Update on the new homemade ankle brace (see previous post). I taped it on and went out for a long ride on my road bicycle… and felt fantastic.

 If I would have done this bike ride in my Arizona Brace I would have been very swollen and walking funny for a couple days. But with this ankle brace I was able to return home after 5 hours of riding without any significant swelling or pain.

I live that i have discovered that it is possible to do more than what the experts think can be done with pain management through joint stabilization and working around the limitations of this injury. At least for me that’s the case. But nobody thought up making my own ankle braces… I just figured that if a ski boot would feel rigid enough to walk while immobilizing the ankle,  then why not make my shoe act like a ski boot!?

I mentioned in a past post that I was applying for the exosym brace. 

To get this brace I had to go see a surgeon and get a very specific prescription and letter written which we submitted to The Hanger Clinic in Gig Harbor Washington who then submitted it to my insurance company could then denied covering it. So now I have to appeal. The device costs $9,000 out of pocket. If you search YouTube you will find that this device looks very very promising for all of us who don’t want to get ankle Fusion but want to get back to a normal active lifestyle.

If my insurance company ultimately denies this I will pay for it out of pocket but it will take me some time to save up.

Does anybody out there have this brace yet?

Take care of you all and keep hopping on that Good Foot 🙂

This was all dictated on voice to text so pardon my typos and for some strange reason Google started capitalizing all kinds of random words lately 🙂

I have had pretty good success with the first fiberglass brace I made which I use for bicycling because it locks out my ankle much better than my Arizona brace. But I needed something that was more comfortable and didn’t put so much leverage on my shin bone… so I have been working a long time on getting around to finishing the second brace. 

Today I finally gave it a test run and I think it worked pretty good. It goes much higher up my calf, which reduces the leverage on my lower leg, and completely immobilizes my ankle! I went for a hard and bumpy mountain bike ride today and was completely pain-free!