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Hardware from Head to Toe
Written by Chloe on Sunday, March 22, 2009
I find it amusing how much body hardware I have accumulated. It literally goes from head to toe. Some of it is for BIID. Some of it is for assorted physical conditions. I’ll just start at the top and work my way down:
Hearing Aid
I haven’t actually used my hearing aid in about five years, so it’s probably cheating to count this. I don’t like wearing a hearing aid. You all who want to be deaf are completely nuts <wink>.
Retainers
I didn’t get braces on my formerly crooked teeth until late in life, in 2002. The orthodontist says that I should wear the retainers (upper and lower) nightly for the rest of my life, or I suppose until my teeth fall out. This doesn’t bother me at all. In fact I like the feel of them. I don’t have the slightest clue why I would like this but not a hearing aid. Neither of them seems related to my BIID.
Cyber-Chick Ready to Rock and Roll
Neck Brace
Umm, okay I’m not sure if this is technically a neck brace. It’s a slightly fancy semi-rigid cervical collar that adjusts for height, tilt, and circumference. You can’t move your neck much in it anyway. Fibromyalgia affects my neck. Sometimes it hurts to hold my head up. A neck brace helps by allowing the affected muscles to be at rest. This increases my deafness since I can’t turn my head to see what people are saying. The neck brace came in handy recently because of the whiplash injury I got from a skiing crash. My partner had whiplash one time, and refused to wear the neck brace that was given to her because it offended her sense of style and fashion. Shows how much fashion sense I have!
Oh… I like wearing a neck brace for some reason. It especially gives me a feeling of security and comfort at night.
Wrist / Elbow / Shoulder – Immobilisers / Braces / Splints / Slings
There’s a big collection here so I won’t bore you with the details. It’s all for fibromyalgia, which affects primarily my arms. Wearing something from this collection is a frequent occurence.
Hand / Finger Splints
This is to prevent flexion contracture in my dislocated finger. I wear it every night. This will probably be for the rest of my life, or until my finger gets amputated; whichever comes first. I like this splint. It prevents me from using my left hand much; some sort of BIID connection there perhaps. The downside is that the edges are hard and rough. It inhibits me from cuddling my partner at night.
In the daytime I sometimes wear a spring loaded finger splint. It does the same thing, but not quite as forcefully.
Crutches
Since I hold crutches with my hands they must fit in somewhere around here. These are almost exclusively for BIID. The one exception is that after a day’s skiing my left leg is sufficiently buggered that a crutch does in fact make things easier.
Back Brace
I have continuous pain from my back injuries. I wear a back brace most of the time to mitigate the pain, day and night. Not for skiing though.
Chastity Belt
Alright, I made this one up. I don’t really have a chastity belt (yet). However, there seemed to be a bit of a gap between the back brace and the leg stuff. A Foley catheter would be good for my BIID, but I don’t have one of those either.
Knee Splints / Braces
I have a good collection of these, mostly acquired to manage BIID. However, they serve dual duty since I do get fibromyalgia in the legs. Mostly the area around my left knee is affected. If it’s bad I’ll use a rigid knee splint, especially at night. It’s good for my BIID too. How cool is that.
KAFOs
Now we’re getting to the good stuff. These are just for BIID. I find that these are extremely effective in managing my BIID feelings.
Wheelchair
Since this is in contact with a good part of my body (well, several good parts), I’m not exactly sure where it fits in. As above, this is just for BIID and is extremely effective.
Leg Spreader
Yes, I admit it. I got this as a sex toy. However, it has seen far more use to manage fibromyalgia in my shoulders. Ha ha, it’s not obvious is it? It took me a few years to figure it out.
It is important for me to sleep on my back if the fibromyalgia is bad, but I have a tendency to roll over onto my side. Easily the most effective means I have found of making sure I stay on my back is to use the leg spreader at night.
Bunion Splint
Ah yes, can’t forget the bunion; just on the left foot. It’s because my left foot is significantly larger than the right, particularly regarding width and depth. The size difference isn’t a big deal except I have to get left ski boots customised and stuff like that. Frankly, my experience is that bunion splints are pretty useless, and they don’t do anything for my BIID.
Conclusion
I don’t really get the point of this post. Maybe somebody else can figure it out? I wonder how much hardware it takes to qualify as a cyborg?
Tags: Back Brace, BIID, Braces, Crutches, KAFOs, Neck Brace, Splints, Wheelchair
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26 Comments
@Tora. When I was a kid I’d stay with my grandparents on occasion. Sometimes they’d leave me home alone. I discovered they had a big drawer full of bandages. Boy was I happy! They would ask me how I amused myself when they got back. Sometimes you just gotta lie.
4 On 22 March, 2009, Sean said:
@Tora, perhaps time to get a part time job and purchase for yourself bandages? Dunno, just an idea :)
@Chloe *at my grandma’s house right now* …hmmmm…..
@Sean Yeah. I really do need to get a job anyway. XD
@Chloe No bandages, but I did find a cane. And a walker. =3 *has the cane next to me*
I love this post, Chloe. It makes me giggle. I wish I had half of your stuff.
@Tora – bandages cost pennies and take up no space – surely you can manage a few more? :)
9 On 23 March, 2009, Sophie said:
I remember once I went into the $2 shop and bought a couple of rolls and took them home. Annoyingly they were compression bandages and ultimately my desire not to make my foot go black was stronger than my desire to play.
With all this talk of bandages I just HAD to bandage my left thigh yesterday evening. Still there this morning. It’s a 6″ compression bandage, but I’ve done these things so many times that I know exactly how tight I can go without feet turning black. There are some little tricks for getting it just right.
Great post Chloe, I wonder how many of us have acquired collections like this over the years. I’ve had the rare opportunity to spend the entire weekend wearing my soft collar underneath my minerva cto which provides total immobilization of my head and neck. Combine that with a bite plate to make extended wear possible, and it’s the most relaxed I’ve been in months. Here’s to biid :)
Ain’t got nufink, cept a chair that’s been at the back of a cupboard for a couple of years.
This sort of stuff does nothing for me. It doesn’t make me feel any more paralysed than i’m already not. And what’s the point of wearing leg braces and the like when you can feel them ?
Just goes to prove how difficult this biid thing is to nail down.
@Chloe You lied. You said you were overweight. You’re not overweight, you’re just cuddly :)
@Chloe Yeah I agree with Will. You’re much thinner than my girlfriend, and she isn’t overweight (ok maybe a little, but she’s perfectly healthy so it’s ok) so you aren’t either.
14 On 23 March, 2009, Sophie said:
I assumed that wasn’t her in the picture.
@Sophie. Well if it’s not her, she’s done a really good job of finding a photo of someone wearing everything she owns.
16 On 23 March, 2009, Sean said:
I can confirm it is a photo of Chloe in her own chair wearing her own gear.
@Sarah. That does sound like a lovely weekend. What’s a bite plate?
@Will & Tora. I didn’t actually say that I am overweight. I do weigh 175lbs nevertheless. But I am cuddly :)
@Will. KAFOs definitely do make me feel more paralysed. You can’t bend your knees, so there are whole sets of muscles that are impossible to use. That feels good to me.
20 On 23 March, 2009, Sean said:
@Chloe cuddly is much better than skinny :)
@Will, I agree, from experience, with Chloe. My braces not only visually authenticate my post-polio image but produce somewhat the effect while I use them. There’s just nothing better than letting my legs sink into the braces as they take my weight after each swing through the crutches, and they do keep my legs still when I’m seated. On the rare occasions when I’ve been able to go crip for several days at a stretch, my legs are definitely unsteady for a day or so after I have to start presenting as AB again. Best of course would be the actual paralysis my mind is telling me I should have, but for me braces are the next best thing and far better than nothing at all.
@Chloe and Brice, I’ve spent 30 odd years investigating this stuff within myself. I’ve had a couple of wheelchairs, a couple of sets of leg braces and crutches and even experimented with plaster casting. I found i could flex my legs far to easily with the braces, but putting both legs in plastercasts brought the immobility i was looking for. But even then, i could still wiggle my toes, and i still had sensation in my legs.
I can fully understand why you and others get satisfaction from using these things. But for me, it was never good enough, and only brought a great sense of frustration. Just as much frustration as i got when wheeling about a city for a couple of days.
As i’ve said previously, it just goes to show how hard it is to pin point what this biid thing is, and how it manifests itself in the individual. For me, it’s all or nothing, i’m not comfortable with pretending/role play/simulation (whatever you wanna call it). I don’t have a problem with anyone else doing it, but i’ve learnt through experience, it’s not for me. :)
Mmm I’d love to be able to get a collection like that XP
Specifically a chair and KAFO Braces – but with a lack of funding its hard to do X_X
24 On 6 June, 2010, Bill Hinkel said:
I hope the link works. It’s of my back brace, which looks exactly the same as Chloe’s. I too am a collector of braces and the more I can get on my body the more fun it is.
That’s very well spotted, Bill, since there’s not much of mine visible. Thanks for the nice pic. Yours does indeed appear to be identical to mine.
It was interesting for me to go back and read what I’d written about the back brace. I was a majority time back brace wearer when I wrote the post. Since then I became a majority time wheelchair user, which rendered the back brace obsolete due to the hugely beneficial effect on back pain. This all changed two days ago!!!
It wasn’t until today that I figured out exactly what I did on the hike to bring about the return of fairly intense back pain. The snowmelt runoff is currently Impressive and the creeks are raging torrents. I needed to make a creek crossing on the loop back down from the peak, one of the more difficult crossings I have come across. After much thought, I decided to leap onto a partially submerged rock, landing with my right foot, and preserve the momentum to pole vault the rest of the way across with my hiking stick. It was a successful maneuver, but with an awkward landing. My torso was twisted greatly to the right in order to keep a grip on the hiking stick as I was landing on the rocks. Today it struck me that my landing position was almost identical to the ski landing when I got my SCI in 2006… It turned out that I did lose my grip on the stick anyway and had to go to some trouble to retrieve it where it got stuck further down the rapids. For the rest of the hike I was focused on making sure that my left leg didn’t collapse under me, and wasn’t paying attention to my back.
The upshot is that I’m going back to wearing a back brace a lot of the time. The pain is not so bad when I’m actually in the wheelchair, but any other time, including in bed, it’s a problem. The brace provides a lot of relief.
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1 On 22 March, 2009, Wheelman1912 said:
Well Chloe, it seams me and you have a lot in common in this area! I also have a good bit of a collection that goes from head to toe, though it is not complete yet and there are still many things I want to do with it.
I have a Padded Helment like thing for my head, a TLSO that I wear everynight, that one was a 50/50 investment for my sciolsis and for fun, my two Donjoy Trom leg braces, a pair of walkers, and then my wheelchair. I have dreams of getting some arm braces, possibly a CTLSO, hearing aids, eye glasses, and maybe more. I am into BDSM so being fully controlled is attractive to me and being covered with braces or machines. (aka Cyborg)
It’s amazing how being held so tightly and firmly in braces can be comforting hugh? I love the feeling of having all the straps and braces press against my body nice and tightly, it truely is amazing.
-Wheelman