Archive: We can rebuild him, we have the technology
Source: Gisoku no Jutsu
Original post date: 26 March, 2007
Ack, wasn’t able to squeeze in a third blog last week – my bad. Between another busy week at work and crunching in an assignment for post grad stuff at Uni, I wasn’t able to get one done. Bummer. But I’ve made up for it by having such an awesome title for this blog. Maybe.
Anywho, it turns out that last Wednesday I managed to get an appointment and had my leg fixed. The problem was the usual one – the big-arse spring in the knee broke in half, hence the weird clicking noise. For those unawares, the knee for my fake leg (see my pics/previous blog for an image) has a big spring inside that helps make it do its usual trickery. Assumedly, after it’s given a fair bit of abuse, the thing shatters/bends/brakes, and so on, which leads to the knee not operating as well as it should (normally, this means it doesn’t swing through as smoothly as it should), and in the worst-case scenario, the knee completely seizes up and won’t move – it stays locked in place.
The last time I had the spring changed, I’d waited ages before I managed to grab some time off work to go in and have it looked at, and the result staggered even the guys who take care of these things in their daily work. I was hoping to have a pic of it uploaded by the time I wrote this up, but was having trouble finding the pic on my mobile phone – thankfully, I’ve finally located it, so I’ll upload it over the next few days. It’s a really cool pic – I placed a brand new spring alongside the mangled one. The result was very amusing. Or at least I was amused, but I’m like that 😉
Anywho, back to the story – the leg got fixed, but due to craptacular study commitments, couldn’t make karate training on Wednesday night, which makes it three weeks in a row that I haven’t trained! Very annoying. I get the feeling my karate will be uber sloppy come Wednesday… and it just emphasises even more that I have to organise the extra night’s training to continue to push myself, and it means that in the future if I have to skip a night’s class due to work or study commitments, it means I won’t be missing an entire week’s worth of training!
Even though I’ve had the time off, I’ve been working hard on my leg stretches in the evenings, and I’m almost at the point of being able to do Chinese splits (i.e. side splits, as opposed to front splits). When I had my previous style of prosthesis (my current style uses a silicone liner for my stump, which is easier on the skin; the previous style had a flexible, plastic-type inner lining and the stump used to slide in and have direct contact with the socket… methinks I’ll have to do a post, or a series of posts, on how my leg(s) have worked over the years), there was greater flexibility between the socket and my stump, and doing the Chinese splits didn’t stress my legs as much as the current leg does, and I could get myself perfectly flat on the ground whilst balancing on my heels. With the extra work I’m putting in, I think I’m beginning to reach that same level again, which is awesome.
In addition to the stretching, I had two pretty intense weight sessions last week – Tuesday night’s workout emphasised chest/upper torso, and on Thursday my father-in-law put me through what he calls his ‘Killer Arm Workout’, with “killer” signifying intensity, and not the usual slang its used for in Australia 🙂 And you know what – he was right! After the workout, even washing my hands was difficult! It was pretty funny mind you – I felt like a penguin, moving my arms from the shoulder to get them to do anything 🙂 Hence on Friday, I was a little sore, and by Saturday, wow… I must have slept with my arms folded or curled up, because the muscles around my elbow were so sore and stiff that the tendons didn’t want to stretch at all, so I had to work on them all weekend to actually be able to stretch my arms out straight! I would like to thank the packet of voltarin for adding some anti-inflammatory goodness, and the magic mud heat rub stuff Wifey and I brought back from NZ in helping me being able to get my arms better! I can now stretch my arms out straight, and it only hurts a bit 😉 Methinks a less intensive session is in order for tomorrow night 🙂
And that’s pretty much it. I’ll post something else in the lead up to training, and will finally be able to do a post-training blog later in the week. Can’t wait – I’ve missed karate!
