A LEG UP
the Center for the Intrepid in San Anto- nio, TX, where Kuenzi is a prosthetist. Lychik’s needs were pretty straightfor- ward, compared to some. Although he had lost his left leg and part of his right, the rest of him was intact and relatively uninjured. Kuenzi said that when he and physical therapist Alicia White met with Lychik, “He was pretty quiet, but he was able to interact.”
As usual during the fitting process, Kuenzi went through a detailed assess- ment of Lychik’s strength and range of motion, the condition of his joint and skin and any highly sensitive areas, and talked to Lychik about his goals and the hobbies he had before the injury.
GOOD TO GO Lychik fist-bumps Juli Windsor at the start of the 2014 Boston Marathon on April 20. (Photo by Taylor Paige)
In Kuenzi’s experience, young men who come in for prostheses often tell him first that they want to get back on active duty, even if they’ve lost both legs and an arm. Lychik, however, “told me he wanted to run that first day.”
Kuenzi had worked with some other patients with hip disarticulation injuries like Lychik’s, in which the pelvis is still in place but the leg is completely gone, and they’d done well in demanding, on- their-feet jobs. But running?
Kuenzi did some research and found that some people with similar injuries decades earlier had been able to run a few steps, but nothing like the miles that Lychik hoped to cover. “Whereas if someone came in with a relatively uncomplicated below- the-knee amputation, I would say to them,
‘Yeah. You should be able to run,’ if only a mile or so.”
EXPLOSIVE EXPERIENCE Lychik stands with one of the Husky vehicles he drove while deployed as a combat engineer to Afghanistan, about a month before his injury. Before losing his left leg, Lychik had twice been hit by an IED while driving the Husky. (Photo courtesy of Edward Lychik)
A VISION OF RUNNING Some people might look at such a traumatic injury as the end of life as they knew it. Lychik came to see it as an obstacle to overcome.
124 Army AL&T Magazine July–September 2014
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170 |
Page 171 |
Page 172 |
Page 173 |
Page 174 |
Page 175 |
Page 176
