My injury - need advice!

[elliot3390]

Hi guys, ive been looking everywhere but i haven't been able to find a good answer for this question. About 3 months ago i was riding my Suzuki gsxr 600 and almost lost my leg in a high speed collision with a van who was on the wrong side of the road. I lost about half the flesh on my lower leg, had an open ankle fracture of my tibia, fibula, talus and femur. After external fixation, 12 screws, 2 plates and several surgeries later I have now found out that i will need to have my ankle fused at 90 degrees to my leg, anyway i was wondering how a fused ankle would affect my riding in the future, i have a big passion for racing bikes and it would be a shame to give it up at my age (just turned 20) I have some gory pics if you would like to see them.

Any help will be greatly appreciated, thanks

[Snorty]

If it's your right leg I shouldn't imagine you'll be hindered much at all - who uses back brake? I hardly ever do, and even so I imagine you can use it.
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Current: Yamaha FZ1 '07 | GSXR 750 SRAD

Past: CB125TDC | TZR125 | GPZ500 | CBR600F3 | ZX9-R | GSXR1000 K4

[Ste]

Give that there are club racers who have one or no legs, you can work around any problems from not being able to move your ankle.

[shereen]

Pics!

Glad you're ok.
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[slowlydoesit]

[shereen]

[stinkwheel]

I have a friend who can't lift his left foot.

He did a 104mph lap of the Isle of Man on an FZR400 using a hip-change (that you nudge with your hip) for the downshifts and his foot (pressing down) for the upshifts.

As has been said, you'll probably be ok with braking using that foot, gear shifting could be trickier. If it's your left foot that's busted, I'd suggest either modifying the bike so the gear shift is on the right or fitting an air-shifter.

If it's your right foot and you find you're struggling with the brake, you can buy handlebar mounted brake levers that are worked by your left thumb (supermoto riders use them for when they have their fiit stuck-out going into right handers).

If you're struggling to keep your foot on the peg, I've heard of people variously gutting a groove in the sole of their boot, replacing the footpeg with a bicycle clip-on pedal and fitting a cleat to their boot (this takes more doing that you'd think due to idiotic thread sizing on bicycles), bungeeing it on and I once saw a guy with an artificial foot who drilled a hole in the bottom of it and had a thing like a towing hitch for a footpeg (seem the same thing done withg a prosthetic arm).

NABD also have a huge knowledge base of ways of modifiying motorcycles to cope with a disability.

Maybe have a look at hitchcocks (a royal enfield supplier) for ways of making a linkage to swap your gear/brake to the opposite side if you need to. They make kits to both convert older enfields to left side shift and newer ones to right side shift.
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I did the 2010 Round Britain Rally on my 350 Bullet. 89 landmarks, 3 months, 9,500 miles.

[elliot3390]

Wow thanks everyone sorry i forgot to mention its my right leg and i did use the back brake but mostly to keep the bike settled more than anything. Yes i will be getting some good compensation but no money can make up for not having a working ankle. Sorry to hear about your brother in law must have been terrible for you guys I consider myself very lucky, i would love to ride the isle of man TT next year but was a bit worried about catching my foot on a curb or a wall and breaking it again or something and not being able to shift my weight fast enough but im sure it will be ok.

The attached pictures show my lower leg X-ray and before and after pictures of my reconstructive surgery (i hope there not too sickening). They took a muscle from my back to reconstruct my leg and performed micro-surgery to hook it up to a blood supply. It looks so much better now and flush with my leg compared to the picture but there will always be bad discoloration.

I was coming back from working late and thought wearing my steel toe caps would be enough protection but i was seriously wrong, my boot got ripped and I ended up being dragged down the road losing flesh with bits of bone scattered at the roadside. I cant stress enough how important it is to wear good protection on your legs; unfortunately i learnt the hard way.

[c_dug]

Ouch!

At 20 years old too, I feel really bad for you!

As for the injury effecting your riding, I would have thought a big factor would be the peg position, if your ankle is fixed at 90° you may have to bend your knee to a funny angle to meet the peg with your foot properly without your toes jutting out.
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