Home again, home again, jiggity jig

We are home.

Ernie walked down to his dad's house this morning.  Arrived with a shirt full of ground-fallen apples he collected on the way.  Like me, they marvel at seeing him strolling along, hands full of autumn bounty instead of crutches.  We had coffee and tea together, and gave them some pecans from Texas.

Still feeling grateful for all the people who've helped, shared the struggle, and otherwise been part of these amazing months full of hope, sweat, and grace.

Among the stories from our recent southern adventures that I haven't posted yet, Ernie competed in the Southwest Valor Games, and had the best time of the day in the 200-meter kayak race. 

The medalists in Ernie's class

Ernie circling back to cheer for his 2nd place competitor

They took lots of measurements of him walking in his old and new braces on Thursday.  Painful, but productive.  We're sort of hoping that the studies they're doing require calling him back for a follow-up, because it would be wonderful to see these folks again, and to cheer on the latest crop of intrepid participants on their road to recovery.

Pressure readings, timed measurements,
and some photo and video of the devices and his gait.

On Friday, coincidentally as a sort of graduation for us, they had a big patriotic event in San Marcos, with schoolkids, police and sherriffs' departments along with three biker clubs of veterans, and a big community-sponsored barbecue at a local airfield, following which they sent any willing wounded warriors up to skydive out of a small airplane.  Ernie liked it so much he sent me up for the final run of the day, too.

Ernie and Kimberly, and their tandem jumpers, going out to the plane.

The plane (flyby on its way to landing after a drop)

People landing who may even be Ernie and Jo

Erica, whole and grinning, back on the ground

Person landing who is very likely Erica

I don't know if you'll be able to view the video above, but it shows Ernie paddling like mad in one of the kayaks.  He's hoping to keep competing, and I am looking forward to being out on the water more as he practices.

For my next trick, though, it's past time to get our Builder's Guide out on the market.  I'm uploading the draft files to Scubbly.com, and recruiting people to help spread the word as soon as I get our Kickstarter approved for launch.  Apparently these things go better if you pre-sell a bunch before the Kickstarter... and I'm not sure if I can promote or organize that heavily without delaying the Kickstarter itself. 

First step is to vacuum the sand out of our good camera, and/or find a local videographer, and get the campaign application finalized and submitted.  While it's processing sounds like the best time to add frosting, pre-sell, or other hoopla.

Anyone eager to fill the role of videographer, and maybe gets some gorgeous fall footage of the Okanogan in the process?

Much love, and many thanks,
Erica and Ernie

IDEO in action

Ernie's first flight without crutches or wheelchair, returning to San Antonio for the final few weeks of training and fitting with his new IDEO brace.

Kayaks for practice

On the San Antonio at moonrise

Erica trying a racing kayak (tippy!)

Rockets in Montana

End point of Sunday's labors

Just one photo for now.  May add more after sleep.

Update:

Paddling in the sun

Ernie's getting comfortable in the racing kayak

Olympic kayaker Ben Kvanli lives in San Marcos (where the weather is suitable for boating all year round).  On Mondays he helps out at the Center for the Intrepid, coaching injured service members and veterans on kayaks and float-boards in their little swimming pool.    On Thursdays he invites veterans and a whole flotilla of experienced paddlers along on various river paddling trips - from shooting man-made rapids to exploring big broad reaches like this one near Austin.

Ben's back yard drops off to a convenient landing on the San Marcos river.  Ben's in-laws live in the area too. His lovely wife teaches third grade, and they are getting ready to start a family.  (Seems kind of like an alternate-universe version of what our life might have been like, except for them being very different people and very much themselves. Despite our lovely experiences here, I don't see Arctic Ernie voluntarily moving to Texas full-time.)

If we do "make it" back to where Ernie has the luxury of boating on a daily basis, we also hope to give back like they do.  I'd love to have weekly outings where kids, families, veterans, people of all kind can come together on the water.

If working with earth is "grounding," playing in the water seems to help get things flowing again.  Issues work themselves out - trust, confidence, body movement.  You start to regain a sense of rhythm, balance, and choice.  Staying balanced above your boat is a matter of constant adjustment, which soon becomes unconscious.

Yulia, my adventure buddy
(second time in a kayak, ever - first time solo.  Brave girl.)

(Watching my adventure-buddy Yulia learning to handle her boat solo reminded me that it's definitely an acquired art!  The first few times for anyone, you're usually nervous, which means most people tense up awkwardly, which of course means you have more difficulty balancing and tend to over-compensate with jerky movements.  The water will teach you fairly quickly just how useless such anxiety really is.  The more you tense up, the worse things go.  The more you relax, and learn to make smooth, powerful gestures in tune with your surroundings, the more freedom and success you experience.  Julia is a fast learner, and is starting to smile as we poke around and explore the river.) 

Once you can trust your balance and your boat, it's hard to beat the feeling of being buoyed up and supported, and the freedom and speed of gliding along as fast as you care to go.   Even if you stop paddling, the boat keeps going - there's a relationship, an elasticity, between the effort you put in and the return that rewards you.

Wading birds don't leave a river
just because it is full of plastic trash...
it's not like they can go to the fish market instead.

Our landing zone, and more lush greenery

We saw fishing birds, heard something (bats?) overhead going under the bridge decks.  I paddled along with Yulia for a while, then she and her husband Jon had some quality time while I poked around looking for wildlife.   Ernie and Ben had started chatting while they paddled and just glided off into the distance, easily leaving the rest of us behind.

It reminded me how far I've come from some of the early adventures with the Portland skin-on-frame crowd.  During one trip on the Willamette, our boat-provider started racing upstream with some of the other guys, and I felt like I was being left behind and tried to keep up.  For half-a-dozen strokes I was gaining speed and almost keeping up, and then I dumped the boat as hard as I've ever dumped a boat.  I got out, found my paddle, and got one arm around the partially-swamped boat and started towing it toward the nearest dock, which happened to be the OMSI one by the submarine.  The last little paddler in the group followed me, not sure what she could do to help (being even less experienced in water rescue than I was).  I was almost all the way to the dock before the speedy guys up ahead noticed that we were not following, and eventually came back over to see if we were OK.  Ernie was not along on that trip, since he'd already dumped the boat they had for him a couple of times starting out, and it just wasn't working well enough to be worth struggling with.  Those kinds of experiences tended to make me feel like I was not doing so well - and I definitely did not feel like I could trust or count on the more advanced paddlers in that particular group.

But in Texas, I was reminded that struggling to keep up with experienced whitewater and blue-water (open ocean) kayakers is pretty intensive training.  I started out by just asking for the open boats (the ones that you can't get stuck in if you flip them, recommended for novices), because I have never learned to Eskimo-roll, and I've always thought that was a prerequisite to being a "real" kayaker.
On the second trip out, Ben needed to swap an over-ambitious veteran into an easier boat, and asked Ernie if he thought I could handle being in a closed boat.  Ernie replied "sure," and seemed to think I could handle most any boat he had available.  By the end of our time together, I tried one of the racing kayaks, and seemed impressed when I handled it without dumping even once.  Apparently, dumping your boat is a normal part of learning to kayak.

The occasional bath doesn't seem to bother Ernie, or stop him from training, except that he gets frustrated if he can't help dumping the boat when he's trying to practice something else.  The IDEO doesn't fit in the boats, so it's all dependent on his ability to compensate and balance for that injured leg.  And whether he's wet or dry certainly doesn't affect my respect for Ernie's athletic abilities. 

I still think I should try to learn eskimo-rolls at some point, and I am still intimidated by them. (I never did learn to swim fast enough for crawl-stroke breathing to work out for me; I have a hard time trusting myself enough to perform precision maneuvers underwater that have to be completed before I can breathe again.) But as long as I get to keep my head above water while I swim, or stay on top of the boat, I'm having fun.

I tend not to want to stop when we're out here on the water.  Eventually you might get hungry, but we usually grab some drinks and snacks on the way out, and stay perfectly content for as long as the day may last.

IDEO progress

Ernie's new brace

 So this is what Ernie's new brace looks like.
He is not only walking without crutches after 8 years on them .... he is having important quality-of-life experiences like putting dishes away, taking out the trash, carrying food and coffee around.  (And other fun stuff, below.)

There's still a lot of leg-elevation time between activities. Swelling, dings and dents, etc. 

Ernie says everybody has seen him sitting around with his leg up, so here are some pictures of the fun stuff we've enjoyed over the past month.

This visiting therapy dog,
I'm told, is a Great Pyranees. 
Is this what they all look like in Texas? 
You'd have to see a highland Great Pyranees,
in all its wooly glory,
to fully appreciate the amount of shedding implied.

Here's a breed standard Great Pyranees,
still not as shaggy as the Highland working dogs I've seen.

This is what cows look like in Texas.

Ernie's second kayak outing

Erica trying the climbing tower as well.

Challenge course climbing - the knee
still doesn't bend as much as he'd like,
but that doesn't stop him.

Top of the climbing tower: nice view.

Zipline.  Just because.

Exploring Mission San Jose over the weekend.

We'll be going almost straight from here to Missoula, MT for the Innovators' Gathering.  There's one ticket left as of yesterday. 

I'll post more pictures of the 1700's Mission architecture we explored over the weekend, along with a longer video, next post.

-Erica and Ernie

Ernie walking, video

Ernie walking around and enjoying one of the restored walls in the Mission San Jose.  It may not load fast for those of us with mountain-grown Internet, but here's a short video.

A new IDEO

Picture: inside Ernie's lower leg:

Just returned from a trip to San Antonio to check out a new type of leg brace for Ernie.

As most readers know, Ernie was hit by a car in 2006, and has mostly been on crutches since then.  The damage was considerable (a compound crush injury at about 40 mph), and most of the expected healing has already happened. Latest X-rays show more bone healing, but Ernie still has shards of fused bone from the original accident and new growth, and very painful sensations of movement in the break area.  Problems with pain, mobility, and circulation continue, and in some cases have worsened despite ongoing care.

The leg brace he currently uses allows him to walk and weight-bear with only one crutch, meaning he can carry a cup of coffee or do some mobile work.  But the brace is designed to support by compression, meaning it cuts off circulation return from his leg.  Circulation return is already not great; further restrictions cause a lot of pain, and a buildup of blood and fluid below the brace cuff.  This limits the useful hours in the current brace to one or two a day, with several hours of foot elevation for recovery.  And there are certain things he just can't do easily in the brace, like rotate his foot into the passenger seat of a car.  This brace is a pretty standard approach for an injury like Ernie's, with instability in both ankle and knee.
 

current brace-
exterior carbon-fiber
cut back from skin graft.

Current brace-
interior side cut back (bone spurs).

Current brace
(Laces up like a corset.)

Mock-up for new brace:
hinged top allows easier entry and removal,
plus more rigid, firm-tissue support. 
Clear plastic behind contoured wings
will be replaced with carbon-fiber flex rods.

The new type of brace is designed for athletic movement; it's extensively used in the Return to Run program for active service members rehabilitating with a brace or prosthetic.  The IDEO uses carbon-fiber elements to provide some spring function, which can be tailored to specific activities like walking and running, cycling, or rowing. They offload the weight using molded supports fitting around hard tissue near the knee, with better results for circulation and force transfer.  Similar to how a prosthetic attaches to an amputated limb.
The foot-plate is full length, limiting kneeling postures, but that hasn't been an option for Ernie for years anyway.

IDEO w/ clip-on knee support
( from ncojournal.dodlive.mil)

Above, Ernie is trying on a thermal-plastic mock up.  The actual brace will look more like this:

IDEO brace
ncojournal.dodlive.mil

Fitting the template.

The Center for the Intrepid, which produces these braces and a number of excellent prosthetics, is impressive.  Nice facility, super-dedicated staff, participants who like Ernie are basically unstoppable (not immortal, just don't see any excuse to quit).  Many return to active service with their new limbs or braces.  For the past year the center has also been helping service veterans for whom this technology was not available at the time of their injury.

The CFI serves a lot of people any given week, usually over 100, with multiple appointments for each.  Most fittings and adjustments are done during morning and afternoon walk-in hours, where the head prosthetist and several assistants work with anyone whose brace needs adjustment.  We  met a Road to Recovery cyclist trying out a cycling-adapted IDEO brace, some guys who'd cracked theirs over the weekend playing soccer on a basketball court, and other folks getting specific adjustments for fit, stability, hot spots, and other issues.  Every brace is custom-fit and altered as needed to fit the particular injury and range of desired motion.  Most participants leave with their custom brace and a duplicate, so that broken braces can be sent back for repairs without interrupting normal activity.

The VA is picking up most of the medical costs, and the CFI coordinator helped us connect with the Fisher House and the Bob Woodruff Foundation to alleviate some of the other costs of the trip.  Both are good places to donate frequent-flyer miles if you have some that might expire.

We experienced warm welcome for veterans and military families everywhere we went locally.  Lots of very young, very athletic service members keeping their chins up as they adapt to a new range of activity.  We met some folks at the Fisher House whose family were in the BAMC's world-class burn ward as well.  Not what you'd prefer to have in common with people, a life-altering injury and all the uncertainties that go with recovery, but heartwarming to have the mutual support.
 

(The Fisher House we stayed in looks much like this, only with white columns.)

Lizard with a pink throat.
Anole?

Flowering tree- crepe myrtle?

The BAMC Fisher House dorm mother decided Ernie is her "Crocodile Dundee."  (Was it the all-weather Dorfman hat, the fishing vest with pockets upon pockets, or the stubbly chin?)

While we did not manage to cook up a lizard on a stick for her during this visit, we enjoyed exploring the Southern flora and fauna between appointments.

 This is just what we saw between the CFI and hospital on a daily basis.  There are a lot of other on-campus gardens, the river walk, and the historic Mission Trail to explore on our next visit.

Mystery bird -
acts & sounds kinda like a crow or jay,
size between the two, black/brown feathers.

 No matter how pretty, however, we're just as happy to be home for a few weeks before returning to start the training and customization process.   Ernie doesn't care for the muggy heat, but it beats being on fire, and also beats slick ice when you're learning a whole new range of motion.

We are looking forward to seeing what these guys can do for / with Ernie.  It does not sound like they are going to be satisfied with "better" if they can achieve "good" or "excellent."  And they have a whole bank of Ernie's favorite type of rowing machines.

both Ernie and the cats are glad he's home.