From EPOP To IPOP

Mine won't look like this

Yesterday morning I met with the surgeon who did my amputation, for a post-op follow-up. As had every other knowledgeable medical person who had viewed the stump, he pronounced the result quite satisfactory, and forwarded x-rays and advice to the leader of the team who will design and construct my prosthesis with a recommendation of "EPOP" ... early post-op prosthesis, i.e., they should proceed soon with that design and construction.

This morning I met with that team. After evaluation, they upgraded the recommendation to "IPOP" ... immediate post-op prosthesis, i.e., they are beginning the process (both on my body and in the shop) right away, and I should have a shrinking of the stump into an appropriate cone shape and a first attempt at a prosthesis within weeks, not months. I am dumbfounded!

This does not mean I will be running races immediately. It is usual to receive several successive prostheses which fit better on each try, and I must be trained extensively in use of the prosthesis, in my home, with a walker. But I never expected to be this far along so early in the process. I am thrilled, and a bit frightened. But I accept the good results, not as a right, nor as a God-given boon, but as a stroke of extraordinary fortune... and exceptional luck in choosing hospitals, clinics, surgeons and therapists, and of course literally hours of help every day from the lovely Stella. My primary care provider of many years deserves an "attaboy" as well; he steered me to the right institutions and persons along the way, and told me "get thee to a hospital" at just the proper time.

It's not all over, of course. There's much work to do, by me and by my doctors. But with luck, I should be walking... yes, walking on two legs, one natural, one prosthetic... sometime this very spring. "Walking with a step in the spring," I suppose I could say... and oops, I guess I did say that...