 Good morning my beautiful internet friends. It has been a heck of 48 hours. I'm not even an attempt to hide that by putting makeup on my face, my face, place. That's not a way of speaking. I'm really tired. So yesterday I had one of the worst migraines of my whole life. I'm laughing about it because it was a really miserable 16 hours. That was a very long intro. What I want to tell you is about the first week of actually having a prosthetic leg. There have been some really, really cool moments and then there have been some very real challenges. So let's talk about that. Some of it's been very unexpected. I think if I'd spent some more time thinking through it, it would probably make a little bit more sense. Oh, looking at the viewfinder, it's also a real bummer that by the time I have my prosthesis and could walk around outside a little bit more, it's getting real cold. So I'm probably just going to look white as a vampire for the rest of my videos for 2019 and most of 2020 because I don't see this on that much, but I really should. Speaking of seeing the sun, let's talk about one of the coolest things I did this week. If you follow me over on Instagram, you may have seen this moment. Whenever I say this, I feel like it sounds like a small thing, but if you have little things in your life that you enjoy that make your day, I know that you'll, you'll probably get it. One of the things that I love most in life is waking up early in the morning before most people in the world or in my town are awake and going for a walk. Like the way that the air feels in the morning and how quiet and peaceful it is and just listening to music or listening to nothing and taking my dogs out was something I loved. It was something I could not do for a very, very long time. And so the other day, I thought, you know what, I'm going to give this a shot. I decided to go for a walk with my prosthetic leg and it was so cool. Yesterday I went for a walk with my friend. I was in my neighborhood with my new leg and it went okay. So I thought I'd give it a shot by myself this morning. Now I will say I'm a little nervous to do this. I just feel weird walking around the neighborhood on crutches with a new prosthetic leg. I also feel slightly uncomfortable because I can't move anywhere quickly and you know, I'm kind of terrified of the outside world occasionally. It's definitely worth doing. So let's go for a walk. Two shoes, guys. Crazy. For a walk, I really can't tell you how cool that was to be able to do. I like definitely doesn't feel amazing. Like it hurts, but it felt okay and I can like feel myself getting a little bit better walking each time I try. It's going to take a lot of practice, but no hands. I'm not looking too shabby. This morning was good. It was really good. I can't even tell you how neat it was. Like halfway through the walk, I just stopped and kind of like smelled the air outside and was like, holy crap. I'm standing on my own two feet. Oh, also please welcome Nicholas Cage lurking in the background. The last time I asked you guys about old Nick chilling back there, still a very divided response. Half of you said that pillow needs to burn and half of you said Nicholas Cage is a national treasure. So I'm just going to make sure that he's, uh, he's only in a few videos listening from the background. He's a little creepy. We can all admit that. Apparently there's also a John Travolta pillow that looks like that. And I just, I feel like we really need to add it to the collection. So that may be half. I mean, getting back to what matters in this video. An unexpected side effect of using a prosthetic leg for a full week. And by a full week, I mean for parts of the day, I have tried to wear it as much as I can comfortably without pushing it too far. The idea is to gradually build up resistance and tolerance to it without hurting it. I was told that the kind of the line for that is when you take off your prosthesis, you want to make sure that there aren't any lingering red marks or bruises. If those exist, that's a bad sign. I have not had any of those by Friday, which marked exactly one week since I got to bring home sunshine. Actually, uh, sunshine. I had her as a prop for this video. I woke up, like I said, with one of the worst migraines of my life. And if you watch this channel for a little while, you know that I get migraines pretty often. They've been a significant issue in my life for a long time, but this was a horrible one. And I was sitting there thinking about it, not able to sleep. There have been some unexpected consequences of the last week with this prosthetic leg. It's officially one week today since I actually got fitted and got to start using my leg. And there's also been some, uh, difficult, we'll just talk about the physical difficulty today that is setting in right now. When you start moving your body differently than it's used to, that can put obviously stress and strain on muscles that aren't used to it. And using a prosthetic leg, A takes a lot of actual energy from your body and it's obviously going to throw off your alignment at least for a while as I'm willing to use to walk it. I have significant neck issues. I have a ton of chronic pain there, muscle tension through here that causes a lot of issues in my life. So as I'm learning to walk, as I'm like walking in one crutch, using my prosthetic leg, limping, trying to make it work, it is throwing my body out. And that has like hit full bore as of 4.30 this morning. It just hit me like a truck, like there's just piercing, miserable migraine. And I get migraines, you guys know that. But they're usually manageable, but this one is not. It's like all the extra tension and stress on my body is just cumulated to like, body is just quitting today. And the amount of pain that it is inflicting on me is not my favorite. It's not my favorite. As I continue this journey, I realize that there are going to be consequences of progress of moving forward. It's not just fun and games and not just easy, but it's crazy to me how integrated our bodies are. Everything affects something else. So as you're putting more pressure on one side of your body, it's going to throw off the linemen on the other one that happens for me that can cause a lot of migraines and trigger just a lot of pain. So one rough day. My migraines are often triggered by muscle tension, muscle stress, which is often related to stress in life. And I also have a brain condition that contributes to it. Suddenly putting a lot of pressure on one side of my body that has not had that pressure for a long time. Your muscles are doing things that they haven't done for 12 months in my case. As great as that is, it's throwing the alignment that my body has gotten used to all off. I felt that and it kind of came to a head yesterday. I really need to get into physical therapy and I also need to start seeing a physiatrist, I think is how you say it to start helping with some of that and then teaching me how to actually walk well. So that's going to be up next. Going back to cool things on Thursday, I had a really neat moment where I had to go to a business meeting and generally I wear leggings or jeans 24 seven, unless I can get away with wearing shorts, but this was something I wanted to look more professional for and I have dresses that I used to wear, but I haven't worn them in a very long time and I thought, you know what, screw it, I'm going to show off my medal. And so I did welcome to professional Joe. You don't see this side of me very often, but I'm headed out to a business meeting, which makes sense if I was talking about professional Joe. And I took a risk. Yes, another one. I haven't quite gotten my balance yet. Check it out guys. I'm showing off my medal in a dress and it feels good so far. I don't think anyone's going to notice though. Which foot has been tanning and which which foot has been laying inside for the last year? Not getting any sunshine. Look at the color discrepancy between those two. So it's very clear. This little guy right here, he's been getting some sun somewhere. While my meat leg over here looks like a vampire. It actually looks like I, you know, haven't seen the sun in months, which is not entirely inaccurate. Major success today. I got on those dress shoes with no problem. I just used a shoe horn, as many of you guys suggested, which made the whole getting shoes on and off process very, very simple. It felt neat to be able to be seen with two legs and I felt like, I don't know, I felt like I looked nice and I haven't felt like I've looked nice for like a year straight. Not a massive thing, but definitely something that doesn't matter to some extent. So that was really cool. I feel like there have been so many things where I see the light or I'm like, oh, oh, I really could start taking walks in the morning, like by myself without crutches in the near future. Or I could walk my dogs or I could start hiking or I could get back to jiu-jitsu or whatever it is. Having tastes of those moments is incredible. And on the flip side of it, it's also been extremely emotional because I realized how far I have to go, which is okay. But I know I also have to pace myself. I know that there will be unexpected things that come up that will be hard to deal with possibly. So I made a real mistake today. And so that I was wearing just leggings, right? It's really easy to put on my leg in because I could just stretch it over it. But what I didn't consider is the fact that I can't take my leg off and I only brought one crutch. So like, usually if I had two crutches with me, if I need to take it off, I can like go to the bathroom, change completely. I have to like undress, take my leg off, redress and I could use crutches. But we were out in public doing stuff and I couldn't do that and I only had one crutch. So even if I could find a way to take my leg off, I couldn't move, like I couldn't get anywhere. And it was really painful tonight. And that's a lesson learned to me that I need to think ahead and plan. I think a little bit better. This did not feel good tonight. And it's hard being in that position where like you're out with people and you're like having a good time. You want to have a good time. It also hurts a lot. And I felt kind of trapped, like trapped by this thing on my leg. If that makes any sense in the future, I'll try to think ahead a little bit more. And it's weird to realize that this is going to be my life forever. The rest of my life is going to involve assembly and disassembly every single day. I was always mentally aware of that. But the reality of it now that I actually get to practice it is a lot. It's not something I'm incapable of dealing with. It's not something I hate. It's just a lot. It's just kind of overwhelming. It's really weird to think about that it's permanent and that there's no taking a break from it and that it will be every single day that I actually want to walk on my own without a mobility device. I guess it technically is a mobility assistance device, but it's one that is more part of me than others do, at least as far as I see it. Should be a lifelong partner and that'll be a lot to adjust to. So week one went really well. All in all, lots of physical aches and pains triggered migraines. Something I'll need to prepare for and something that will get so much better with time. It's been so cool to have this to actually start working. Like my life actually could be what I hoped a year ago. It could be the reason why I chose this path to have a hope of a better life and a future that I actually wanted may actually be a reality or part of a reality. And that's really cool as an under statement. So thanks for being along for the ride. Thanks for being along for the journey. Thanks for being excited with me. On to week two. I love you guys. I'm thinking of you and I'll see you in the next video. Bye guys.