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Visit Dan's website at ampu-cycle.com Amputation. That one simple word changes everything, doesn’t it? I had this thought recently as I spoke with a man who was facing the heavy weight of the decision of an amputation vs. his sixteenth surgery to restore mobility to his damaged left ankle. I could relate that for sure. While listening to him weigh out loud the pros and cons of such a decision, my mind wandered back to the day just over a year ago when I first heard that word spoken concerning my own future. Since that day many things in my life has changed. The world and my place in it, looks so very different. In the short months that have passed since that day. I have experienced fear, depression, and guilt. I have felt deep sadness and grief, and became almost familiar friends with their offspring, that deep well of tears that seem at time to be never ending . I have faced hard choices and challenges and have found that I somehow possess courage I cannot explain. I have learned to set goals, reach and surpass them. I have in this first year recovered from the physical trauma of surgical amputation. And slowly I am piecing my emotional and spiritual life back together. My story started in the fall of 2001 as I sat listening one morning to my orthopedic surgeon quietly informing me that after three minor corrective surgeries there was little more he could do to give me more mobility or relieve the pain in my badly shattered right ankle. Two plates, 13 screws and an odd pin or two held it all together. In as little as two years from my accident I had already wore out the cartilage in my ankle and the bone on bone pain would only get worse. In order to be free from the pain and agony I felt with each step, he suggested that an amputation might be a solution. I was referred to The Hanson Foot and Ankle Clinic in Seattle Washington for a consultation with the highly respected Dr. Sigfried Hanson. Today I realize that my local doctor placed me before a road that would lead to some of the finest surgeons, nurses and medical care available. My entry into this world of excellent health care started with the very first hour long meeting with Dr Hanson. The length of our meeting itself was such a surprise. I was used to the quick ten minutes with a doctor who had three other patients waiting in other exam rooms. During this hour Dr. Hanson led me through all the possibilities open to me. In short I had too two choices: spend the next 3 to 5 years having multiple surgeries with about a 25% chance that I would get better or amputate and move on with my life. The previous two years had been filled with so much physical pain. How could I face more of the same? I just wanted it to end. I told him I just could not face so many more years of struggle. I knew I just did not have it in me to through such reconstruction surgery. Was I a coward? Would I be taking the easy way out? It was a gentle word of warning from Dr. Hanson crystallized my decision to think seriously about having an amputation. ”We can save your leg, but in the process we could ruin your life“. ”It could be years before you could work again and recovery is a full time job“. I left the meeting feeling shocked that my whole world was going to change, and there was little I could to stop it. On my eight hour drive back to southern Oregon I cried many times. I knew during the drive that I was going to go ahead with the amputation. I am ”nothing if not decisive“ as described by a friend. But somehow two months passed. My wife and I researched amputation and prosthetics. I joined a newsgroup of amputees on the internet and from them learned what this new world was about. I cannot stress how important communication with other amputees was and remains today. From strangers I learned about the new life I was facing and found acceptance, strength and support, as well as a forum for my many questions. This process gave me the time to accept the decision and find the courage to contact Dr. Hanson again and begin the process to improve my life. My wife and I drove back to Seattle the first week of February to meet the doctor who would do the surgery. A young, calm confident surgeon appeared and introduced himself as Dr. William Ertl. I had researched both Dr Ertl and his procedure commonly called an Ertl amputation. Dr. Ertl made a contract with me. I was going to have to work hard in my recovery, follow his advice, and have a can do attitude. In turn he was going to in effect rebuild my leg. But it would be different I would not have an ankle or a foot. His confidence instilled trust and I immediately decided to have the surgery in two weeks. Waking up from the five hour procedure I steeled myself for the shock of looking down and not seeing the rest of my leg. I had read the stories of others waking up and experiencing this pivotal life changing moment. I was ready! I lifted the sheets and saw a neatly wrapped residual limb. That was it. There was no heart stopping moment, there was no flash of an epiphany. I was simply still me. It was almost a letdown. I remember thinking ”well that’s not so bad, piece of cake!“ There would be time for the grief to set in later. Five days of hospitalization passed and my wife drove me home to our changed life. Inside I raged against what had become my fate and destiny I feared I was going to be a cripple, and what would that mean? My feelings of loss, of grief, and the overwhelming desire for a sense of normalcy, waged war within me. The words of a kind nurse who oversaw my rehab in the hospital echoed in my mind. ”You will never return to what your life was like before your injury“. ”You can learn to do and be anything you want except to get back there“. ”Let it go“. Never has so true words ever been spoken to me. Totally disregarding this most important advice, my emotional roller coaster gave me the fuel I needed to return to work. Within three weeks I was back in my art gallery greeting customers. I would rarely venture beyond the sales counter seeing how uncomfortable your average tourist was being waited on a one-legged man on crutches. (The Ertl amputation takes 8 to 12 weeks non weight bearing to heal but mine took four months due to a slowly closing wound.) Sales slumped because of my condition I feared, it had nothing to do with the largest wildfire in Oregon history burning out of control nearby. I worked alone each day feeling that all eyes in this small town were now on me and my progress. I longed for the day I would get my first leg and be normal again. But a funny thing happened in those intervening months on my way to normalcy. I began to forget what life was like before my surgery. Living life on a pair a crutches became normal and I was adjusting to it. I noticed the stares less and less, Laugher seemed to slowly be returning. In June I was fitted with my first leg. Steve, my new friend and prosthetist got me to walk again sent me off and said that, ”There little you cannot do and what you break we can fix“. Within two weeks I had crashed and burned while cycling on a country road, so life was returning to normal. Again I was fortunate to have met so many nice people via the internet and spent a week with many of them talking laughing and not feeling that I was different. I had not yet seen another amputee short of a support group meeting I attended during my hospital stay. I worried that I would stare at other Amputees as the people in my small town stared at me. But within afternoon I was openly accepted by those in attendance of the conference. Faces were put with names of those friends I had only known in cyberspace. It had been two and a half years since I had laughed and has such fun. These kind people helped bring me back to living a full rich life that is different but no less as fulfilling. During that week I met many amputees that struggled with poorly fitted prosthetics, bad residual limbs in need of revision surgery. Until then I thought all amputations were like mine. I began to understand that week just how more my life had been improved by having an Ertl amputation. Today I think of it as a fully functional leg that does not have an ankle and foot. Dr Ertl fulfilled his part of our contract and I would like to think I fulfilled mine. The benefit from this type of reconstructive surgery is shown in my daily life. I have cycled up to 160 miles in one day.. I have minimal Phantom pain. I take no medications. I have a very normal gate. I look forward to the future. It will not be with issues and problems and some of them might even be because I am an amputee. I am just an average 42 yr old with two good legs. Okay, so one of them is a little different but as time goes by I sense the importance of with one that is will diminish further. So the first year has passed. I have cried till the tears could no longer flow I have cursed God in the unfairness of it all. I have struggled with a new since of self worth and with vanity. But, little by little, this last year I have began to accept the new me. And even delighted in not being what I thought was normal. Eight months after my surgery I moved 3000 miles from Oregon and began a new life on the coast Of North Carolina. And sitting here one day I thought about all this while listening to a frightened man about to embark on his own adventure. What would his first year hold in store for him? I wished him well as I wish us all well. It will be nothing if not interesting eh? Please feel free to email me at danielsheret@earthlink.net Update provided Nov 2005: The pain and weariness for the last two days fell away from me as I rounded the last corner and finally saw the Atlantic Ocean stretching out as far as I could see. I found myself yards away, from the beach access I had spent two months trying to reach. With one last pedal stroke my riding was done. ”How many millions of turns of the pedal crank had passed since I started in San Francisco?“ went through my mind as I made that last revolution. I slowly coasted to a stop and unclipped my left leg from the pedal, then with reach down and unclipped my prosthetic leg on my right. Hoisting my bike on my shoulder my eyes were brimming with tears. I walked those last few steps of my long journey to the waters edge. As I made my way through the crowded beach I was joined by my fellow riders. We became a curiosity for the families enjoying their summer beach vacation. A group of 30 laughing, crying, shouting, cyclists standing in the warm surf is not an everyday occurrence on a New Hampshire beach in July.
Or so I thought…… Since then I have cycled across Europe to bring a message of hope and awareness that life does not end with limb loss. I am an Ertl amputee. My surgery has given me the ability to do anything I want without any limitations. As I approach 4 years of being an amputee I forget most of the time that I am missing my right ankle and foot. Today I continue my cycling adventures and have added a few more. I am also a long distance kayaker, a back country skier. But the most important thing is that I was asked to join a new practice in North Andover Mass. called Lifestyles Prosthetics and Orthotics. Here I am being trained as a Prosthethist and work with a great group dedicated to improving the life of other amputees. Like is better for me being an ertl amputee than before my accident. Like is nothing if not a surprise eh? Dan sheret |
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I stood stunned for a moment, unaware of the press of people around me, and of the cameras of the media closing in on my spot on the beach. There would be time for them later. This was my spot. I earned it. There was one last thing I had to do before I was descended upon. I steadied myself with one hand on the bike that had taken me all across this vast country. I reached down and stripped away the cover to my leg and pulled my stump from the carbon fiber socket of my prosthesis. The tears of joy were blinding me now and I lifted my carbon and titanium leg as high as I could, in victory. ”Yes!“ I said over and over. ”Yes, I did it!“ Fifty two days and 3800 miles earlier I left a foggy beach in San Francisco on June 8th and here I was in Portsmouth New Hampshire on the last days of July, my travels completed.