. I don’t know whether to feel flattered or insulted. I ask him if he says that to everyone. He doesn’t.
Every time Ryan leaves the room, I try to explain to my husband what moving in these braces feels like. Everything is stiff and robotic, but also unsteady. “How does anyone learn to walk in these things?!” I wonder aloud. Let alone do anything else?
I’ll probably need to use the poles for the first few months, Ryan tells me. How do they feel, he wants to know.
“Right now, it feels impossible to function,” I answer truthfully. Ryan might have been surprised at my bluntness (perceived negativity?). He tells me to take them off and see what it feels like without them.
It feels lighter, roomier, like I no longer have casts on my feet. It’s a relief. Am I shuffling and swaying again? Apparently. But I can’t tell because it’s the way I’ve always moved.
“You’re here for a reason,” Ryan says. “Because you want something different. I’m trying to give you a different way of moving. It’s going to take time.”
I know all of this, but I cannot see years into the future. How am I supposed to decide whether or not to move forward and get the real devices based on this? I will have five days of training upon “device delivery,” when I come back to the clinic. How much can my body learn in five days? Before they send me back home to my own physical therapist who’s never heard of the ExoSym?
I get myself back into the braces. Walk up and down, trying to move faster, take bigger strides, remember my core. Everything is loud and clunky. Very aware that my feet are not on the floor, but inside a layer of hard plastic, I do not feel grounded, literally. I take a moment to just stand, handsfree. I can lean into the braces, into the cuffs below my knees. They hold me up, and I do not start to bend toward the ground. I lean forward, side to side. I do not lose my balance. “I’m standing,” I acknowledge. “I can’t do this without them, right?” I wonder, continuing to lean and experiment. “But how do you move? How do you pick something up? Or get up from the ground?” I try taking steps without the poles, but my body isn’t strong enough. My thumbs/hands are already starting to hurt from how much I’m gripping the poles, depending on them. I make my way outside the parallel bars and my husband holds my hands, higher up than the poles. This feels better. He is strong and stable, so much better than a pair of wobbly sticks.
Ryan encourages me to go out into the gym. I walk up and down a textured mat-pathway once or twice. “You should use a light touch with the poles,” he says. “Can you do a light touch?” I know I’m not supposed to be gripping them so hard. I cannot do a “light touch.” He can tell I’m trying. I am tired. My right heel is starting to hurt/burn. I feel done.
I make my way back across the gym into the walking room. I’m proud of myself for going out there. No one else was there. But I had elected to stay in the walking room the first time Ryan asked if I wanted to go out into the gym. I know if I’m going to do this that I’ll be facing lots of uncomfortable moments.
Safely seated, I tell Ryan about the painful callus on the bottom of my left big toe. Yes, he could put padding there in the real devices. “It should slowly disappear over several months, but we want it to be comfortable until then.” A $20,000 fix for toe pain? Sign me up! But really. My toe becomes excruciating because I land on it foremost, with every step. When he says the callus should resolve itself, what that means is that I will be walking differently. My gait will be different. I cannot say how that will affect the rest of my body, but it will. So I have to do this. I have to find out.
Here is my favorite moment. I told him my right heel was feeling pain and pressure. I pointed out where it hurt. He felt it and then he felt inside the brace. “Oh, there’s a little bump here. I can smooth that out for you. Feel it.” Sure enough, there was a tiny, but significant, bump in the plastic that I had been standing and walking on for two hours. Triumph! A pain, a reason for the pain, and a solution to the pain. Do you know how rare that is? How satisfying? How reassuring?
Just an hour or two after we left the clinic, I felt a new soreness that I couldn’t remember feeling before. Same amount on both sides. I thought it might be the gluteus medius, the ones that I needed to strengthen. I looked it up, just to make sure. Yes, these muscles were sore, but not in pain. Just using the test devices for two hours had forced my body (without my conscious effort) to use the new, “correct” muscles.
So here I am. Knowing that I have years of work ahead of me. No way of knowing the outcome. Right now, I feel more disabled in the things, yet I am supposed to believe that they will help me feel more able than ever before.
Goals before trip number two, when I will receive the real devices (in a few months):
-Learn to use trekking poles (with a “light touch”)
-Strengthen my core
