Wifey passed along a story to me this morning – published in The Advertiser (13/5/2009, page 12), but originally published in The Daily Telegraph, it’s a piece on Paul de Gelder who had his right hand ripped off in a shark attack while testing equipment for the navy; due to the nature of the attack, he also had to have his right leg amputated below the knee. The awesome thing is that he’s back in the water now, and has started surfing again which is amazing considering the attack only happened a couple of months ago. Well done mate, good luck and keep it up!

If you want to read the full story and see some more pictures, the story on The Advertiser’s website (AdelaideNow) is available here, and the original source (The Daily Telegraph) is available here. The text is similar between the two (they’re both News Ltd publications), but The Daily Telegraph has an image gallery attached to the story. If you want to skip to the gallery itself, here’s the direct link.

Huge thanks to Wifey for passing along the story from The Advertiser to me 🙂

Bloginated Wednesday, 13th May 2009 / Prosthesis or amputee stuff
Tag-isms: amputation | Amputees doing cool stuff | prosthesis | shark attack | surfing

Last week Wifey and I popped up to Noosa to catch up with her family. Now, my father-in-law and Hamez (brother-in-law, look up some of the archives as I’ve dragged him along to karate in the past) are particularly keen fishermen, so in due course I went out with them in their boat to do some fishing. Not having fished since I was a wee tacker, this was all very new and interesting for me; granted I was a bit rubbish at it, but it was awesome fun.

Where I want to go with this, though, is how being on the water on a small boat works on your balance. Between the three of us sitting down, standing up, casting, drinking beer (well, my father-in-law and I, Hamez is still under 18 and was our driver since he now has his boat license) and motoring around the river, there are plenty of opportunities to fall over and mangle yourself (and I’m quite adept at both of these generally). I’m sure with two legs its tricky working out your balance, but I had a bit of trouble adjusting given the lack of a knee on my left leg 😛 What I eventually found out was that I had to adjust my whole method of standing or moving on the boat… it’s hard to describe, but the best way I could put is that you have to learn to be far more flexible with how you control your walking/standing motions to go with the flow of the boat and the water, rather than resisting the natural flow of movement with a sense of rigidity. Once I got this sorted, I found I was having a much easier time moving around the boat without stumbling so much. Sure, I was never game to stand on the bow, but I was reasonably confident standing in the recessed areas by the time we ended up leaving to come back home.

It actually reminded me of the montage scene in The Karate Kid (aka greatest movie of all time), where Daniel is standing on the bow of the boat practicing his forms. Except I didn’t do any karate, because I probably would have looked like a bit of a tosser with all the other fishermen around 😛

You know what? I think this calls for a (widescreen) trailer to the original Karate Kid movie:

Awesome. Note the boat scene around 1:03. The only way that movie could have been better is if Chuck Norris was in it as a referee or something, like his awesome cameo in Dodgeball.

Anyway, the principle of this is the same for martial arts – be flexible, learn to move with your scenario and don’t oppose it with unnecessary, strict rigidity – as the mighty Bruce said, “be like water”. Even beyond the principle there’s the question of using the boat as a tool for teaching you to have good balance, which is an essential technique in any committed martial artist.

If nothing else, it’s definitely something to think about.

Bloginated Friday, 8th May 2009 / Movies, Prosthesis or amputee stuff
Tag-isms: Balance | Chuck Norris | prosthesis | The Karate Kid

I got a couple of e-mails from Jesse over at Martial Arts Explorer this week (check out his blog, it’s awesome!), and one of them linked to a recent post over on Engadget, a site that I had totally forgot to check out on a semi-regular basis for cool new developments for prosthetic limbs. The post in particular he pointed me to was Ossur’s new (v2 I guess) Power Knee:

Engadget’s writeup can be found here, and Ossur’s press release on their website can be found here. This awesome piece of tech got me to thinking about technology and limbs and stuff, and how the landscape continues to change and evolve over time. The first time I ever saw some technology beyond the basic socket + hinge-knee + rubber foot was back in… 1993 I think, when I was 11. I was having one of my usual visits to my specialist with my Dad, and one of the guys who looked after my leg showed my Dad and I this video on these crazy new knees that had hydraulics inside them to do all sorts of cool stuff. At this time we didn’t have the money to go this route, and since I was so young anyway, the money spent would have been devoured since you’d require constant upgrades to the knee as I grew older. The idea never went away though 🙂

In 2000 I got my first hydraulic knee thanks to my folks, as I made my first leap beyond my conventional prosthesis into something a bit more contemporary. I’d finished growing by that point, so I made the move from a loose socket to a suction one, ditched the molded plaster lower-leg for a titanium rod with a foam cover, and moved from a free-swinging hinge to a hydraulic unit. The change was absolutely enormous, it really was huge. Moving away from the belt mechanism that used to hold my leg onto my body was a bit tricky at first, but there’s no comparison to a good suction leg, and I’ve had one ever since. I’m no longer using a hydraulic knee as I find my current pneumatic one a better fit for me – it’s more reactive and stable so its prefect for martial arts training, and more importantly its supported by the government, so it isn’t costing me anything in terms of upkeep or replacement. Without government support, the unit would be setting me back $2000, and I hate to imagine how much I’d be costing if maintenance wasn’t covered as part of it. One thing Australia has so right is its universal health care system, and I’m continuously thankful that the government continues to support amputees and look after us.

But I’ll leave my own tech for a post some time in the future – I want to talk about some of the cooler stuff out there. I was lucky enough to get a test-drive of Otto Bock’s awesome C-Leg a few years back, if only for maybe half an hour, and the thing was just amazing. Within 5 minutes I was jogging around, climbing up and down ramps and stairs, walking over gravel and uneven slopes, and the feeling was just… unbelievable. Unfortunately the price is well and truly beyond our means ($40k – $60k I think is the figure you’re looking at), and while it would be awesome to have one, to be quite honest I’m a bit pragmatic when it comes to large sums of money, and if I had $40k – $60 up my sleeve, I’d rather put it on my mortgage and continue with my current setup on my prosthesis – if it ain’t broke, I guess why fix it????

Still, it’s an awesome piece of kit!

Still on the topic of cool of cool tech, I found the following on Engadget as well:

To quote the source, “The concept “immaculate” from Hans Alexander Huseklepp explores the idea of turning a handicap into a high-performance, cybernetic fashion statement”. Seriously, if this is the future of limbs, sign me up, that’s awesome. I think the idea that they talk about in the original article that Engadget reported on (playmedesign, click here for the story and more pics) is to look at a prosthesis not as a substitute, but an opportunity and a fashion statement. One of the comments on the playmedesign website quotes the following:

And you know what, I like that rationale. When I was younger, I never used to like wearing shorts (well, once crazy pubescent self-consciousness hit anyways, so from about the age of 12 onwards), because the leg was so obviously fake. When I started going out with my then-girlfriend (now Wifey), she eventually got me into thinking about trying to wear shorts again (you know, ’cause it kinda gets warm here in Australia during summer :P). I figured that if I was going to do this, I’m going to make a statement, be proud and unobtrusive, and remove the foam padding that wraps around the titanium pole. Was a bit weird at first, but it now feels natural to wear it like that with the titanium pole exposed (it’s also better for movement, gives the knee a bit more free movement). I still use the foam padding when wearing trousers/jeans to assist in protecting the material and keeping the shape that the material’s been cut for, but when I wear shorts, the foam padding comes off. It was actually quite liberating (and still is) to do this, and while you get plenty of looks (especially from the kids, which is all good because that’s the beauty with kids, they’re just curious and I think that’s awesome), it’s never thrown off my confidence.

… and with that, I’m going to wrap up this essay 😛 If you’re keen on keeping up with what’s being tagged on Engadget, I’ve made a direct link to all their prosthesis news items here, and have also added it to the links in the sidebar. Again, big thanks to Jesse for sending through the links that got me onto Engadget and inspired this post – cheers mate!

Bloginated Saturday, 25th April 2009 / Prosthesis or amputee stuff
Tag-isms: new technology | prosthesis

Hmmm, definitely a candidate for “longest heading ever” on this blog 😛

Anywho, just a quick one to start off this morning – last night while getting ready for bed my stupid foot decided to weird out and my leg collapsed beneath me out of nowhere, throwing myself flat on my back without warning. In what is a pretty crazy outcome, the brief breakfall training I’ve had instinctively came into play without even thinking about it – I tucked my head in, braced my belly to reinforce my lower back, stuck my arm out and went with the flow of the movement rather than trying to fight it. The end result was that I ended up on my back, but didn’t crack my head against any hard objects (a bit of a miracle fluke if you ask me) or wind myself. Mind, I was trying to come to bed discreetly as my wife was asleep and I was trying to avoid waking her up (especially as I got distracted doing stuff online instead of being a dutiful husband and coming to bed earlier ;)), but wake up she did – bolted upright in a freakout-ish state of mind. First thing I said was “I’m not hurt”, but think about it – how trippy would it be that you suddenly snap awake despite being deeply asleep to see your other half just collapse without warning and for no apparent reason? I think she did better than I would have to be completely honest, maybe after all these years she’s starting to well and truly expect the unexpected with my ability to fall over at will 😛

Thankfully now that its the next day, I don’t think I’ve sported any injuries. So far my muscles are a bit achy, which could also be due to training on Wednesday night, and one of my wrists is a little sore, but apart from that I’m fine. I’m just damn lucky that I didn’t hit my head or back against anything on the way down. Will totally be calling and making an appointment asap sometime during the day, the last thing we need is for me to tempt fate any further with this mangled foot!

So, moral of this story – learning proper breakfalls for the general populace is definitely a good thing, but for amputees who might be a little accident prone like yours truly, they might just be an essential technique in your toolkit for scenarios like this. I’m just so glad that Sensei had us work on them last month, came in very handy!!!

Bloginated Friday, 24th April 2009 / Prosthesis or amputee stuff
Tag-isms: Breakfalls | mangled fake leg | prosthesis | stupid injuries

Well, dropped into the leg people yesterday to get them to do some work. Y’know, like a car service, but for a leg. I reckon I should slap on one of those “Your next service is due by June 2009, or 5,000 kms” on my leg. That way I’d be a bit better in getting it serviced regularly 😀

Anywho, the new foot enclosure is still on its way, at this stage it looks like I should have it done before Wednesday next week, which is good as I’m driving Wifey up the wall at the moment from walking around the house doing karate. Due to the foot I haven’t done anything too stupid (like running up and down the hallway doing jumping side kicks :P), just punches, shuto and the occasional kick. It’s now been three weeks since my last class, and I’m starting to worry about the quality of my kata, so I’ve started going through it in my head every now and again and trying to visualise it and train the pattern in my brain that way. In the meantime with my foot, they’ve fused the toes back onto the rest of the enclosure which should abate any paranoia I have about them breaking off entirely if I keep to my currently level of activity. They also serviced the knee while I was there – I hadn’t snapped the spring this time, but it was given a thorough once-over and its working much nicer now.

Anywho, in general training news stuff, I manage to squeeze back up to 50kg on the bench on Wednesday night, which was good (I could only get to about 46kg the night before). I was going to do weights last night as well, but the week’s catching up already so I gave it a miss as I had a few other things to do after work anyhows. So this ends my first week of minimal reps/maximum weights that I wrote about earlier on after reading Jesse’s blog. Obviously it’s still early days, but I enjoyed the challenge this week, and we’ll see how it translates into my usual training regime for next week. In the long run, I’m hoping it will be a positive addition to my between-class training.

More importantly, hopefully I’ll be able to get to class next week!

Bloginated Friday, 17th April 2009 / Prosthesis or amputee stuff, Weights
Tag-isms: mangled fake leg | prosthesis | weight training