 Do you want to go outside? Do you want to go outside, Sophie? Yeah? Let's do it. We need a new tennis ball, Sophie. Do you want it? Go get it. As you guys just saw, I'm missing a leg, but I can walk around okay, thanks to the IWALK, which is a walking crutch. So why would I even bother with trying to get a prosthetic leg? I can move and this costs $200 instead of $20,000. A lot of you guys have asked this question and there's a really good reason, so let's talk about it. Hello, my beautiful internet friends. Welcome back today, we are joined by my adorable puppy Sophie in the background. There's a question I am asked at least once a day that goes something like, hey, that IWALK is pretty cool. It works really well for you. Why do you need a prosthetic leg? Why don't you just keep using the IWALK? Fair question. For those of you who don't know, here's the difference. Real quick, before we go any further, a word from me, your sponsor. I told you guys about the shirt that I made a couple of videos ago that says I can see you staring at me. I made a quick design change to kind of make it more lighthearted. Now these shirts have a nice little smiley face at the bottom of them. This one just came in the mail so a little bit big for me. It's a lounging around the house kind of t-shirt. T-shirts are available in my merch store right now in many different sizes, many different colors, many different styles, so check it out if you are interested. A prosthetic leg, which I have here, which is presently useless, I'll get into that, is about $20,000 just for the leg itself, let alone all the fitting and all the process that goes into that. The IWALK, which is a walking crutch, is less than 200. Really big difference there. Quick backstory for those of you who are new on this channel, by the way, it's great to have you guys. I lost my leg back in October. In December, I got fitted for a prosthetic, started using a little bit, had a fall, really messed my leg up, wasn't able to use a prosthetic at all until after surgery in March and April, I got fitted again for a prosthetic that I wasn't able to use because of pain. Pause that point in the story. A couple months before that, I was sent this IWALK by the IWALK Free Company. They were super kind to do this and I am not paid to talk about them at all. And it honestly changed my life. The ability to even just do dishes without worrying about falling over or having to balance my knee in a chair or the fact that I could vacuum my house is life-changing. I could go to the grocery store and actually carry things around. It made such a difference and it's been amazing. I went to Ireland and I hiked up a big hill at the Glen Bay Castle, which was absolutely gorgeous and such an incredible experience where if I didn't have that IWALK, I would have been crutching around and been able to go like very short distances max. So none of this is a diss on the IWALK. It is the best possible tool I can think of that I am aware of and I'd recommend it to absolutely everybody. Not paid to say that. I'm just saying that because I truly believe it. With that being said, there are some serious drawbacks and I wanna talk about that because I totally get the confusion. I think a lot of people think that I choose not to wear a prosthetic. I actually got a comment a few days ago saying that I'm using the IWALK like a crutch. By the way, I mean it is a walking crutch so you're absolutely right. I am leaning on it as a crutch. They compassionately told me that I should stop being scared of a prosthetic and just start using it. And that actually made me really sad because I was like, oh God, you know, I would give anything to be able to use a prosthetic leg right now and I think people just don't understand why. So the reason I'm not using a prosthetic leg right now and the reason why I'm fighting really hard to be able to is I'm still in a lot of pain. My leg is still really messed up. I'll link a video up above, up above, up above. I always get the slides of the screen messed up where the link's gonna pop up. That is gonna tell you why I am facing having my leg amputated again in a month or two whenever we can get it scheduled. And the reason for that is because there is no way that I can put on a prosthetic leg. Even the liner, which doesn't have any hard parts to it, like there's no carbon fiber, there's no hard plastic. It's just this like thick liner causes severe pain because I have some serious issues that have developed in my residual limb. So I am going through a really severe surgery again to be able to walk normally. But a lot of people I think see me walking around. I look like I'm kind of walking normally. Like a lot of people will comment on how well I walk on it and I've gotten really used to the eye walk. Here's the problem though. Appearances aren't everything. I have now used the eye walk since the beginning of March, I believe. Daily for like hours every day. And your body isn't designed to move that way. This was a problem that I ran into with my ankle being fused. I had a fused ankle prior to amputation. What that means is that they essentially took my leg and screwed my foot to it. They cut out my ankle joint and literally screwed the bones together. Now, again, it looked like I walked pretty normally unless I was having a really bad day and limping or unless you knew what was going on. But behind the scenes, the joints that surround that area were breaking down because they are not designed to have that kind of stress on them. Your body is designed to function a certain way. It's incredibly resilient. It wants to heal itself, but there's only so much stress and strain it can take. And so using the eye walk is not a normal gait. You're not walking like a normal person. I hate using that word normal. I gotta think of a better way to say that. It's not like I'm abnormal, but I don't walk like a normal person, right? So in eye walk, you swing your leg forward from your hip. There is no knee flexion or extension. Also, your body weight is coming down on my knee and that has recently caused some real problems where I am spending literally every night icing my leg and then icing my residual limb. I ice my residual limb because of the pain that I'm in because the problems I have, but also because where the eye walk hits it, it still causes pain, nothing bad with the eye walk. It's just how my body is right now. But with so much pressure coming down onto that eye walk pad that my knee is on, I am now having skin breakdown, which makes sense after using it for so long and a lot of pain, which worries me because I don't wanna finally get to the place where I can be cleared to wear a prosthetic leg and where my residual limb is good and then realize that I've really screwed my knee up. I don't think that's gonna happen. I'll be very careful with it. I'm working with eye walk to make sure that that isn't an issue, but it is hurting. I'm able to use the eye walk less and less and I have to be really careful. Like I cleaned my house today, right? It took about 45 minutes and my knee is tanked for today. It hurts. I am taking too much ibuprofen, not actually too much, but like the maximum allowable dose. So I have to balance like, well, how much, you know, medication do I wanna take this day so I'm still able to move? And with the life that I have to live and with the job that I'm working right now and all of that, I do have to get around. So the eye walk is an awesome short-term solution, but it is not designed to be used every day for hours a day because that is not how our bodies work. Our bodies ideally have a functioning knee, a functioning hip, and a functioning ankle and, you know, foot joints on top of that. That is not the case when you simply swing everything forward from your hip flexor and that's just it. So with that being said, using a prosthetic leg solves many of those problems, though not all of it. Once I have a prosthetic leg, hopefully I won't be having knee issues, fingers crossed. Hopefully I'll be able to walk normally and the alignment in my body will go back to normal because when you throw your body out of alignment by walking differently, that can cause back and hip issues and neck issues, which it has, I'm sore. You know, and I wake up not feeling great because of that sometimes. It's not the end of the world, it's just not comfortable, it's painful. And so the idea is to get to a place where my walking gait is as normal as can be achieved. And when you have a prosthetic leg, you can get pretty close to that because the technology is absolutely amazing. Are there still major considerations with wearing a prosthetic limb? Yes, absolutely. You don't just pop a leg on and you're like, good to go. You really have to worry about skin breakdown. You have to worry about the joints that surround it, like your knee, like your hip. It's important to really keep an eye on things and yeah, issues are gonna arise. But the closer that you can get to walking, the way that a body was designed to function best, the way that we were designed to walk in the first place, the better. And I am now feeling the effects of not doing that for many months and frankly years before because I never really walked normally with the angle that I had. I just adjusted and kind of looked like that. I totally understand the question I get why people are like, hey, the eye walk works great. Like, why are you even trying to spend your time, money, energy, effort and surgeries? When you're walking, the thing is I'm not really walking and I can only use it for limited periods during the day and I have to weigh the risks of how much this is gonna hurt, how long I'm gonna have to ice it tonight, like if I'm gonna make it that long to how much I actually need to do. And that's not the best case scenario. It works for now, but that's why I am fighting so hard and I will not stop fighting to be able to wear a prosthetic leg. On top of that, I mean, I can't do yoga in an eye walk. I can't jog in an eye walk. I can't do all the kinds of things that I would like to do in the future. God and everything willing, fingers crossed, if I am able to use a prosthetic limb and if it works really well. Something else I totally forgot to mention as my dogs are running around, sorry for the noise, is that it is a pain to take off and on and buy a pain. I mean, it is super, super effective and fast for what it is, but with a prosthetic leg, you can just like sit down, be done, you know? With an eye walk, I have to put it on, take it off every single time I get up or down and that takes a couple seconds every time and there's like pinching sometimes if I don't put the straps on right or if I'm trying to sit down, I don't wanna go through the trouble of actually taking it off or if I'm just like sitting down for a minute or two and I really don't wanna go through all that, then I have to deal with it sometimes pinching my leg in a weird way because of the straps and I have to find somewhere to put it. Like it actually has to like reside somewhere near me while I'm sitting down where a prosthetic leg is just me, it's just part of me. So what the future looks like for now is I am trying to limit my eye walk usage. They recently just sent me a new knee pad that might help with some of that pain. I'm trying to be really careful with it and decide when it's worth it to use it. I'm also switching to crutches sometimes which kind of crushes my soul a little bit because I do not like being on crutches but you know what, that's where things are right now and I am waiting for the day that I can be clear to start using a prosthetic leg and hoping to God so hard that no additional problems come up and that I will actually be able to go through that process. Side note, if you're wondering what's like to actually get casted for a prosthetic leg, I'll link a video up below to the first time and the second time that I was casted for that because it's happened twice now. So that kind of answers that question. If you have any questions about that, let me know but please understand that the eye walk is amazing. I love using it, it's a great tool but it's just a tool, that's it. I am dying to use a prosthetic leg. I'm not using it because I'm scared. I'm not using it because it is impossible to wear. It is way too painful and I have to wait for surgery at this point to fix the multiple issues that are going on down there. So that is where things are. I hope that answers that question. If you're interested in an eye walk, you can find the link down below to Amazon. They are under $200. They're a great tool if you're facing ankle surgery or if you messed your leg up or whatever, short-term use. They are freaking fantastic. Or if you're below the knee amputee. If you enjoyed this video, I would love it. If you would hit subscribe to this channel, I am trying to get to 100,000 subscribers and gosh darn it, we are getting really close and that's really excited. Thank you for being here. Thank you for all the new faces and thank you for all the old faces who are dear friends now on this channel. Also, like I said, new merch in the merch store. Check it out if that's something you're interested in. I love you guys. I'm thinking of you and I will see you in the next video. Bye guys. 🎵 Hand her from the sky 🎵