Well I got my knee scooter today. Now that’s what the medical professionals call it, but we all know what it really is…..a tricycle!!!!! And yes, I sometimes use it that way around the apartment, esp when I’m going to the fridge (keeps me at shelf level).
I’m thinking of putting blinkies and a bell on it.
For the record, this thing actually gives quite a workout because you are supporting so much of your weight with your thigh muscle. It would also help a lot if the t-bar were curved towards the user so as to be more ergonomic. Oh yeah, and I’d like some shocks and bigger wheels too.
Do they come with electric motors for climbing hills?
Yikes. I’ve been away (not for fun) and largely off-line, and am only now seeing these scary sad sagas. Hugs and get-well wishes to Boomer, Klizotte, and Dickie. Heal fast and kill those bad bugs!!
Rooting for you. w&w
This has got to be a first: a biking accident that did not include actually being on the bike or outside!
I was in a hurry to get out for an hour’s ride cause the storm was coming. I wheeled my bike into the apartment building corridor then realized I’d forgotten my sunglasses. Ran inside to get them, and while coming back thru the entryway my feet went right out from under me and I hit the floor. I would have been fine from the fall (I was wearing my helmet after all!) but my foot hit the door jam to the closet and twisted unnaturally. End result is an ankle the size of a golf ball. Sigh.
Turns out plastic mountain bike shoes and stone tile are NOT a good combination. Very, very slippery! So beware, esp if your shoes are wet. Another case of haste makes waste.
Unless the swelling goes down magically overnight I’ll be at urgent care tomorrow for an x-ray just in case but I suspect it’s just a simple sprain (my first one!).
Be careful out there!
OH NO! Sorry to hear about your ankle. Carbon fiber bones can’t come fast enough!
Amazingly, I don’t need surgery because it is a stable fracture and displacement is minimal. Even better, I’ve been put in a Darth Vader like walking boot that I can take off for showers (but still need to wear at all other times). Unfortunately, I can’t walk on it for about two weeks then I will graduate to crutches then full walking. Still a much better situation than surgery and a non-removable cast. Whew! Dodged a bullet on this one.
So I get to scooter around for the next two weeks. I’m gonna have a garage full of medical supplies by the time this is all done…
I asked if it was true that the new bone that will grow in stronger than the old stuff. Nope, the ortho said it will at best be as strong but possibly weaker. Darn. I was hoping for some benefit!
I went to Dr. Anthony Avery at OrthoVirginia at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington. I highly recommend! He told me I should have skipped urgent care (and ER) and gone directly to them on Monday. He said they would have found a slot in the schedule that day cause it was an emergency. They sell knee scooters and the like there as well, including the one that I bought (for the same price as Amazon, I checked). I could have saved myself a couple of days of anxiety. Hopefully there won’t be a next time.
Just getting caught up and well, this whole thread just sucked the jam out of my donut total bummer! I hope your recovery is fast. I can attest that the boot is WAY better than a cast, but you didn’t exactly dodge a bullet…it grazed you a la “The Matrix”. Hope to see you tonight so we can buy you stiff drinks for the pain.. I believe rcannon100 plays a DR. on the internet and highly suggests whisky as a healing power. Hope you feel better soon.
I went to the orthopedic surgeon today for the first time and I knew luck was on my side when I noticed this picture on the wall of my exam room:
It was an omen!!!
Amazingly, I don’t need surgery because it is a stable fracture and displacement is minimal. Even better, I’ve been put in a Darth Vader like walking boot that I can take off for showers (but still need to wear at all other times). Unfortunately, I can’t walk on it for about two weeks then I will graduate to crutches then full walking. Still a much better situation than surgery and a non-removable cast. Whew! Dodged a bullet on this one.
So I get to scooter around for the next two weeks. I’m gonna have a garage full of medical supplies by the time this is all done…
I asked if it was true that the new bone that will grow in stronger than the old stuff. Nope, the ortho said it will at best be as strong but more than likely weaker. Darn. I was hoping for some benefit!
I went to Dr. Anthony Avery at OrthoVirginia at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington. I highly recommend! He told me I should have skipped urgent care (and ER) and gone directly to them on Monday. He said they would have found a slot in the schedule that day cause it was an emergency. They sell knee scooters and the like there as well, including the one that I bought (for the same price as Amazon, I checked). I could have saved myself a couple of days of anxiety. Hopefully there won’t be a next time.
I would have thought that eventually the bone could be stronger than before, with strength training. Bones are constantly being remodeled by the body, in response the demands or lack of demands placed on them. For sedentary people who never exercise, the body removes calcium from the bones and weakens them, because the body doesn’t perceive a need for strong bones. With people who do strength training (total body exercises with a challenging program, which can include bodyweight exercises), the body adapts to the stress by making the bones stronger. Cyclists tend to be somewhere in between, although as I mentioned before, elite cyclists seem to have worse bone strength than even sedentary people. Maybe because of the high volume of training, and their attempts to cut bodyfat through restricted diets.
Even if the bone is a little weaker after it heals, shouldn’t you be able to strengthen it later on, after you have fully recovered? Or does the break itself cause a lingering weakness? I’m not an expert on this, but I thought that you would basically be back to normal. Then you can strengthen them later on.
Biceps curls won’t do anything for leg bone strength, but a careful program of squats, lunges, deadlifts and similar exercises will, both two-legged and single-legged. Likewise, exercises like push-ups, one-arm push-ups, pull-ups or partial pull-ups, etc. can strengthen the core and upper-body bones, including the collarbones. The collarbone is one of the most frequently broken ones. For cyclists, the collarbone is vulnerable during a crash, or even during a low-speed tipover if you stick your arm out to cushion a fall. (This is why I generally keep my arms in if I’m doing a slow tipover. I take the calculated risk that I have more cushioning and soft tissue mass on my hip and rear, as long as I don’t land directly on my back.)
Of course you would need to be careful with all of this. Heal up completely, then try something basic, especially if you haven’t done much strength training before. Try bodyweight only for a while, to learn the proper form of the exercises and build up some basic muscle and bone strength. Then gradually increase the workload over time, but not too quickly. It’s better to err on the side of caution with weight-bearing exercises.
For an extreme example of how consistent training can strengthen bones, look at the Pumphrey Brothers. I don’t know if they are the “best” at smashing things with their bodies, but they are among the most visible. They used to have a TV show where they smashed hard objects with their bodies. This video shows the two brothers smashing thick slabs of ice by running into them. I can’t say much for their wisdom, but they do have very strong bones. It’s something that they developed over a long period of time. While most of us don’t need to have bones strong enough to demolish ice or concrete, stronger bones can be more resistant to injury.
Bicep curls won’t do anything for leg bone strength, but a careful program of squats, lunges, deadlifts and similar exercises will, both two-legged and single-legged.
Bicep curls are the only indispensable component of my training regimen.
THE FACTS Just like muscle, human bone grows and strengthens under pressure, and weakens when barely put to use.
This concept — that bone adapts to pressure, or a lack of it — is known as Wolff’s law. It’s the reason astronauts return with reduced bone densityafter floating in microgravity. And conversely, it explains why studies show that tennis players and fencers develop greater bone mass in their dominant arms and legs. But this adaptive measure goes only so far. Despite one misconception, there is no evidence that a bone that breaks will heal to be stronger than it was before.
When a bone fractures, it begins the healing process by forming a callus at the fracture site, where calcium is deposited to aid rebuilding, said Dr. Terry D. Amaral, director of pediatric orthopedic surgery at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx. In most cases, a plaster cast is applied to protect the fracture site. But because there is no weight or pressure on the limb, it becomes weaker — except at the site of the callus, where calcium is being deposited.
“The area that’s healing is undergoing rapid mineralization, but because you can’t use it, the rest of the bone is demineralized,” Dr. Amaral said. As a result, there may be a brief period in the healing process when the fracture site is stronger than the surrounding bone. But they later reach equal strength, and the fracture site is no more or less likely to break again. Dr. Amaral said that in studies in which healed bones were subjected to bending and twisting forces, the repaired bones were capable of breaking anywhere, including the fracture site. “They never comment that it’s stronger or weaker than the rest of the bone,” he said.
I’m sure that I can build up the bone with strength exercises and I’ve added calcium supplements to my daily regimen just in case.
Exactly. I’ve landed very awkwardly on my ankles several times, even having my ankles cave out to the side as I try to skip around other people in running races, but I never sprain anything. Doesn’t mean that it can’t happen, but I think it does show that strength training has strengthened my muscles, tendons and ligaments enough that situations like that don’t lead to injury for me.
I’ve landed on a treadmill (when I was running on wet soles, unfortunately). I scraped up both knees but nothing broke. When I land on my hip in the slow-speed and moderate-speed tipovers, including a relatively recent near-crash at the airport (when I almost ran into a chain), I think it definitely helps that I do strength training. If I had weaker hip bones, I might have fractured a hip in one of those incidents.
I’m not indestructible. If I ran into a 40 mph car, I would be seriously injured. But I am more resistant to injury in less forceful collisions than I was say a decade ago.
Read up on calcium supplements and talk to your doctor and a competent nutritionist. There can be some issues with calcium supplementation. They can help some people, but they might not be so good for others.
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And yes, I sometimes use it that way around the apartment, esp when I’m going to the fridge (keeps me at shelf level).
total bummer! I hope your recovery is fast. I can attest that the boot is WAY better than a cast, but you didn’t exactly dodge a bullet…it grazed you a la “The Matrix”. Hope to see you tonight so we can buy you stiff drinks for the pain.. I believe rcannon100 plays a DR. on the internet and highly suggests whisky as a healing power. Hope you feel better soon.
