Straight up crutching uses one leg and two crutches and has you moving via a series of vaults. Plant crutches ahead of you, push off good leg, move in crutch-defined arc, land on good leg, repeat. It's fast, somewhat intensive, and nothing like walking. The entire point is to never let the bad leg/foot/thing touch anything.
Walking with crutches is entirely different. As far as your leg movement is concerned you're just walking. Where the difference comes in is that when your good leg is up the crutch (or crutches, but usually just the one) is down. This distributes your weight across two or three (again, usually one crutch so just two) ground contacts and keeps your bad leg from taking the full force of your weight.
From walking with a crutch I'm to use my own judgement as to when I just plain walk (there will be a brace involved) and again to when I walk entirely unassisted.
So, today I start walking, by the time of my next check up, which is another six weeks, I should be walking without any outside help. Obviously the metal crap inside of my foot will be providing inside help.
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Honestly, I don't give much of a shit about that. My prognosis was always good. Someday I'll be back to 100% and yada, yada, yada. Another week or two before I could try walking wouldn't have bothered me too much.
Here's what I give significant shits about: We've reached the point where surgery related blood-clot risk is no longer enough of a concern to keep me off of my hormones.
It takes time to change a system, things won't get better overnight any more than they got worse. In fact, in my experience it usually takes a longer for mood to recover than it does for it to degrade. But at least it can start getting better.
At least this fucking pseudo-depression can start to go away.
At least the fog in my brain can start to lift.
I have no idea how long the change for the better will take, but it begins today. A new day is coming at some point. It might not be light yet, but there's a glimmer.
This is a dumb question, but when you walk with one crutch, which side does the crutch go on? I've walked with a stick from time to time when afflicted by a recurring muscle spasm, and I can never figure out which way helps. I can see logical arguments for either way, but haven't been able to work out a practical answer
ReplyDeleteI couldn't figure it out on my own either (I tried to once with a previous sprain of my right ankle), fortunately they told me.
DeleteIt goes opposite, and by shifting your weight you can adjust how much load is on the bad foot/leg. Neutral stance is fifty fifty, if you lean away from the bad side, progressively less weight goes on it.