ADJUSTED
ADJUSTED
Moving Forward After an Amputation with Aaron Holm
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In this episode, ADJUSTED welcomes Aaron Holm Executive Director and Founder of Wiggle Your Toes. Aaron discusses his experience with limb loss and the mission of his foundation Wiggle Your Toes.
Season 8 is brought to you by Berkley Industrial Comp. This episode is hosted by Greg Hamlin and guest co-host Matt Yehling, Directory of Claims at Midwest Employers Casualty.
Wiggle Your Toes: https://wiggleyourtoes.org
Visit the Berkley Industrial Comp blog for more!
Got questions? Send them to marketing@berkindcomp.com
For music inquiries, contact Cameron Runyan at camrunyan9@gmail.com
Hello everybody and welcome to Adjusted. I'm your host, greg Hamlin, coming at you from beautiful Birmingham, Alabama and Berkeley Industrial Comp, and with me is my co-host for the day, matt Yaling. Matt, if you want to introduce yourself, hello everyone.
Speaker 1This is Matthew Yaling with Midwest Employers Casualty, joining Greg and Aaron from St Louis, Missouri, along the banks of the mighty Mississippi. Looking forward to speaking with Aaron.
Speaker 2Yeah, we also have our special guest, aaron Holm, on. He is the founder and executive director at Wiggle your Toes and we actually had one of our team members get a chance to hear Aaron's story at a conference and suggested we have him with us. So we want to welcome you to the podcast, aaron. Thanks for joining us. Thank you very much, great to be here. So I thought maybe the best place to start, aaron, is to have you tell us your story. I know that you went through an accident. You weren't born with limb loss, so I thought maybe you could tell us how you ended up being disabled and your journey through all that.
Speaker 3Yeah, it was actually January 2nd 2007. And at the time I was leading a great team of IT and engineering professionals. We worked at a consulting firm downtown Minneapolis and it was really fast-paced putting high-tech individuals into seats, running projects at major companies like Target Corporation and Lockheed Martin and Delta Airlines and really fast-paced, maybe cutthroat a little bit. My wife was working in IT at Target Corporation downtown as well, three youngsters on the ground and I had returned to work after taking some time off for the holidays and was getting caught up with my team on the morning of January 2nd and the first call that came in that day was from one of my administrative staff and she was letting us know that she was running late. She had a flat tire on the side of the highway just outside of downtown Minneapolis and she said she had help on the way and we just told her to be safe. We'll see her when she gets in. And a short time later she called again and said that the emergency staff had been summoned or something happened with the help that she had summoned, and I immediately knew that I needed to get her off the road into safety, because January 2nd anybody knows, minneapolis or Minnesota was probably zero degrees outside, and so I just excused myself from the office and drove out and saw her on the side of the highway. So I pulled up behind her and as I pulled up I realized her back right tire was flat and it dawned on me quickly that I could easily change her tire and get her and her vehicle, you know, off to safety. It certainly had nothing to do with my role as a leader at CDI Corporation, but I decided I would do that and in the process of changing her tire, an individual traveling at 55 miles an hour on the shoulder of the highway hit me from behind, pinning me between the two vehicles. So you've heard a lot. My life changed in an instant.
Speaker 3I was fully conscious, laying on the shoulder of the highway on my stomach and kind of wondering why these cars are flying by me and kicking debris in my face, and at that point I decided I better try to stand up. It was one of those things I thought it was dreaming. I tried to stand up, I tried to go from laying on the ground to a standing position, and at that point I knew something was drastically wrong with me. So I glanced over my shoulder, behind me, and I could see that my lower extremities were in pretty tough shape. So I realized at that time what had happened. It took a while, but eventually the police and ambulance showed up and pulled me off the pavement and put me in a gurney and into an ambulance and carted me off to North Memorial Medical Center where an incredible staff of medical professionals gave me some sort of magic medicine to make the pain and discomfort go away. Clarity-wise, I was about as conscious as I've ever been in my life. I was crystal clear mentally. But physically I was in very rough shape. I knew one of my legs was gone. The other one was just not in a position that it should have been, so I really thought that that one would be gone as well.
Speaker 3The word got out on the way to the hospital. I relayed my wife's contact information to the driver and the EMT up front and contact was made. She was actually standing at the bus stop putting our two older children on the bus and she got that phone call. I can't imagine getting that phone call, but as soon as she got the kids on the bus she sprinted home and got her vehicle and flew out to North Memorial Medical Center and walked into the emergency room where I had been stabilized and I grabbed her by the hand and I said we're going to need some help here. And you know I had no idea the extent of the situation we had been in, but the first thing that came to my mind was a personal injury attorney. So I said we're going to need some help here. Contact an attorney. So I mean, there's a brief little introduction on how my life happened and maybe a little teaser to the start of rehab and recovery.
Speaker 2So I got to know did the driver stop the?
Speaker 3driver stopped instantly. I mean, it hit me. He hit me from behind and we got photos of the cars and yeah, that car was not going anywhere, but yeah, he definitely stopped.
Speaker 2We've seen that a few times where we've had the driver run, especially in these kinds of situations. So I was curious about that. Matt, you were going to say something.
Speaker 1I was just going to make a poor choice of questions and ask if, hopefully, it was a big policy limit on that driver's insurance coverage. That's true, my subrogation hat goes on right away. Right, yeah, tragic, tragic event. So you got us to the hospital. You know that it's going to be bad. You spoke to your wife and said get an injury attorney. So your first foray, I'm guessing, into workers' comp, the world of workers' comp what was your first interaction with an insurance company, or how soon did the carrier reach out to you?
Navigating Workers' Compensation and Recovery
Speaker 3Yeah, and that that's I mean. That didn't happen immediately and I had. No, I was oblivious, right. I had never had an injury before. I'd never been hospitalized for any kind of trauma, any kind of setback. Thank God my children had and my wife had. So it was a brand new world.
Speaker 3But the state of mind was get a personal injury attorney and what happened at that time? Was it kind of set us into action? It wasn't going to be. We were going to wait until the medical professionals came to us or the insurance companies came to us. We were going to kind of take action and that's what we did.
Speaker 3Anybody who offered any type of support or came to visit me in the hospital, we would ask them if they had any bandwidth on trying to figure out this world of uncertainty that we're in. I was told that I was going to be a bilateral above the knee amputee. So both legs, as I kind of suspected, were gone at the knee and I never knew anybody that was an amputee growing up or knew anything about prosthetics or, ultimately, the passionate people that would put me back together. So it took a little time for the wheels to start in motion.
Speaker 3But what we did was we asked people who had bandwidth to go out and do the discovery and within about two days we had kind of a checklist of the components that we call the components of recovery for a bilateral above knee amputee and that was kind of where the health insurance and where WorkComp stepped in. That was one of the 10, because in conversations with my employer at that time they were having conversations with their work comp carrier and it was deemed work comp and I was told that. But really I didn't know the extent of that. I didn't know that that team, that case manager and the provider, the insurance company, would, ultimately we would make them a part of our care team. That was an incredible component the orthopedic surgeon, the plastic surgery, the prosthetics and the case management and working through that process. So it was a few days later until I mentally understood what that meant, that we were covered through workers' comp.
Speaker 2So what did the recovery period look like for that? I assume that you were in the hospital for a period of time and then after that did you go home or did they send you to a rehab facility.
Speaker 3They wanted to send me to a rehab facility but because we were so proactive, on day three my home was being modified. I mean, we were Tarrant, I don't take credit for any of it. I was in my hospital bed pushing some morphine button or something and going through surgery. So I had several surgeries. I was in the hospital for 19 days. They didn't want me to leave yet. My wife didn't want me to come home yet. But after 19 days I came home. We had a rented accessible van where I could wheel up a ramp and a wheelchair. My home was fully modified so I had a ramp to get in. I had a stair lift to go upstairs. I was able to tuck my kids into bed, read them a book and tuck them into bed after, you know, just less than three weeks of being in the hospital. So our home was ready for me and then the recovery was several months.
Speaker 3Obviously it was a lot of downtime where mentally and physically I tried to stay active and I had a physical therapist that actually was in our neighborhood at that time that would come over every day after work and kind of work me and set some goals and objectives for getting the core strength up. I know I knew that eventually I would be wearing prosthetics. I would be depending, dependent on my upper extremities, obviously, because my lower extremities were no longer with me. So we would work on core strength and endurance and try to get as much cardio as we could with just some lifting, some light weights and things like that. I taught our two oldest kids how to skate standing up, and I taught our youngest child how to skate when I was in a wheelchair, you know. So I would actually go out onto the rink with him and let him kind of push the wheelchair around and just do whatever we could. You know what we used to do, but a little more slower, more methodical.
Speaker 1Yeah, so this happened almost 18 years ago now, if my math is all right. I can see you, but this is a podcast. So how old were you then? What were the ages of the kids? And you alluded to some younger kids. It sounds like at the time, everyone in Minnesota probably learns to skate when they're like three years old.
Speaker 3Yeah, I'm in my mid-50s, so the kids were let's see, I had a 99, well, let's see 24, 22, and 20. So they were, you know, I don't know, I'm not a mathematician.
Speaker 1So my math is pretty good. I'm three years old when you're teaching her how to skate. Oh yeah, I'm three years old when you're teaching her how to skate.
Speaker 3Oh yeah, I learned from Minnesota. They, as soon as they they can learn, they learn to walk there. They've had skates on their ground, on their feet. So yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2I was born up in Michigan so I know, I know a figure too. I remember ice fishing and doing all that kind of stuff in the winter time for sure.
Speaker 2So, one question I was curious on is as you're going through that. So the longer I've been in workers comp, the more I've realized that how people think and how they feel while they're going through their recovery has a huge impact on their actual recovery. So for you, as you were working through that, I imagine you had some emotions realizing you've lost your legs. How did you work through some of those things to think about how your life was going to look going forward and how did you keep your mind in the right place?
Speaker 3Yeah, and my motivation certainly was the family and I think the mindset was I wanted to be in their world. I didn't want them to be in my world at the current time, right, I wanted to keep up with them and I wanted to do whatever I possibly could and I would do whatever I possibly could to make sure that I kept up with them. They weren't going to miss their hockey games, their figure skating matches, competitions, dance, all that stuff. I was going to be there, just like I was before. So many times I would get reluctantly picked up in my wheelchair and carried up steps. My friends love that, but I wasn't absolutely thrilled about that but I would attend their events and just keep up to pace. So mentally it was, I need to stay in the game.
Speaker 3And we had discovered during the period of discovery, you know, one of the components of recovery would was that prosthetic device that we we discovered and company by the name of Autobach my current employer actually. We had a and a company by the name of Autobach my current employer actually we had a marketing rep. Stop by the hospital and drop off a brochure that showed this microprocessor-controlled knee and, ironically, inside this brochure there was a bilateral above knee amputee walking with his child on his shoulders through a parking lot and you know it's like check the box. And that was, that was hope for me.
Speaker 3I knew that part of my outcome was to walk again you know, and there was a period of my life that I didn't know if that was possible for somebody like me. So we just kept moving forward. I led that I knew that I had to lead, that I knew the sun was going to continue to rise and set, and whether I was there or not, so I wanted to be part of the game resources.
Speaker 1You keep mentioning these, you know, components of recovery. Can you talk through some of those things that you know? How did you organize these things? How did how were they identified for you or how did you identify them? Like, this is looking back, you know, 17 years ago, not you know. Obviously now hindsight's a little easier, but 2020, but what was it like? I mean, I would imagine the struggle of you know you mentioned a little bit earlier, like just the overwhelmingness of it all. But how do you put this back together? How did you identify these components of recovery? Walk us through some of that stuff.
Speaker 3Yeah, and that's what. When people started coming into the hospital and checking in, we would ask them if they had bandwidth and we form these project teams and the teams would go out and ask questions and do the discovery and come back and within just a couple of days we had the 10 components of recovery, and financial was the top one. Right, it's like I'm going to be out of work, my wife's going to have to take a leave of absence, because not only is she caring for three kids but she's caring for me. So the financial was a huge one the legal portion of it, health insurance, all the medical appointments that I would endure and how to get there, that transportation aspect of me becoming a little bit more independent so she can focus on the kids in the home, and things like that.
Speaker 3Home modifications, which I mentioned, kicked in right away. Three days after my accident, we had a team here tearing down the house and putting it back together, making it accessible. We identified physical therapy and we listed that twice. So there's two components within the 10 that are physical therapy and one is A and we called it simple stuff, right, but preparing my body for ambulating with a prosthetic device, and that was, as mentioned, getting that core strength up, getting my arms ready, going from sit to stand. I'm going to depend on my upper body going up steps using a wheelchair short term. So physical therapy A was pre-prosthetics and then physical therapy B was once I'm fit with these foreign objects, I need to learn to walk with it. I need to learn to ambulate.
Speaker 3The world is not flat. They're sophisticated, there's amazing technology involved with these, but I am going to be putting on these prosthetics and walking very differently compared to what I had just days prior and then return to work. That was my ultimate goal. I wanted to return to work and I had set a goal for nine months after my accident that I wanted to get back to work. How I came up with nine months, I can't answer that. It was just one of those things that if I set it for nine months, there's a chance I can get it, but if I didn't have something set in stone on the calendar, it may not happen in nine months. So we just threw it out there and that's what I work towards.
Speaker 1I mean, I have so many questions so like I know a little bit about this stuff, obviously, but so how many procedures did you have? How you know there's a shrinkage component? Can you talk to some of that? And and, did you go into nubbies or did you? I mean, how quickly are we talking about some of this rehab and recovery? I mean.
Speaker 1I can tell you're a very motivated person. You know you have this great components of recovery, the nine points. You're doing a lot of research and asking a lot of peers and friends and things. So you know. So there's a lot there. Like you mentioned, the nine months to return to work back up to maybe before that you know how soon were they talking about shrinkage and and you know how you know I would imagine the pain was pretty unbearable when you start putting weights on these wounds and things. So maybe some of that early.
Speaker 3My biggest issue was the skin grafting. I had extensive skin grafting in one of the legs. The leg that I lost at the scene was torn up pretty bad, so there's extensive skin grafting on that. And once I put the socket on and for those who don't know, the socket is the part that fits around the residual limb that holds the prosthetic let's say the knee and the foot on, and it's held on by suction. So it has to be perfect and because I had that thin skin, that thin skin grafts, I would put my prosthetic on. This is about four and a half months after the accident. I would put that prosthetic socket on and do some walking. And it's a clear plastic prosthetic so the practitioner can see what's going on inside and they can identify skin breakdown. Well, I had that.
Speaker 3I had skin breakdown to the point that after one of my sessions of trying to walk, my practitioner said you're grounded for at least two weeks and that really pissed me off, but it set me back a little bit. But eventually, when I and right there, we leaned on our team again, right, we had this cool, great team of knowledgeable people that were passionate about working with me and trying to figure this out. But one of them said I compete in inline skating and we buy liquid bandaid and we paint our feet with liquid bandaid and that creates a second layer of protection where it may be alleviate a blister or skin breakdown whatever. So you know, as I'm healing, I'm also shopping. I'm going to every pharmacy in town and buying out as much as a liquid bandaid as I can find.
Speaker 3So when I was ready to get back and my body was ready, I showed up about a half hour early for my appointment and my practitioner came out and said what the heck are you doing? And I'm painting my skin. I mean, I literally was painting this liquid bandaid on my residual limb in the points where I experienced breakdown prior, because I didn't want that to happen again. Those two weeks drove me crazy. You know, we packed up the family, like went to Wisconsin Dells, like that day that I was grounded. It was like we're getting out of here, I'm not going to sit in the house. But that was one thing. And then you asked about the stubbies. They put me on stubbies but they had my knees leaning up against the wall.
Speaker 1Tell people what those are.
Speaker 3Yeah, stubbies are very small. I want to use my hands but we're obviously a podcast here but they're very small legs. So basically I would put a socket on my residual limb and this stubby, which is basically a flat type foot, would attach to the bottom. So I'm only as high as where my knee centers are right, so I'm just very close to the ground. I can actually probably touch the ground with my hands and it allows you to kind of get a sense of what it's like to fire, you know, to get your hip flexors moving again because I'd been sitting for four months in a wheelchair and to get those hip flexors going and how it's going to feel to ambulate with that socket on your body.
Speaker 3Well, I took about two laps in the parallel bars and I said let's go. You know we need to put the prosthetics on. I'm not. They wanted to send me home for a few weeks in the stubbies and that's a. It's a very common practice and some people need that. But I just felt like I was ready to go and and to be tall again, and we ended up putting the prosthetics on that day and attempting to take a few steps, that's amazing.
Speaker 2So from the time that you started with that, did you, were you able to return to work in nine months? Did you meet your goal on that? I did.
Speaker 3I did meet my goal.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 1And it was a lot of.
Speaker 3I mean obviously a ton of recovery and physical therapy and trying to figure out mentally what these prosthetics were going to do in any given situation. You know that. You realize quickly that the world is not flat and I got frustrated because I was doing physical therapy on a gym floor. I was doing, you know, practicing at my practitioner's office in the parallel bars. Flat, you know, flat, nice concrete floors, no real obstacles, and then you'd get outside and the world would start throwing a curveballs.
Speaker 2You know obstacles and then you'd get outside and the world would start throwing a curveballs.
Golf, Recovery, and Prosthetics
Speaker 3you know, I bet you really recognize the places that were not easy to get into in that situation that you just took for granted maybe before. Huh, 100%. Yeah, it was frustrating. I mean I ended up putting parallel bars. The physical therapist that's a neighbor of mine put parallel bars in my basement and I used to hop on the kid's little 50cc Kawasaki four-wheeler and drive around the back of the house because I couldn't go down the steps. Right, we had a stairlift going upstairs to the bedrooms but going downstairs it was just the steps. So I would ride around the back with that 50cc Kawasaki four-wheeler and put my prosthetics on and take as many laps as I could in the parallel bars I would take you know, I think they were like eight foot or something like that parallel bars and my goal the first day was just to take four laps and then to double it the next day. And every day I would try to double that and knowing eventually, within three weeks to a month I'm walking quite a bit. But still on that controlled you know surface it's a, it's a nice concrete, flat surface in the basement as well.
Speaker 3So I a cool story that I got a call about the same time this is probably May, mid, mid to late May a buddy of mine called and said hey, you're playing with us on the hockey association golf fundraiser next week. We got you on the team again and we had played it years prior and I gently reminded him that things had changed a little bit in my life and golf probably isn't in, and at that point I didn't think golf was, you know, I would ever play it again, right, but he said, get out there. You know, I just figured, okay, I'll go along and I'll ride within the cart and I was walking. But I was, I was barely walking. I had the loft strand crutches and you know, every step I was looking down because of the proprioception where I can't feel the ground right. I have prosthetic devices on both feet, so I don't have that, that sensory that that an able-bodied person might have. So it was just very cautious on every step that I took.
Speaker 3But we got out there and it was a scramble. I don't know if you know what a scramble is. Everybody tees off and you go to the best ball and everybody hits from there. It's just a fun tournament format. And they teed off, the three of them all teed off and they had a nice shot down the middle and we're about 110 yards out from the green and we get to the ball and I'm sipping my beer a little bit just, you know, kind of thinking, I'm going to be the mascot here and my buddy says get out of the cart. I'm like, oh God, here we go. They're going to shoot me out of a cannon or something Right.
Speaker 3But he takes a swim noodle out. You know, to swim noodle is styrofoam swim noodle and it's it's hollow in the middle. He had taken a rope and put a rope down the middle of the swim noodle and he handed me a pitching wedge and he said okay, I'm going to put the swim noodle around your waist. You're going to take a nice easy stroke at the ball. You're going to want to fall forward. Your momentum is going to be going forward like golfers momentums do, and typically you would bend a knee to compensate for that momentum and offset it a little bit. He goes I'm not going to let you fall, I'm going to, I'm going to resist as much as I need to. So I'm like, oh you know, this is great, it's just, it's like I just want to go home, type of thing. You know, that's what I was thinking.
Speaker 3But but I addressed the ball and I took a nice easy stroke and made good ball strike. It went up and bounced a couple of times, rolled up, hit the pin and went in the hole from a hundred yards out. I hit an Eagle from a hundred yards out wearing prosthetic legs first swing ever wearing, you know, since I lost my limbs, but it it, it hit me at that point. If I'm going to figure out what these prosthetics are going to do in every situation that gravity can throw at me, why not do it on a golf course? If I'm going to fall, I'm going to fall in grass, I'm not going to fall on concrete. And I fell a ton.
Speaker 3So I played 18 holes that day using that swim noodle. A few days later we flew to Colorado. I played nine holes with that swim noodle and then the next nine holes without it. So in that quick of time it hit me that, okay, on my back swing, my left leg is going to move forward, the resistance at the microprocessor control knee is going to be there, it's going to allow me to stay standing and then, as I start to swing, the right leg is going to start to move a little bit. But then I would feel that resistance and mentally I became more in tune with these prosthetic devices that over the next several months I played 20 rounds of golf and every time I got done with 18 holes in golf, mentally I was, I was more trusting and more confident in in these, in ambulating, you know, with with these prosthetic devices. So it just became an incredible source of of rehab for me. I fell, but again it, it didn't, you know, it didn't jaw my teeth or anything because it sounds like you have amazing friends.
Speaker 1Yeah, I was going to ask you does this friend have like a therapy background or no? He did.
Speaker 3He was a he's a member of a club and he was on the driving range and I think he was talking to one of the other members or I think the golf professional had some experience with adaptive golf and he just mentioned it and and he applied it and he executed it and it worked because it it really opened up the world that in a short amount of time, you know undulating greens, the sand traps, the sprinkler heads, the cart pass, everything that will get thrown at you just in daily ambulating. It was out there on that golf course and I just had to embrace it and accept it and apply it. So it was, it worked phenomenal, it was really cool.
Speaker 2I know you said you returned to work in nine months. How did you decide? At what point did you decide? I want to pivot and really spend the rest of my life helping people who are going through what I went through. And what was that like?
Speaker 3Yeah, I think that ties into the WorkComp because I, you know, I identified the sea legs, that Autobot product that I mentioned earlier, the type of feet that I needed, the, you know, the medical care. I did what I needed to do and Work Comp had my back. I had no idea. I cruised through it. I had no barriers, other than mentally and physically. I got what I needed to move forward. Right, I mean, I got to be friends with in a sense friends with a case manager that was assigned to me.
Speaker 3I invited her to my first, one of my first office visits at the prosthetist's office, at the prosthetic practitioner, and we walked in and she was with me and the CEO said hey, who are you? And she introduced herself and he said you can't be here, you cannot be here with my patient. I said, oh, she's here, she's my guest, she's part of my care team and she's going to see me showing up to these appointments. She's going to see me trying to improve myself every time. I, you know getting better every time I walk in and walk out of here. So I embraced the company and, like I said earlier, they became part of my care team and you asked when I ultimately started to give back a little bit, and it was short.
Speaker 3I mean, I was injured in 2007 and I recovered quickly and my story started getting out there and we started hearing from people my brother's coming back from Afghanistan, or my uncle was in a motorcycle accident, or my aunt has diabetes and they're losing a limb, or they lost a limb. And where did you go? What did you do? What are you wearing? You know? Who did you go to for physical therapy? And it resonated quickly on us that we had developed this. We had such an amazing support team that most people don't have, and we had built up such a wealth of information through my what I would consider a successful recovery post limb loss that we wanted to give back. We had this information, we had this knowledge, we had made these connections. So we started giving back by doing some advocacy work, some hospital visits and things like that, letting people see what is possible post limb loss.
Speaker 2So how did you I know that now you represent Wiggle your Toes. First of all, I love the name. Would love to hear how you came up with that. But second, what's the mission of Wiggle your Toes and what do you do with that now, today, to impact people who've been through limb loss?
Speaker 3Yeah, wiggle was formed basically, I mean, from my hospital bed I was blogging. I had a CaringBridge page set up for me where I could keep people informed. At that time Social media really didn't exist. And I think my wife's overhaul bill I remember when we had to pay for minutes and I think she had a $1,000 overhaul bill that first week after I was injured and so we set up the Caring Bridge page and I could blog. You know I could, or my wife could, or one of my friends could, if I was busy in surgery.
Speaker 3But one of the blogs that I said is probably day, you know 10 or 11, they were going to do a resurfacing I think they called it a bone resurfacing surgery, which did not sound fun to me and they explained to me that it was going to be a very complex and there would be a little bit of a discomfort involved with it. So I was blogging and I was saying you know, kind of telling people that I can. You know I've lost my legs but I've got these phantom sensations. I can still wiggle my toes. I mean, they're not there. And then I was explaining how weird it was and I said got this tough surgery in the morning, do me a favor, wiggle your toes for me. And that kind of stuck, you know people. Instead of when they responded to that they'd say, hey, aaron, thinking about you, we're wiggling their toes for, you know. So it just kind of stuck.
Speaker 3So when we decided to start this nonprofit, I let my wife know. I said I'd like to call it Wiggle your Toes and she said not a freaking chance, you know, that's just what happens. What happens is when we go into a hospital or when we meet somebody for the first time, especially in a traumatic loss situation, and we explain to them why it's called wiggle your toes, it clicks because nobody else in that room understands that. But you know, it allows them to realize that we're we're speaking the same language, because it's those phantom pains and sensations post traumatic loss are very, very common. People mentally can't figure it out. So if we can have that conversation up front, it seems to really open up the conversation with individuals, knowing that we might know what we're talking about.
Speaker 2That's awesome. Do you still notice? I'm just curious do you still notice the phantom limb loss, or has that gone away with time, or is it still something that every now and then you experience?
Speaker 3You know it's good. Now it's like if I I mean, there've been times I, I'm, I hit 36 holes of golf or something and our, we're out, you know the boys weekend where we're, we're maybe overdoing it or something and then you kind of got this. The next day you might feel some revenge, you know sensations or something, but I don't have the. You know, early on, when I have nerve damage, when the nerves were all messed up and I was healing, I still had the skin grafts that were very sensitive. That was tough, I mean, and I talked to a lot of people. They asked me how long this is going to last, because it was like an electrical shock, you know, and it was common Like every two and a half, three minutes you would get this jolt in your residual limb that would send you through the roof. So it wasn't cool at first and there's medication for that and we would treat it as well as we could. But it's just an unknown. It's still unknown. Some people have it for quite a while.
Speaker 1So you've started Wiggle your Toes. The mission for Wiggle your Toes is really to empower other folks to share these resources. What does that look like now for you?
Speaker 3Yeah, and I guess the easiest way to explain what Wiggle does is our three pillars are heal, recover and flourish. And heal is that ever-important advocacy meeting somebody in a hospital post-limb loss and working with them the patient themselves, their family, their caregivers and just kind of helping forge a path to recovery, going through some of the 10 components that we identified, what they could focus on short-term and people want to stay busy too. So even some modifications to homes. There's always people coming around and saying what can we do? What can we do? Embrace that you know, if you had a carpenter that can build a ramp or things like that, just kind of. Just kind of identifying a path to recovery for them. And so that's heal. And then recover is pre-COVID.
Supporting Recovery and Prosthetic Advancements
Speaker 3We were going out and doing home modifications, we would hire contractors and we would have ramps installed and transportation aligned, and we're starting to get back into that. But we lost that and we're starting to gain that heel portion back. But the flourish. So heel, recover. And then the flourish pillar is all the clinics we do. People want to get back to gardening, people want to get back to running. We grant running blades to individuals that want to be active. We hold clinics. I mean we've held everything, believe it or not. People wanted to try skateboarding, so we partnered with the X Games and did a skateboarding clinic and we do snow and ski. We do a mobility clinic at the University of Minnesota.
Speaker 3Every Sunday morning we rent out the University of Minnesota Fieldhouse where we're individuals that all levels can go. They can walk, they can jog, they can run. You know we've got soccer nets there for kiddos to come out and just make sure that they're moving forward and identifying new activities or are rediscovering an activity that they enjoyed doing prior to the loss. So, wake surfing and and uh, uh, biking and fishing and you know, just pickleball obviously is huge now. So we've had some pickleball clinics and things like that. Golf tournaments and, uh, we do a lot of sponsorships. We have a lot of, uh, paralympic athletes that we've supported. So, yeah, that's, that's the heel recoverish. Those are the three pillars, but it's really just helping forge a path to recovery and getting people back to life, back to work, back to family.
Speaker 2That's fantastic. I think it's got to give people a lot of hope of what their life can look like afterwards to meet somebody like you and see some of the things that they can do if they go through the process. You mentioned that you're in the field now when it comes to prosthetics. Maybe you probably have a good idea of this. How is technology evolving in those prosthetics from maybe even when you first experienced them 20, 18 years ago to now? How are they changing and how is that changing quality of life for folks?
Speaker 3Yeah, they've become incredibly intuitive. When I was fit with prosthetics, my first set 17 years ago they were as mentioned, they were called the C-legs and it was the first microprocessor controlled knee. They had been out, I think, about five years. So I mean, I say that I'm lucky. You know, I'm lucky to be, I guess, an amputee in this time because of the intuitiveness of these products. What they've allowed me to do I travel a ton, I play golf you know I don't say no to things with a family which you know.
Speaker 3Years ago I think you really had to choose your battles per se, because there are some things that would get in the way and make it very difficult or maybe dangerous. But yeah, the technology today. I actually just picked up my new knees and socket this morning and I'm in the latest and greatest. They're, they're Autobach products, they're X4s, so C-legs, the X2, the X3, and now the X4s are out. So that that shows you over the last 17, 18 years, where, where we've gone. And they're smart, you know, they know what I'm doing in space and time, and they resist, let's say, if I catch a toe on a carpeting, or you know, it's something called stumble recovery, where it'll not lock up but resist with a hydraulic unit, talking to the sensors that are built into it. So it knows what I'm trying to do and what I'm trying to do and what I'm trying to do it. So they're pretty incredible.
Speaker 3And there's upper extremity as well that have recognition technology, and so there are some powered units out there as well. But if you've ever used like a power drill and that battery runs out, how inconvenient that is, I don't want to be there. Yet it's not quite there. We're getting there, it's getting close. But for someone as complex as I am, as far as the level of loss both legs above the knee, one might be fine, the other one, you know the bad I don't want to be carrying around two, three sets of batteries with me when I'm traveling from here to there, you know. So it's just. But what I have, what I depend on every day, it's, it's amazing.
Speaker 1It sounds I mean, it sounds like an amazing journey. Obviously, there was, you know, fits, you know, and you had the ups and you had the downs, and it sounds like you know where you are now is compared to where you were 17 years ago. I mean, who who would ever know what you know? Life throws at you right, but it sounds like you've made the most out of it. What would you tell? Or what do you tell? I mean, this is what you do, but what do you tell young people you know that are in their 30s or they're coming back you mentioned Afghanistan or from you know a conflict area or something like that have lost a limb? What's that dialogue look like when you meet with those folks and you know they're where you were 17, 18 years ago?
Speaker 3Yeah, and we try to get them part of the community.
Speaker 3You know whether that's getting on some calls with them introducing to others similar to them you know another veteran or another unilateral below the knee amputee from a work accident. So we get people, try to align with each other and do that advocacy work more one-on-one initially, someone that's maybe two, three years into their journey with someone that's brand new and and just identify what what that person's going through and and help them overcome. And and you know, I remember when I was brand new walking into the walking in, I wheeled in on the wheelchair but there was another bilateral there and one of the first things I asked them is is how do you, if you are on the ground let's say you do fall how do you get back up? You know, and that was one of those mental blocks that I had is like okay, I can see walking, right, I can envision myself walking, but what else? How do I go from sit to stand? So, just addressing some of those questions and erasing some of those uncertainties so that person can keep moving forward.
Speaker 2Aaron, what really stands out just this whole time we've been talking is how many wonderful people you have in your life as a support system, from your neighbor that's a physical therapist to friends that were helping you at the hospital. Sounds like your wife's an amazing person too, and I know just from my experience how important that support system is for someone who's trying to recover and move forward. What a great example of maybe how things can go the right way, huh.
Speaker 2Right, absolutely yeah, so we have some patients that would love to have that support system around for sure. I know, matt, probably too. I've really enjoyed just visiting with you today and learning more about your journey. I'm always inspired by people who go through what you've been through and set that example for others. One of the things that I always like to end on is gratitude, because I really feel like when we're grateful which I think I've heard it said that our capacity for happiness is limited by our capacity for gratitude, and that's really stuck with me, because I felt like it's real easy to just forget about all the great things that are going on. So one of the things that I've been trying to do in each of the episodes is to end with someone sharing something that they're grateful about. So, aaron, I wanted to ask you that question if you didn't mind sharing with us something that you're grateful for.
Speaker 3Ask you that question if you didn't mind sharing with us something that you're grateful for. Well, absolutely, and you covered it my family. I'm just incredibly grateful, not only for them being there during this incredible setback that I faced but we faced as a family, but keeping their chin up and turning into the people that they are today. I mean, they're just incredible children and my wife was the rock from day one. I was like ready to sell a house and sell the toys, the four wheelers and everything and just say, okay, it's going to be a simple life from now on. But she said, let's pace ourselves here, you know, let's infuse some common sense and learn before we execute right, but make an educated decision. So I'm incredibly grateful for my family for being there and for putting up with me and encouraging me, and they've turned out to be, like I said, wonderful people.
Speaker 2Absolutely love that. People can't see this because it's only audio, but I am dressed up like a Power Ranger right now because it is Halloween today and I've got six kids of my own. This will probably air in December, so people will be wondering about the Halloween comments, but I love my kids as well, and they are my wife for sure, so I love hearing about that. Well, aaron, if anybody wants to reach out to you, your foundation or has questions, what's the best way to get hold of you?
Embracing Limb Loss and Difference
Speaker 3Yeah, the best way is our the foundation is wiggle your toes. Dot o r g. Check it out. Check out our social media pages. We share a lot of the success stories that we have our individuals that we support and you know we've got an incredible amount of followers that find inspiration and motivation from what we're doing and you can reach out through that site if you're looking for some type of support. We encourage everybody to follow us, whether you're personally living with a limb loss or limb difference, and to define that.
Speaker 3Limb loss is typically amputation, right, that's traumatic and you had a limb removed from surgery and then limb difference is a huge part of our community as well, and they were born with a congenital difference and a lot of kids they just are killing it out there with we put running blades on and things like that are in that congenital limb difference world. But, yeah, if you check us out and if you need support, reach out and I love sharing this story as well. So thank you for having me on and you know the work part of it. Like I said, it became an incredible part of my care team and I can't thank that world enough.
Speaker 2So Well, thank you, aaron, I certainly appreciate having you on. We remind our guests to do right, think differently and don't forget to care, and we hope you'll follow us every two weeks as our podcast releases and you'll follow us for future episodes. So thanks everybody, take care, thank you.