Linda Smith Swerdlow
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Frustrated with existing canes, Linda decided to use her knowledge of biomechanics to build a better one.
On January 15th of 2013 an SUV crashed into the driver's side door of my car. Over the next two years I would undergo hand, shoulder and hamstring surgery as well as five procedures and eight long post-op and post-procedure periods. I was continually told after the accident that I had unreasonable and unrealistic expectations in regard to my long-term prognosis. What almost everyone including my physicians didn't understand was that I didn't believe, nor did I expect my surgeries and PT to return my broken, twisted, disabled body to the way it was before the accident. I expected my surgeries and PT to give me an opportunity. Winston Churchill said, "A pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. An optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty."
The crutches, leg brace, walker and traditional cane that I used after my surgeries forced my body to be misaligned and move in ways it was never designed for to maintain balance causing secondary disability. Those mobility devices bankrupted the opportunity my surgeons had given me. The only difference between the injuries I sustained in the accident and the secondary disability caused from the mobility devices was the speed with which they inflected injury and disability.
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S01E14 Linda Smith Swerdlow.mp3 - powered by Happy Scribe
Welcome to the Enabled Disabled podcast. I'm your host, Gustavo Serafini. I was born with a rare physical disability called PFG. My journey has been about self acceptance, persistence and adaptation. On the show, we'll explore how people experience disability. The stories we tell ourselves can both enable and disable our vulnerability is the foundation for strength and why people with disabilities can contribute more than we imagined. I hope that leaders, companies, clinicians, families and friends will better understand our capacity to contribute to the world and help enable us to improve it.
Linda Smith Swerdlow is a martial artist and entrepreneur. Her company aligned US design started when Linda was rehabbing from serious injuries caused by a car accident. Linda needed a better cane to help her walk again, a cane that caused no additional harm or injury, a cane that would help her get stronger because it was designed with a better understanding of how we move and function. Linda's knowledge of anatomy and kinesiology is remarkable, her intensity is sincere and focused on helping people with a disability to move better.
If you like the show and want to meet interesting people, including some of our guests, please visit Facebook and search for enable disabled. You'll find an active community of supportive people who are sharing their stories, resources and feedback of the podcast. Thank you so much. Linda, welcome to the show. It's great to see you again.
It's great to see you, as always. Awesome.
So. I wanted to get started, if you could tell us a little bit about yourself, especially as you were younger and growing up, your experience with martial arts, where your relationship with that was and how you got involved with it?
Yeah, sure. So I started doing martial arts when I was 12, a man by the name of Bill Underwood, who was in his 70s. I put two and had to have invented this form of martial arts called thenDo that he taught during World War Two to Special Forces, American and Canadian. And it was because of Bill that I learned about having a certain kind of attitude. Bill was five foot two inches tall, went to enlist and was told, thanks, but no thanks, you too small and you're too old.
And he said, that's fine. Just bring me three of your biggest, strongest men. And they did. And he put all three in the hospital and he spent the remainder of the war teaching people the style of martial arts he had invented. So when I was in my early twenties, I moved to L.A. and I called Bill and I said, Bill, I need the name of somebody to teach me martial arts. And this is like back in the days before real Internet and stuff.
And he gave me the name and his address. So I went and I told him that I'd gotten his name from Villans Wood, and I told him I wanted to start training there. And he looked at me and he said, you know, this is a closed dojo. What are your style of martial arts? Would you like to learn? And I looked at him and I said, the style that fits, the one that forms itself into whatever shape it needs to be your take in order for me to develop instinctive physical and mental reflexes.
And you just kind of looked at me for a minute and then he said, I want you to meet the other man I'm sure the dojo with. And I said, oh, OK. Well, and he said he's a master of martial arts and he's a Chinese medical doctor, said, OK, great. So I met him and he asked me a couple of questions. Like he said, are you right handed or left handed? Which I thought was a strange question at the time.
And I said, I'm both. And he said, you can you can write with both hands. I said, yes. So can you write with both hands at the same time? I said, yeah. And so he said, Can you show me? So I picked up two pencils and I wrote One Way This Way. I said, Hi, my name is Linda. Nice to meet you, you know what I mean? And they said, could you please wait outside?
We'd like to have a little discussion. So they had a little discussion and they came back and told me that they would teach me counsel and that Master Wong would teach me Qigong. And then Armstrong hand me two books. The first was Gray's Anatomy, and he said, You need to learn how the human body is put together and which way it moves and doesn't move. And the second book was a physics book by Dr. Richard Feynman on rotational force.
And Master Wang said to me, This book will teach you to think of the human body in terms as a biological machine made up of levers and fulcrums, basically, and self. You know, that's my kind of like introduction, so I got my first black belt just before I turned 30 and I got my last black belt like about a year and a half before the accident. And I was actually training for my second degree black belt in Russia when the accident happened.
So up until the day of the accident, I was doing eight hours of martial arts at two different dojos teaching, running four days a week. And there was basically nothing I couldn't do that I didn't want to do physically. I had been very fortunate in the sense that I was healthy and I had never really had any major issues. And my kids used to say, how come you never get sick? And I look at my father and I would say, well, he went to the finest medical schools in the country, so he should be able to just touch me and heal me.
And my husband would roll his eyes and say it doesn't work like that. So I'd say, well, you know, I just don't like so fast forward. I'm driving home one day, I'm going five miles an hour.
And Linda, can I just. Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you. I'm just curious. Yeah. What drew you to like what was the driving force for this unbelievable commitment to martial arts? Where you competing that you just love it? Because I loved it.
I started really young with Bill Underwood and my family, actually. And it just I when I was a kid, I loved to run. And the faster I ran, the better I felt. And when I met Bill, he was kind of like the coolest person I've ever met, also really old. And when I started doing it, some people just have an aptitude for certain things and I happen to have that aptitude. And then plus after I moved here, I just just like moving to a new country is even though candidates just over the border, culturally, it's it's different.
It's really different. Like, I just no longer felt the same way and I just decided that I needed to start doing some martial arts. And you'll have to give me the name of like. Pretty heavy duty place, and then once I started there, it was like I never looked back. And when, you know, you start doing something you love at a young age, keep doing it. And in my case, it was more than just a physical skill set.
So there were some places that just teach you a physical skill set and see used to say to me, there's a difference between a black belt and a martial artist and the black belt age and injury while I make them because they're just a skill set. OK, highly disciplined. Highly qualified. Lots of commitment, but they're just a skill set. OK, and then you always say a martial artist is somebody who develops their mindset skills, get thinking and attitude independently and in conjunction with each other.
So neither age nor injury will make that person because they will understand what they need to do and not do think and not think so that they can get to the future moments that they want, even if they're not the future moments they planned on. And certainly I ended up being a case study in that because I had I had my when I had my accident, I had been doing Chingon for over 30 years. I understood anatomy and physiology in a whole different way than most people who do martial arts do because because Master Wong was a Chinese medical doctor.
So he was always handing me books. And when I met my husband the first time he came to my house, he said, You have more anatomy and physiology books that than me. And I'm a doctor. And I go, I love anatomy because basically martial arts is just Leber's and fulcrums. And once you understand that and you understand how to move those levers and fulcrums, it's not that hard. So, for instance, I'm not a big person.
Right. But yet somebody who's 100 pounds heavier than me and a foot taller than me is not necessarily an issue for me because I'm going to use their momentum. I'm going to wait till they reach out and then I'm going to just use their momentum. Or move there. The average person doesn't really think of Lebas and fulcrums in that way or balance and in balance, so at its core, martial arts is maintaining your upward force from your base of support and your downward force of gravity while you're trying to offset and over balance somewhere.
OK, so once you do that and you understand that and you have the mental mindset of that, you kind of look at the world in a whole different way and it makes your life easier when you're disabled. So I used my martial arts more after by accident than I ever used it before, which was interesting because people would say one of the things that when you become disabled that you have to deal with, that you don't necessarily deal with before is people saying stupid things to you and the effect that that has on you.
And because of my previous background in martial arts and because I had worked with some women who had been victims of violent crime and they would tell me things that they had been told. I understood how destructive having someone say to you could have been worse. When you don't ask for it. And so I used to tell people and I tell people now, any time somebody says to you, it could have been worse, your response should be no, it could have been better.
And if you want to say anything, say sorry, it wasn't. Is there anything I can do for you? And when people people are scared of disabled people, it's it's there's like an attitude that you have that they have like once you become disabled, the attitude, whether it's from physicians or people who are disabled or almost anybody is could you please go over there in the corner quietly and leave us able bodied people alone? It's not because they're being mean.
It's because most of the time they're scared. And if they're like high achieving people, they're used to having answers for problems with. They don't understand is I don't want you to have an answer for me. That's my job. You just need to be human. You just need to be calm. You just need to be compassionate. And if you can't do any of those things, just zip it. Right.
So can you can you talk a little let's backtrack a little bit without getting into the super details, because we don't have to. And you do you do highlight you do talk about this at length on your website. So after the accident, so when did you first start to notice the attitude change of people? Can you give us some specific examples of immediately that took place?
So during the accident, my arm was ripped out of my shoulder socket. My leg, the safety belt kept me going this way. But the car, because the woman hit me not once but twice and they couldn't get her foot off the gas. My leg was driven underneath the dashboard and a piece of bone ripped away from my pelvis, taking my handspring tendon with it. And then when the windows started bubbling in like it was made of liquid, my arm was hanging, my martial arts training just kicked in and I dropped my my chin down away from the window.
I did this and the window exploded. So I had glass on my neck and glass in my head. And I didn't realize there was a piece of my finger. And when I went to pull the piece out, it broke in my neck. It broke off. So I end up in the emergency room and I say, you know, there's like. It's your shoulder, and I'm like, it's more than my shoulder as they're picking the glass out of my head and I said I felt this pain at the top of my leg during the accident.
And they said, oh, that's just a hamstring muscle. It could take up to a year to heal. It's just shoulder to shoulder. Now, my shoulder injury was really, really bad, but it was kind of like it's just a muscle. Go walk up and down for us. So I did. And they said it hurt and they said, oh, if it was the tendon, you wouldn't be able to walk. And I'm like, that doesn't make sense.
So I go the next day with my husband to a shoulder surgeon and he's my husband says, Are you going to do an MRI? And he goes, No, I'm just going to wait six weeks and let things calm down. And then we'll look. And then my arm is put in a sling and I'm told, don't move it. And I come back in like three, four weeks and I'm like, the pain is worse. And he's like, you know, you've probably been doing martial arts.
And I was like, no, in order to become a blackbelt, you have to have some self discipline. I've done exactly what you said. It's getting worse. And it kind of rolled his eyes and then I had to have my hand surgery done. So then I come back after that, I said I really need an MRI. And he literally rolls his eyes again and says, OK, I don't think it's going to change anything. If the MRI and the MRI shows that I have one of the worst shoulder injuries imaginable, my shoulder labrum is torn from nine to three.
My bicep tendon sprayed, my butt turns up, my ulnar nerve was damaged. We didn't find that out till later. But my ulnar ligament, I had a class to sprain and that was just my arm. And I took my husband with me. Thank God, because everybody needs an advocate when you become disabled. And I had already looked at the MRI and I walked in and he says to me, Linda, why the long face? And I'm like, have you seen my MRI?
And he says, Yeah. So I mean, you never get in your hand above your head again. I mean, so I mean, I wouldn't do surgery because you'd never get in your hand above your head. And my husband says, I think we need a second opinion. Go for the second opinion. Lovely, lovely, lovely physician, he looks at my MRI because this is really bad and you're allergic to narcotics. And so I don't recommend surgery because you never get in your hands above your head anyway.
And I so my husband says, what's the best surgical outcome for somebody with this type of injury? And he says five percent of people will be able to get their hands above their head, but no one will be able to do this or this. Right. And so I said, well, five percent is not so bad, I mean, like. Probably three percent of people who start martial arts as adults become blackout's five percent sounded good to me and he looked at me and said that five percent is for somebody under the age of thirty five, not for you.
And I thanked him for his opinion and I got up to leave and he kept repeating to me, you need to accept this because you need to be realistic because it will be easier for you in the long run. And he kept saying that. And all I wanted to do was get out the door because I suddenly was having trouble getting breath in, because I thought, if I can't get my arm fixed, I can't get my leg fixed. If I can't get my leg fixed.
I can't even imagine my life, so the third time he said something snapped and I turned around and I smiled at him and I said, I don't do you and I need to be realistic and I have no intention of being in the top five percent. I'm going to be I'm going to find the right surgeon and I'm going to be in the top one percent for any age. And I said thank you. And my husband then said to me, I will find out who the best surgeon is in Los Angeles.
So I see the best shoulder surgeon says this is really bad. And finally, he agreed after months of trying because nobody wants to do surgery on a person who's allergic to narcotics, it's just finally a repeat MRI. It shows I'm losing the use of my arm. And he says to me, you'll get back between. 40 and 80 percent of your former range of mobility, depending on what you do the first six months after surgery, because in the first six months you get ninety five percent of whatever range of mobility you're going to get back and you'll never have muscle in your arm.
And I looked at him, I said, listen, I love you and you are the best, but I'm going to get one hundred percent because unless I get one hundred percent, I can't get my leg fixed. If I can't get my leg fixed, I just don't want to think about this. So all every stage that I went on, once you become disabled, it's almost like. The minimum amount of what can be done for you is usually done.
And so unless you're lucky enough to have great surgeons, which I was blessed, you know, I had a great hand surgeon, I had a great shoulder. I mean, I had the best soldier, like, amazing. And then I had an amazing surgeon for my proximal hamstring tendon, which ripped away, lodged itself a piece. That piece of bone lodged itself in my sciatic nerve. So even though I regained the ability to walk normally again and if you looked at me, you would not say, well, there's a disabled person.
I deal with permanent nerve damage in my leg and I found ways to work around it. And because I'm allergic to narcotics, it's turned out to be a blessing because I think too many people when you have chronic pain. It's very easy to get addicted to those narcotics. So what I found with being disabled is a whole new way. I mean, first of all, here's the thing I experienced that I don't think many people realize being disabled is hard work.
It's not just painful, but. You have to it takes so much energy and effort and focus and attention to get yourself up out of bed, into the shower, out of the shower and dressed and ready to go without hurting yourself or aggravating your injury, especially if you've only got one leg that you can use. Right. And so by the time you're ready to go out of the door, you feel exhausted. And because of my training in martial arts and because of the people I trained with who helped me develop my mindset and thinking and planning, I understood that my long term outcome was only as good as what my surgeons could do and then what I could do after.
OK, so I developed preop plan to post our plans and how to get out of the House plans. And because I knew that the fatal flaw to all my plans was further injury from falling, what I didn't expect and I did, I had by the time of year to the day of my HAMP's my shoulder surgery, I had one hundred percent of my range of mobility back. I was doing great. Then I get my leg surgery right, and I kind of think, oh, this this will be the same, it's going to be hard, it's going to be painful.
But I'll be able to rehab it. I'll be able to use all that martial arts and qigong training, break down those exercises to like the smallest, smallest beginning point and just rebuild up like I did with my shoulder. And I'm given. Stretches like a few days before my my surgery and I go to pick them up and I say to the guy, how do you use these things? And he looks at me. What do you mean how do you use them?
You never use crutches. And I said, no, I've never used crutches. And he said, you must a lot of very sedentary life. It's like there's no point in answering somebody like that. So I just said, could you show me how to use them? He goes, Yeah, you make a tripod out of your body. And I was so freaked out that I just burst out, that's not safe and that's not right. Because of my training, I understood you have to maintain the upward force from your base of support and the downward force of gravity in order for your body to be possibly aligned and give a disabled body the best opportunity to heal.
And doing this doesn't. So he showed up and then I apologized after megalopolises, said, I'm really sorry, I'm sorry. Please forgive me. And I said, and by the way, I haven't let a sedentary life. And he said, OK, well, what kind of things have you done? And I said, I'm a martial artist. And he goes, Do you have a black belt? He said, Well, show me your black.
That would use these scratches. I support the design of them is wrong, so they're going to force my arms away from my body, but here's how I would use them. I would keep the crutch as close as I could to my legs, push myself up instead of forward. And then he said, show me. So I show them and he goes, well, your body is straighter, but you're moving much slower. And I'm going nowhere in a hurry for the next three and a half months.
So I'll settle for that. But despite that, every night after I had my hamstring tendon surgery, I would complain to my husband that the crutches were bankrupting the opportunity my surgeons had given me by forcing my body to be misaligned and moved in ways it wasn't designed for that. But the crutch feet couldn't replace the bone in my foot. Your underarms were designed to carry the weight of your body. When I briefly used when I bought it, I bought a walker that I used that I modified to help me stand up and sit down and then get the crutches under me.
I'd unlock the walker and push it with one hand because I had modified it. And then I take a step and then I because I realized the fatal flaw to all my future plans was further injury from falling. And I had reached that point. When you become disabled and you're in a lot of pain. You figure out what your limit is, whatever it is you've got, you know, I can take this much more or I can't take anymore.
And I was at the point, after all those surgeries and procedures on my spine, I knew that this was my limit. So I had to do everything I could to keep myself from having any further injuries. So I realized when I and it took me a long time to accept that I was. Disabled and not injured, you know, in my mind, in the beginning, I knew I was badly injured, but I really believe that I was more injured than disabled when I saw up for you.
So for you, what does that what does that difference look like?
Well, for the difference for me was I knew that if I could find the right shoulder surgeon, he would fix my shoulder. And I had enough martial arts and qigong training that I could devise a program for myself. Remember, you're not born a black belt. You become a black belt. You spend years learning how to move your arm or your hand or your foot or your leg the right way over and over and over until you've got basically you learn how to synchronize sequential movement to generate momentum that is stable and balanced.
So I knew if I had my shoulder fixed by the right surgeon, I would get great pity. And then I would work hours and hours a day so that I could get back so that it would be an injury, not a lifetime disability. Right. With my leg, it was a different story because I had that fantasy that, OK, well, once I get put back together, I've got enough training to figure out what I need to do because I'm kind of like at the edge of like this is where it is.
What I didn't count on was that. From your waist up or non weight bearing joints from your waist down is weight bearing joints. So when you force a weight bearing joint to be misaligned and moved in ways it's not designed for, continually you create more disability, you create more injury. So my leg surgeon put my leg on straight. We know he didn't put it on crooked, right. But my leg was in this race at sixty degrees for like two months bent, and it was like rotated outward because of the brace and gravity.
And I was on crutches. So I was like this. And every step I took was misaligned and and I tried every crutch on the market. And the idea of walking when I first started walking first day. Without prejudice, my left leg was rotated outward. My left foot was rotated out for my left hip was rotated outward. My left leg was an inch longer than my right leg. But my heel didn't touch the ground. Why? Because the muscles between my hip and my knee had lengthened and the muscles between my knee and my ankle had shortened.
So you can imagine when you have a leg hanging for two months at an unnatural angle, those muscles, some get stretched, subject contracted. So when I first started walking, I had this really awkward, weird, bizarre gait in my whole body was shifted, OK? And I had a couple of people asked me, did you have a stroke? Because that's how bizarre my gait was. The day I started walking and I realized how badly disabled I was was the day I said I'm disabled, I'm not injured anymore.
But the thing that made me really angry was the reason I was so disabled was not the accident. It was the months and months of forcing my body to be misaligned and moved in ways it wasn't designed for and for the hotties. Brodies that they know that's called daviss law. And I think every disabled person should, but they only learn two things. They should learn daviss law and world law, because daviss law, most people know, is the use it or lose it law.
And Wolf, what it says basically that bone function changes cause bone structure modifications. So after two months on these corrections with my arms like this, even though I try to use them like this, I had developed kyphosis in my spine which made my spine had now curved like this. So that added to all the things. And like I said, I used to complain to my husband every night about my crutches. And one night he said, Linda, I listen to people all day long complaining about serious heart issues and people who are dying can come home to you and you all night.
You know more about anatomy and physiology than anyone I know. I've seen you take two hundred and eighty pound into the ground in a split second. You can build anything, stop complaining, go build yourself some mobility devices. So I did because I realized, unlike a lot of my physicians, that unless I could redevelop contralateral and reciprocal movement. And what's that? Our bodies are designed for left or right, balanced momentum. That's how they're designed. We all may look different on the outside, but on the inside, our bodies are designed to move laterally, to maintain muscle strength and alignment, upright posture and force strength.
So I realized unless I could re develop a normal step stride and gait and get that leg in like this, that I would wear out my knee joints, my ankle joints and my hip joints, and I would spend the rest of my life having surgeries and procedures and living in terrible pain. So that's so so I, I that's what I did, I invented a cane that would allow my foot to relearn how to strike the ground from heel to tell his traditional cane.
Just help you balance in the way they do is they break your arm out to the side. And I knew I needed to maintain that upward force and the downward force. And the only way to do it was to redevelop. So I put I accept my cane. I put ridges in it just like in the ridges of the metatarsals and the challenges of the bottom of your feet and your heel bone. Actually, if you look at a heel bone and you look at the back of my cane, they look the same.
They have those ridges. So my cane allows you to keep your weight is distributed evenly between the foot and your feet and allows you to regain or maintain upright posture, balance and stability. So I was able to learn how to walk normally again. So the same physicians that told me in the beginning that I had unreasonable and unrealistic expectations, which was all of them basically then told me one of two things. I was a medical marvel and I said, no, I'm not.
I'm just well-trained. Or they would say most people wouldn't do what you did for hours and hours a day. I said if most people had my training and understood what their life would look like going forward, they would do exactly what I did. But the really sad part is most people shouldn't have to do what they have to do because the mobility devices, the crutches, the trains, the walkers, the wheelchairs create more disability because they don't give a disabled person, especially a disabled child, a fighting chance to get the most out of their mobility and the most out of their muscles and the most out of their alignment.
It actually makes you worse. And then the attitude is, OK, you're disabled. Could you please go over there in the corner for the disabled people, you know? And you know, athletes have sponsors, right? They get shoes and clothes and stuff. Disabled people. I mean, my long term goal is to change the face of disability so that people realize that most disabled people mean I'm talking physically disabled people are no different than anybody else, OK?
They are the same. They are doctors. They're lawyers. They are engineers. They are artists. They are bakers. They are whatever. OK, and why do they have to carry the additional burden of having mobility devices that operate below the standard of human care and become more disabled? Because that's the way it is. So that's why I started my company.
When Linda. When did you. So a couple things I'd like to just add. Most people, in my opinion, don't have your grit or your perseverance or your desire to. Achieve what you wanted to achieve for yourself. I mean, at least in my experience, most people don't have that. I totally I totally respect what you're saying and I understand where you're coming from because. You're saying they shouldn't have to. Let's let's help by. Developing technology that at the very least doesn't hurt them and hopefully helps them, so I get it, I get it.
But my question for you is, when did that when did that moment of realization come where you said, you know what, this cane that I developed worked for me. I'm seeing why it's so much better. What was the leap that you made to say now I want to go help other people with this?
Oh, no. That came that leap came the night after my hamstring tendon surgery. I'm standing in my living room because lying down was really more painful than standing up. And I'm looking at the window. And I think to myself, my whole long term prognosis now is totally dependent on this stupid thing on the bottom of my crutches. And. If I fall, it's all over, OK? And then I thought, OK, Linda, it's only three and a half months.
You can do it, you can get through it, and I thought, OK, and then I got really angry because I thought there were little kids out there that use this their whole life. There are people there are adults that have to use these dumb crutches and all these other things their whole life. They don't even have a fighting chance. And I know from being in pain, if you are in pain, it's really hard. It zaps your energy, saps your it zaps everything.
And then there's not much left over to do anything else. So that night there, I said, no, no, there's there's got to be better. So at that night there, I decided I just have to buy a few more crutches or a few more whatever. You know, I've surely there's something better out there right now. And I bought every kind of. Give me the arm once, the elbow like this one, that they were OK when I started walking and I walked so weird and so twisted and I was so much muscle atrophy because basically two years and three months of surgeries and procedures and I had between one and three and a half months at a time where my movement and mobility was restricted.
So muscle atrophy was kind of my middle name at that point. But I was like, this is not the life anybody should have. I mean, it's hard enough just trying to do the best for yourself without, like, having a ball and chain that you have to carry around behind you. So, I mean, basically, I was like. I never liked a bully, you know, and I felt like this is kind of like a bully situation.
And when I started walking after I realized that there were no good mobility devices that didn't cause secondary disability and I realized what these devices had done to my body, if my shoulder heals in a year, I was like, I had muscle again in my arm. I had started doing five hours a day of rehab, but by the end of the year it was down to 15 minutes. And now I spend five minutes a day and I have one hundred percent of my range of mobility with my leg.
It was a completely different thing. It was like this is what the face of disability is. And people understood what secondary disability was and why it's important, what mobility device you choose or how it's adjusted. I mean, most walkers are not adjusted properly. They're too low. So people are like this, you know, and I have a bunch of people now who used to my canes and are off their walkers. And in the beginning I said, could you show me how you walk on your walker?
And I'm like, that needs to be adjusted higher. You know, if the if the current biomechanics theory of the people adjusting them is if you're like this, you have less chance of falling, then they're not understanding. You also have more chance of disability. So. I think that if people understand more, especially disabled people like. How do I need to line up my body to give myself the best possible outcome and the least amount of pain and achieve what I want to achieve without getting exhausted from having to drag my body around all day, then it will change the entire industry, because as long as people are willing to buy devices that cause secondary disability, there's no incentive to change things.
I mean, I'm one woman, one company with like I've got seven patents now and four canes and crutches and walkers and I'm working on a wheelchair. That that is just completely different than anything. But I'm one person. And when I talk to people and they understand it and I say, OK, do you realize if you do this, why don't you try doing that? Or then they're like, oh, I didn't even realize that once people once, you know, you can't know what you know to be true.
So as long as you're being told this is the best you can be for this is that there's nothing more for you, you will say, OK.
And or or or you'll do what you did and say, you know what, I'm going to find a better way, I'm going to work, I'm going to work it out myself or I'm going to I'm going to seek more people out who who have the same mission as me. Right. So, I mean, I think it's an incredible thing that you're doing. It's courageous, it's important work. And it has the possibility of being super beneficial for a lot of people, but there are there are also people.
Like you who have taken those steps and who are who are trying to make that change and it's super commendable, but it goes I think it goes back to. You know, your perseverance, your grit, your your attitude, your your training, your your mental training, right. So I'm curious, like, have you thought also about. Helping people with disabilities on improving those attitudes. Or or just changing the way they see the change in the way they see what's possible.
So I'm working with a couple of people now who are pretty badly physically disabled. And I tell them this is not a day off kind of thing. This is an every day you don't you don't take a day off from breathing. So I don't care if you just do something for five minutes, but your mental mental attitude has to be. How do I get myself to a better tomorrow? Good enough is not enough if it stops me from getting to where I want to go or what I want to do or how I want to do it.
You have to recognize that mindset is different than skill set. Skill set is different than thinking and thinking is different than attitude. So attitude is a really important thing. There will be times in everybody's life where you're in a really bad situation. And as my late English grandmother used to say, when you're going through hell, keep going, but sometimes you can't. And sometimes in some situations, the only thing you can change is your attitude. Just changing your attitude, change your situation, maybe, maybe not, but it sure as hell makes it easier to get through that terrible situation day after day.
And so I tell people it's more than physical. You have to have the right attitude you can never have. Poor me. Pity me if you can have it. But that's where exactly where you're going to end up.
But that doesn't help if it doesn't help. So your mindset has to be. If I can get myself to a better tomorrow, what do I need to do today is the way you walk, today is the way you walk into tomorrow unless you do something about it. So if you've got a bad attitude, it's time to change it. That doesn't mean that your situation isn't terrible. It may very well be terrible. It may mean there's nothing you can do.
But if you're going to have to be in hell. Does it help to have a bad attitude or a good act? My belief is it helps to have a good attitude, because I've met some disabled people who are really, really angry. Most of them are fabulous. So you have to know I when I decided I wanted to design a new kind of wheelchair, I couldn't exactly see people in wheelchairs on the street and walk up to them and go, Hi, my name is Linda.
Could I talk to you about your wheelchair? So I started I hung out at Abilities Expo all three days and I spent days just going from one disabled person to be another and having amazing conversations. And then I used to call what I would call trolling Fridays. I would go to hospitals and people in wheelchairs are often dropped off at the front. And then they sit in the in the waiting area in the front until somebody goes past the car and comes back.
So I'd go and I'd sit down and I'd start having conversations because if you're somebody is already there and you sit and you said, hi, my name's Linda, how are you? How's your day going? You get to talk to people. And so. You understand that there are some people that they're just amazing, you meet them and they're they're just like, I really like you. I want to have dinner with you. I want to know what your favorite book is.
I want to know what your philosophy is. And then there are some people who are so angry and bitter that it's shocking. And because when people look at me now, they don't realize I am a disabled person because of this nerve damage. I mean, I had one woman send me an email. If she had seen the name of my cane, aligned his design on a picture of my cane. And so she wrote me a really nasty email that said, I really hope that picture is not the way your cane is going to be like that with that giant logo.
I want you to know that we disabled people. You are not proud of our disability and we do not like logos. So I wrote her back a very nice email saying, I'm so sorry if I offended you was not my intention. I remember when I was was less disabled that I tried every cane on the market. And if I had seen somebody using a cane that kept them upright and balanced and aligned their their body, I would want to know the name of that cane without having to come over and either tap on the shoulder or interrupt them or stop them.
So that's why I put the name of my cane right on prominent so that people could see it. And I'm really sorry if you're offended. So. You know, there was another woman who sent me an email saying, you know, I saw you on YouTube and you are not disabled and you can go to hell. And I just thought, OK, well, she's not having a good day. And I responded thusly, being a Canadian, I just said the story that you're having a bad day and I hope your day tomorrow is better.
Which is which is a great response, I mean, and there's. I was so I was born with a disability, I never acquired one later in life, I didn't have chronic pain. I had a lot of challenges, obviously, physically, and I've been told by multiple doctors that I'm a medical marvel. And, you know, I get that I get that all the time. And it's fine. You know, it is what it is, but.
What? The attitude helps, but I guess the way I look at it is. I didn't, so I didn't have pain, but what I had was the driving force for me was perceived limitations, right? Like, I can't do this, I can't go out and try out for the basketball team or I can be a good tennis player or whatever, whatever the case may be. That's what drove me for a while. I want to prove other people wrong then.
Then over time, I think my attitude changed where I said I want to do it because I like doing it and I want to see how good I can get at it, which is a which is a huge mindset.
Change is.
Yeah. And makes makes an incredible difference. Two questions for you is when you were in so much pain and you were going through that rehab. Again, in five hours a day, I mean, nothing, I've done a little bit of rehab for some minor injuries right by my rehab program that I developed myself with five hours a day.
How did you know we'll be right? I wasn't I wasn't going to a party that was so right for my shoulder because my shoulder injury was so bad. The rehab for the first six months was four days a week, an hour and a half, two hours that I would come home and work for five hours, which is incredible. How did you know? Like when you're when you're in pain? No, it is. I mean, OK, that's fine by training.
And you had my understanding and you knew that if we move all day long, every day, whether you're disabled or not, we're always moving. I understood that I had to regain what I had lost in order to stop this downward spiral of I would just end up with more pain and more surgery. And when you're allergic to narcotics and pain relief, it is a real challenge. You get to a point where you just go. I mean, I have to admit, the second day after my shoulder surgery, the only thing I had for pain was I had an interest in pain pump filled with novacaine.
It's what you get at the dentist. And I had a little ball that I carried around. And the second day after my surgery, I begged my husband to kill me because the pain was killing me slowly. And I begged him to please kill me now because I just didn't want to die this way. And I thought I was going to die. And my husband first I said to him, take me back to the hospital because the pain is killing me.
And he said, what do you think they're going to do for you at the hospital? And I said, they'll put me out. And he goes, they can put you out. Everything that can be done for you is now being done. And I said they'd kill me because I can't do this. And so that freaked him out. He called me my my my surgeon, and he said, tell her to yank up, turn up that pump.
And I had been told I only had three days worth of if I ran out of it, it was too bad. So I cranked it up and I got up my ice machine and I had a great pain doctor. And I put on that cough and I slept in that ice cuff and I yanked that and I got through it. And after that, I knew I had to develop strategies for after surgery and how I was going to get through it.
Because when you know, you've got to go through it, you figure out how to get all the info that you can from everybody. OK, well, is there anything else? Is there anything else? What else should I be doing?
I get it. You put it you put it in your mind that you had to get through this no matter what. There was no choice. There was no alternative. So you did it. Yeah, which is.
And I had a plan. So just so you know, for a few months after I started my martial arts training, handed me a business management and planning book. And he said to me and I remember I looked at him and I and I was like, OK, this book number three. But why? And he said, this book will teach you how to plan and teach you how to think. And when you're finished studying this book, and I do mean studying, I expect you to come up with an outline for a plan that you'll use inside and outside the dojo to reach your goals.
And I did. And so I have followed that outline for that plan ever since then.
And what that book was, what book was the basic and I've given it to you, I've just said go get a basic business management plan and book one or one, read it and study it and start thinking about your life and what you want to accomplish in terms of business propositions. So the outline for my plan that I used when I made my mobility devices and my preop plans in my postwar plans, like I had preop plants. Why? Because I realized that I have never had that kind of surgery and there were things I didn't know that I should know or think about.
So I took a pad of paper and I walked around my house pretending I was and had shoulder surgery and couldn't use my arm. And I started to write down all the things that needed to be changed or moved. And I realized, oh, I'm not going to be able to use my left arm to go down the stairs. So I had a second railing put in. My staircase, so I could walk up with my right hand and then turn around and walk down and I didn't have to risk falling, so I have my own plan.
It starts with state the problem, which sounds pretty. You know, like something everybody should think, but like when I started building my mobility devices, I spent a long time on state to state the problem that what is wrong with the current mobility devices. Right. And then number two is always the same. Whether it was my plan with my kids or my plan with anything I've done, state the goal because a lot of people spend a lot of time and energy on thinking about what they're going to do, but they don't necessarily have an end goal.
And when you have an end goal, you can kind of focus your thinking. And when you're disabled, it's really important to understand what your problem is physically. Right? Understand it mentally. You're starting to have a problem and you're going to need some help because it's hard being disabled. So if you have a good friend network, then you can say to your friends, you know, there might be a day where I call you and just ask you to come and sit and watch a movie with me because I'm lonely, OK?
Number three, take inventory. Most it's like something most people don't do. You start thinking, I want to do this or I want to do that, but. Do you have the right inventory to do whatever you want, no, for buying the fatal flaw? So I understood the fatal flaw on my pre and post up and rehab plans was further injury from falling. OK, so I had to be really careful that whatever I did didn't increase that risk or put myself at risk.
OK, so those those are always the first four things in any plan that I use that it lists the obstacles and difficulties. Because once you're aware of the obstacles and difficulties you face either in your life or in something you're trying to learn or something you're trying to do, you can focus your attention where it needs to be. Because one thing I've noticed as a parent, as a martial artist, as as somebody who's who's an inventor, people spend a lot of time and energy doing, but not necessarily achieving because they don't they're not focused on what they really need to be focused on.
Right. And so the next step in my plan is always with the assets and resources. So if you need human resources because you're disabled and it's going to be a long shot, you never want to exhaust your human resources. It's very easy for your friends who have to say, no, no, no, I'll be there, I'll help you. But it's much easier if you can recognize this is not going to be a six or an eight week thing.
It's going to be a long term thing. So maybe I need two or three friends that I can count on. OK, so maybe so I don't hire anybody out, right, and then the next step in all of my plans is outline your plan. Right, because most people don't. And then the next step is break it down into stages and then list the obstacles and difficulties in each stage of the plan. And then it's allocate your assets and resources.
And then in a business management and planning, you learn what SWOT analysis is right there. Weaknesses, opportunities and threats. I did, and so I did a risk benefit, cost benefit and a SWOT analysis every planet ever done, especially my postdoc plants, every morning I would get up and I would say to myself, what are my strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats? It takes a minute. If you understand you didn't get enough sleep last night, you've got to be more focused.
You've got to pay more attention. You've got to tell yourself, I'm not going to try and do anything. Suddenly I know it's going to take a long time, but that's what I'm going to do. If I can take a nap, I'm going to do it. So you list those. And then one of the most important parts to any planet ever developed, and I know this may sound very new agey to some people was the mantra, if you have something, you can repeat yourself over and over and over again, keep you focused.
So when I started walking and I walk so funny and I was told that I'd never walk normally again and I start if you read my mind, my story on my website, I had a four year walking plan. And so my first mantra was, every place has a step, every step has a place. Now find the places and take the steps to the future moments you want in life. And then in Qigong in martial arts, there are belts, white, brown, black and qigong.
There are no belts. OK, if you're lucky enough and there's different forms of chingon, there is martial qigong there, spiritual qigong. There's what people refer to as exercise qigong and their spiritual right. But one of the forms of Qigong is called walking meditation, OK? And it's basically where you connect your up line and connect your chai with the earth. And when your body is moving in alignment and you can connect your and you can feel that balance within your body and the balance within the in the earth and around you, it it it gives you more energy.
So when I finally started walking normally I started saying I walk strong, I walk free, I'm done with the earth and she's one with me. And so people would say to me, how can you walk every day? And I say, because I'm disabled and in order to have the least amount of pain in my day. This is what I need to do, so if I can connect with my CHY, with the Earth or anybody I meet, you know, if I can put a smile on somebody's face, if I can help somebody, I'm doing a good thing.
And the last thing in all my plans is to have a set of rules or laws. And one of my big one was never give up, never give. And not as long as you live till the day that you die. You just keep getting up because failure you learn in martial arts. How do you become a black belt by failing. You fail up. You keep kicking yourself up and starting over. You learn something from your failure. You learn how to do it right, to learn how to do it a little better until finally you develop the procedural memory and the muscle memory that allows you to develop the neural pathways in your brain.
That makes it automatic.
So when you were when you were doing these walks every day and it was difficult and it was step by step, how did you know? I've walked enough today despite despite the pain, so when you're training for something, when you're trying to get better at something. So how did you manage? How did you manage? Like, I'm pushing too much or I'm pushing.
You understand? I never. Most people think of working out. They think of what I used to think of as working out hours of martial arts, real cardio vascular running, which I up until the day of the accident, I was running a seven minute mile, three miles, four or five days a week at seven minutes a mile. And a lot of it was uphill. That's a real workout. When I'm walking, I'm walking for alignment, not speed.
I'm walking to regain the ability to align and move my body the way it needs to. So my spine is badly damaged in two places. So I knew that I had to redevelop the muscles around my spine so that it would give that that my spine more protection. And so I did. She got in martial arts exercises. I reduced them down. I form new exercise so that I could safely rebuild the muscle without putting too much tension on my spine.
And any time I felt my neck straining or my lower back straining, I would just say, OK, so you got to relax the spine, but engage the muscles. So just that little bit of understanding how to do it and the way to do it. And because I been so many I mean, when you spend years chewing this over and over and over or screamo is stick fighting, you just spend hours sick fighting. It's not it's it's not something that's foreign to you.
Plus, I kept a movement and emotions. So most people don't understand the difference between movement and motion. So if you think about it, the easiest way to think about it is if you see an old person hunched over walking on a cane, they're moving. But that's not the kind of motion anybody wants to have. So I kept a movement and a motion journal and I wrote in it a couple of days a week so I could chart it.
Why? Because I could. At the end of every month I could look back when I would start to feel like I think I've made some progress or whatever. But by looking at it and reading it, I could say, yeah, I did make progress this month. I got to keep going. I also took when I first started walking, it wasn't just my leg was twisted. The bones in my lower leg were twisted and the bones in my foot, everything was twisted.
But a year after when I took it, I knew it would take a year to get my toes in the same direction. So like year one of my four year plan, get my toes moving in the same direction. No, you're too was getting my heel to touch the ground. You're three was unloading my overloaded right leg and reloading, starting to reload my under loaded left leg. And then your four was developing in normal steps, stride, contralateral and reciprocal movement.
And I used every day of those four years just to get to my point of where I was satisfied. And then I went into the fine tuning period, OK? And I knew that if I walked, I felt better. That's how much pain I had. Like the nerve pain was so bad. And here's another little interesting fact for most disabled people. I complained to my surgeons, my neurologist, my and everybody, my team doctor, that I had terrible, terrible pain from my damaged sciatic nerve or that piece of bones.
And after two years, I spent a long time looking in one of my anatomy books that I went to my neurologist and I said. I think it could be the colonial nerve, which is a branch offset branch of the sciatic nerve. What do you think that could be possible? Well, there's an easy way to figure that out. We just get you a novacaine five percent novocaine patch. And if that's what it is, the pain will go away.
And I remember looking at him and thinking to myself, I need to get out of here now before I call him a name that might very British grandmother would not approve of, or if I tell him what I think. So I just said, can you crawl that into the form of a right now? And I got out of there and I just there was part of me that really wanted it to work, but there was a part of me that didn't want it because I didn't want to think that for two years of me complaining, everybody was just gone.
So I went and got the patch and put it on. And 15 minutes later, I could function like a human being. And in three months I invented my cane, my crutches and six again because I wasn't in so much debilitating pain. So that's why it's really important for disabled people. Not to just settle for well, that's as good as it gets, or it would be much better. That's why I'm trying to form this network of disabled people.
Disability advocates and and and industries that help disabled people or companies that have new and novel products to act like as a resource like, hey, does anybody have that idea? Here's what I did. Go ask your doctor about it or they're doing a clinical trial here. Maybe see if your doctor can get you. And it's like it's it's great to have a network because, I mean, if you think about what is the Republican and the Democratic Party, they're voting blocs.
Right. And they've got a lot of power, but there's no disability bloc. Like if it's disabled. People insisted that insurance reimbursement was better. Every person with paralysis might get a Seabrook's. I don't know if those are I don't know what is so totally cool there for people with paralysis. And there's a great I just saw a YouTube video on it and you see this woman and she's walking all crunched. And just like her leg is not right, she gets this separation.
It's almost like an exoskeleton, but it's like a leg. And you see her walking and she's walking normally like it's like you wouldn't even know there was anything wrong. And all I could think of as somebody who's a martial artist does she is like, if that woman could walk like that all day long, she can start rebuilding her core strength and her balance and stability because her muscles will start functioning the way they're supposed to. Here's the downside. There's seventy five thousand dollars a brace now.
It would behoove insurance companies to pay for those because that person is not going to need all the ongoing medical care and treatments they're going to need from that disability. Just getting worse and worse. But because there's no disability block that says, hey, this is what we as a group need. Or this is what you should be doing for us. It's not getting done.
I think I think that's a really important point, and not only that, I'll just add to that if more people had that. They could be more productive, they could go out and invent things, they could go out and contribute to the workforce. They could go get employment. And they can they can be they could participate. In society, in life, the way we're supposed to be able to, and I think people and physicians especially need to be educated about biomechanics, and you say, but surely, Linda, they are.
I had. Three or four physical medicine doctors, why? Well, the first one I loved and she was great, but she left and they replaced her with another and then they replaced the he left and there was another and another and another. And I was shocked at the. They're hit all of the attitudes were kind of like. Your permanent nerve damage like. That's just the way it is. I mean, nerves don't heal after a year, so my my pain doctor, who's fabulous, said, I want you to have nerve conduction study.
I want to we need to find out how bad the nerve damage is in your arm and your leg. So I go and I have this nerve conduction study, and it's three years after the accident and it's, you know. Over a year, like almost two years after my leg surgery, and they do the production study and the neurologist says to me. NurseR are not supposed to heal after a year, and I don't know what it is you're doing, but whatever it is, keep doing it because your nerves are feeling still.
Now, I would think that if I have been in his place, I would say, well, what are you doing and how are you doing? And can other people do what you're doing?
But study this, let's study this and how that attitude it's like you don't call me a medical marvel, don't call you a medical marvel. Say we want to know what are you guys doing? Why is it you can do with your condition that other people with your condition, can you tell us what you do every day? Tell us what you do every week. It's a cool way of disabled people are a really big resource. That should be. Talk to you in medical school, I mean, I remember shortly after I started walking, I was at a party with my husband.
There was some kid there who had just graduated from Berkeley with a biomechanics degree, and he was building. He'd gotten a quarter of a million dollars in funding to build a new and better kind of walker. I said, oh, that's great. Well, tell me about your walker. Oh, no, it's top secret. I said, OK, I respect that, like I said. But can I ask you a question? Sort of related but unrelated.
I said, how many disabled people have you talked to? Said, Well, none. Why would I? It's all math and science. And my husband looked at me, he just like with anything because he was afraid I was going to say something, but I wasn't and he was afraid. He said afterwards, I knew you wouldn't say anything. I just didn't want you to roll your eyes at him. I went and looked up this pant, OK?
And the only thing I can tell you is it would be a very cool dog gate or gate. Because it was kind of shaped like this, but. No disabled person could ever use it. And guess what? I've never seen one for sale. So what is it, business 101? You can build anything you want, but if nobody wants it, nobody's going to buy it, right?
So I've had the conversation, too, with with some people that I've met and who are on the podcast that are inventors and technologies that are working with assistive technology. One of the big motifs there is people with disabilities need to be involved in the design process for the product. And just like with your cane, with your walker, you, you and you went in, you're doing the research for the wheelchair. Can't get it.
You get it. Here's the thing. I walk normally today because of my cane, because when I first started walking at a different step and stride on each side of my body and anybody who's a pahad, that not only different step in stride, but one foot was like this was like this I a different step in stride. And even though intellectually I knew my foot needed to strike the ground from head to toe to maintain my upward posture, my core strength, my balance and stability, I still couldn't do it.
Here's another interesting thing that happened. I had my hamstring tendon surgery. I was told I could not walk up the stairs with my left leg for six months. So six months comes the big day that they told me, OK, you can you can walk up the stairs now using your left leg instead of just my right leg and then for myself and then my right leg and then pull my leg up. So I go to step up the steps.
And even though intellectually I know how to do it, I physically couldn't do it. I mean, I literally physically could not do it. I went to Peaty like a few hours later, I said. What's the story like, can you teach me, like tell me what exercise? Tell me what I need to do. Like, I can't. I can't. I can bend my leg. Like, if I'm sitting down, I can bend it.
I just can't, you know. And they were like, just keep doing what you're doing. I'm sure it'll get better in time. Or you just walk up the stairs using one leg. It's not so bad. And I was like that going to work. So back to the drawing board, I invented some more exercises. I broke down some other ones. I realized because I had the understanding I was like, my Achilles tendon is too tight, my calf muscles or uneven on both sides.
I have a problem with the distribution of weight because my foot's not touching the ground properly. So I literally like sat down with paper and a pad of paper and I started developing more exercises and it took me several more months. But I can go up the stairs and have two at a time with either leg. So if disabled people here, you can only get here or you're never playing tennis or forget about swimming. Most of them will go, OK, all right.
You know, the worst attitude, I think is but I've met a few disabled people who say, well, I'm disabled, I can't do it, and I think to myself, how about I'm disabled and I'm going to figure out a way how to do it, even if it's not great, if it makes me happy, if I love being in the pool or I love whatever it is playing baseball, if I can't swing that bat with with with two hands, I'm going to learn how to do it with one hand and maybe I do it perfectly.
But if it makes me happy and fills me with joy, I'm going to do it if I'm going to find a way to do it. Yeah, absolutely. But I think so the kind of the key takeaways then are. Attitude is is super important, right? It's about developing these resources for people like us that we can support each other and help each other and say, look, you can do these things if you want to do them. It may not may not be easy and may not look the way you want it to look at first.
But you're going to get better at it if you want to. And then number three is how do we help other people who don't have disabilities understand that we should be involved in the design process. We should be, at the very least, has to users. We should have input.
Well, I know what you're designing. I intend to keep designing those devices. And I'm just one woman with one company. But eventually, hopefully it's going to catch on and people are going to start saying, no, I don't want the cane. That makes me less balanced and makes me walk like I want the cane. That's going to give me the opportunity to maintain or regain the ability to walk normally. Because let's face it, we all have built-In prejudices, right?
When you see a person, whether they're old or young and they're walking bent over and they have this weird kind of way of walking and they're looking at the ground that that's a professor or that's an inventor or because that's you. We have these preconceived notions that if somebody is walking bent over and looking at the ground, that they're probably not that interesting to talk to. Whereas I think if you see somebody and they're using a cane or crutch, but they're like walking upright and looking around and they got a smile on their face because they're not in so much pain, it's like this looks like a cool person.
Maybe I'm going to go talk to that person. Right. So it's like we have to change not only the attitudes of the non disabled people, we have to change the attitudes of the disabled people first. Like the industry needs to do better for us. We need to like if you went and bought a car and they said to you the first three times, going to drive like a dream, but the fourth between the fourth and the sixth, it's going to crash into a wall.
You wouldn't buy it. That's below the standard of care. If if mobility devices had ratings on long term, users can expect this in terms of balanced stability, upright posture, movement and momentum, they might say, well, maybe that 12 13 is not such a great idea because it's going to require a lot more time energy care and expense in the long run, if people, disabled people, understood that their shoes are really important. So if your shoes are worn down on one side, your knee and hip joint on that side are also being talked that way.
So like people say, well, I've been wearing the same shoes for years. I don't walk much. It doesn't matter. But then if you look at their shoes and it's worn down in one place, it does matter. Here's another interesting thing. I spent years and after all my surgeries and I noticed that, you know, everybody, almost everybody who had one knee replaced ended up with the other knee replaced. And I said to the. Is it just my imagination now that I've been here for a couple of years between surgeries or that person was here for the other day?
Oh, yeah. I said, what percentage of people get one knee replacement than the other 80 to 90 percent? And I was like, that's not good enough. Insurance companies only pay to rehab the injured leg. Right. But if they understood you've got to offload the overloaded leg, that the person's been using too much of it and reload the other leg and treat the whole body. And maybe if they're going to use a cane cane that distributes their weight equally between the cane foot and their feet.
So it take like my cane will take the weight off your hip, knee and ankle when you use it correctly, because it's got those ridges and it's offset and it's bigger. So it naturally just does this. OK, and I people now all over the world using it and saying my ankles feel better in my knees stupider. My hips feel better. That's the kind of thing we as disabled people should come to expect, whether it's. Any kind of mobility device or any kind of peaty like why do insurance companies only pay for to treat the affected area when the whole body is affected, like let's get the body as best as it can and then help the person maintain it the best they can.
Because I met people who had been empty for 10, 12, 13 years and they didn't have any underlying conditions. They had just had a bad injury on one side. But because their entire body was never addressed, they were constantly playing the overload under load overload undervote game. And so. I would think to myself. Surely if insurance companies understood that, would they pay a little extra pay the parties or the OTES a little extra to look at the total person and what's the best outcome for each person?
Because that's really cheaper in the long run, don't you think?
Absolutely, yeah. If you can if you can minimize a second knee operation, that's huge.
And the pain meds and all the like, the times where you're not going to be able to go out or want to stand up or, you know, it just it's like disabled people need to help themselves. Said we need to standards higher. We do, and I'm not sure exactly how we do it, and that's why I want this network, because, like, I want the ideas of everybody to like what's the best we can expect for ourselves because we've kind of relied on industry for too long and.
While there's been some great innovation in certain areas like certainly like inside the heart valves and Stanson surgeries that repair the inside and even surgeries that repair the outside, then once it's repaired, it's kind of like.
Where are you?
So I have I have two more questions for you, Linda. So I respect your time and we've we've had a great talk so far. The first question I have is, what have I missed? In this conversation that you feel is really important, talk about.
I think it's really important that people understand whatever injury or condition they have, that if they don't have a doctor that they feel they're getting the best information from. That they get to a computer and research it themselves and that before their next doctor appointment. They research as much as they can so that when they go in to ask questions, they have really good questions to ask, so that if especially if you're in an HMO or you're in a situation where you're going to get 15 minutes with the doctor and that's it, you want to make sure that if you read about a study that you think that might be beneficial for you, make sure you do all the reading.
So who qualifies for it? Do I qualify? So when you go into your doctor, you say there's this study. I think I qualify for this reasons. What can you do to help me? And so people need to get educated. It is our responsibility as disabled people to learn as much as we can to educate ourselves, to understand and not and to have what I was told. I had unreasonably unrealistic expectations in regard to their long term prognosis, because unless you do, you're going to keep getting up every day saying, how can I have a better tomorrow?
How can I bring five minutes of joy into my life? So you got to start with five minutes.
That's excellent advice. Thank you for that. And the second question, last question is, where can people find you? Where can people take a look at your work and your your future products and help support you?
So my website is online, just design dot com, and you can go there. And we are currently selling the cane. We will be selling the crutches, I think, in July or August. And they're completely different than any crutches that you see on the market today, because the top of my crutches made of fabric and their straight arm crutches. So all the weight, so. This is what my cane foot looks like, you can see it's got ridges and bottom of it.
My foot looks the same, so the weight of the body is kept in the foot. So my crutch, like my the handle keeps the hands straight close to the body, keeps the neck relaxed. And I have a bunch of other patents on a bunch of other mobility devices that hopefully one day I will develop but need those sales to to do that. And people can if they have questions, whether they need a cane or they don't need a cane, they can reach me at customer service at a line is design dot com or just go to a line, just design dot com.
And when you get to contact, send me an email and I'm really good. Everybody who buys it can either email or I call to see how they're doing. If there's a learning curve to my cane, because you have to keep your arm close to your body and you have to learn to distribute your weight evenly and keep yourself upright. So I always tell people, if you want to do a zoom tutorial with me will set up the time in the day.
If you're having any problems and you want to discuss them with me, I'll set it up. I'm very available because my long one of my long term goals is to not just raise the standards, but for disabled people to be able to contribute more to their lives because they have less pain and suffering. And a lot of relationships fall apart when a person becomes disabled because they are in so much pain that they're not their highest and best self. And so unless you're fortunate to have a spouse like I was fortunate to have a spouse, I was very independent.
I did things as independently as I could, but I still had to rely on my husband a lot. Like after my surgeries, he literally had to put my socks on and help me get dressed and undressed. And that's what you want to be able to make sure that you don't overburden the people who love you and you keep your relationship strong so people can reach out to me. And I'm starting this network with a whole bunch of people. And if I don't have the answer of hopefully somebody in my network, like what you perhaps might be able to provide an answer like about swimming.
Right. And I know one of the things I did was I taught myself to swim backwards, to rehab my leg. I don't know if you've ever tried the.
So I'm like, not that backstroke swim backwards instead of doing the breaststroke forward. I started at the end of the pool and I did it backwards.
Interesting. OK.
And that actually got my my lats working and my deltoids working. And it kept the pressure off. My my cervical spine was badly damaged, so and my lower spine was badly damaged. So I needed to do things to build the muscle that wouldn't hurt my neck and lower back and swimming is great and floating. I don't know if you like to float. I love to float so people can float and some people can't like I love I love the water.
So yeah.
Yeah. So like when I get in a pool and I stretch out and I felt like I had to warn my husband the first time I met him, I said, look, I like to float face down. So if you see me doing that, I'm not dead. I can I can go for about a minute without breathing. Don't worry about it. But just for disabled people, if you can get yourself to a pool, even if you can't swim, just get in the water and stretch your muscles.
Like my 20 year old Maine Coon cat who just died, took up swimming in his last year of life. He was so arthritic he would walk in the pool with me and he would just just like to be there. So I think for disabled people, you can get yourself in a pool. It's a great thing.
It really is. Absolutely. It relaxes the muscles. Like you said, you stretch, you stretch out. You feel so much better afterwards, whether you're doing something intense or not.
Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing that one last thing I can tell all the disabled people should do is they should get a pillow like a lumbar pillow instead of this weight in their chair. Turn it this way so that their spine is supported. So it should go up to just about but your shoulders or even a little above. So when you sit in your chair, your trunk is straight. And so that way you're not you're not into this.
And what it also does is it starts engaging all those muscles around your spine and around your core and just just from sitting with that pillow. You'll start to develop a little bit more core strength, and if they can do five minutes of tai chi a day, any basic program, they'll also feel better. That's my. My thing and I look forward to when covid is over so I can come to Florida or you can come to L.A. and we can get a whole group of us together and have you over to my house if you come here and you can meet the famous rocket.
Have you heard of my rocket?
Yes. You have mentioned Rocket.
Yes. Yes, he's here now. He's usually on all my demos. He wanders in and I'm really looking forward to meeting you in person. And I sent you another name today, and I've got a couple more names for you.
Likewise. Thank you so much for the conversation. The time is fantastic. Any time.
Helpful links:
Aligned as Designed: www.alignedasdesigned.com
