He had been interested in running in middle school, but was so shy, “I was never involved in anything.” It wasn’t until he joined the Army that he really got into running. “I joined the military and there was a lot of self-discovery, I would say. Within the military, I started to grow myself internally, mentally, spiritually. And then the injury happened, and that was the biggest growth I ever had.”


After his injury, he was determined to get back to running. “I’m in the hospi- tal bed, and I’ve got a limited mind-set, looking at the things that I can’t do. [But I thought,] I’m going to need to focus on what I can do.” From that bed, he said, he envisioned himself running. It was a full- fledged waking dream. “I was wearing this black hooded sweatshirt, and it was very foggy, and I was driven and I was focused. … Before surgery, after surgery, I would wake up and I would go to sleep, and I always had that vision.”


He also had a vision for the prosthesis that would enable him to run, but first he had to walk. “Our first mission with Ed would be to get him walking, then get him independent-walking,” Kuenzi said.


“Certainly, with a hip disarticulation amputation, if somebody can be a high- functioning walker, that’s a huge success.”


Hip disarticulation is “a high-level injury,” Kuenzi said. When a patient still has some femur and thigh left, it can provide not just a place to attach the prosthesis, but also the forward motion required for walking or running. Ed Lychik didn’t have that.


For the first few months at the Center for the Intrepid, Kuenzi and White worked on getting Lychik walking. Tat included


“a high-tech, microprocessor-controlled knee and microprocessor-controlled hip and a good walking foot. He took right to it,” Kuenzi said. “He was walking


THE FINISH LINE Lychik, shown after finishing the Boston Marathon in April, is the first known hip-disarticulation amputee to run in the event, and did so on a prosthetic leg he helped create. (Photo courtesy of Edward Lychik)


all over the hospital grounds. A lot of people would ride their chairs” for trips to lunch or elsewhere, but Lychik “was definitely going to use that prosthesis.”


But about six months into the process of trying to come up with a running pros- thesis, Lychik began having problems


with his walking prosthesis. His body was changing because, unbeknownst to Kuenzi, Lychik had been working out all of the muscles that he thought would be necessary for him to run successfully.


“He was telling me more and more that he wanted to run,” Kuenzi said, adding


ASC.ARMY.MIL 125


FIELD EXPEDIENT


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