Between Surgery Ten and Eleven | Reid Robinson this is where AI comes extremely handy you know

Hey, one more thing before you go.

Let me ask you something.

What if the one thing that you've learned to live with is the very thing you need to question?

Today, you'll discover how one man's decision to challenge what everyone else accepted opened the door to a life he never imagined.

And why.

The smallest questions can sometimes change everything in life.

For Reed Robinson, it began in a hospital bed.

313 Surgeries, years of recovery, and a pair of crutches that made even the simplest things difficult.

As you all know, I can relate to that.

But somewhere between surgery 10 and 11, he picked up a pencil and sketched an idea.

He had no idea where that one moment of curiosity would lead.

And perhaps by the end of this conversation, you'll recognize a moment in your own life that's been waiting for you to notice.

And you could pick up the pencil from there.

I'm Michael Hurst.

Welcome to one more thing before you go.

Today I'm sitting down with Reed Robinson.

He's a Canadian inventor who took life when his life took an unexpected turn after a serious car accident in 2015.

What began as a simple sketch in a hospital room eventually became the X leg, a wearable mobility device designed to help people move more freely while recovering from certain injuries.

But what interests me most isn't the invention itself.

It's the man behind it, the experiences that brought him to that hospital room, the questions he began asking, and the unexpected road that found himself driving, traveling, when he decided to follow one of those questions.

Because sometimes we all know the most interesting part of a story isn't what someone accomplished.

It's everything that happened along the way.

Reid, welcome to the table.

It's a wonderful opportunity for us to have a great conversation.

Thank you, Michael.

I appreciate the intro.

You know, spoke right before we come here, and my community knows that we will have some similarities during this conversation.

I know I empathize with you on so many levels in regard to being told that you won't walk again, being told that you don't have the ability to do what you used to do, take your life completely changing itself, redefining your purpose in life because of circumstances that took place.

And I think that you have a.

You have a story, man.

I can't wait to get into it.

Thank you.

And as well, do you.

So, yeah, I'm.

I'm.

Yeah, yeah.

Let's jump in.

Before we talk about the accident, my surgeries in the imagine, I'd like to kind of go back just, like, a little bit further, and I mean, way kind of way back before all this happened.

Like, who was Reed Robinson before all this happened.

When you go back to your childhood, for example, what's the first picture that comes to mind?

You know, would you want to be.

Do you want to be an astronaut, a lawyer, an actor?

Would you want to be.

So I grew up in Tro or just outside of Truro, Nova Scotia.

And as a young child, I didn't really have any.

Any high aspirations that any, Any clearly defined direction.

I would say I left, I left Nova Scotia when I was 19 and head west because although Nova Scotia, beautiful country, a wonderful place to raise kids, retire, but not a whole lot of industry.

So in my, I guess in my early years, yeah, I came out to Calgary with the idea of.

I make the joke of riding bul and, and working in the oil industry and making a million dollars on penny stocks, which I, I partly, I partly did.

So I did some work in the oil field when I did come out to Calgary and I did start a course for.

To become a stockbroker.

And then the computers were becoming very popular at the time and my mother actually taught me DOS 8.3 or something along those lines back at the, the local university.

So making the, the switch into, into computers and it, that's the direction I chose.

And for 25 years that was my profession.

And I, I'm her profession.

Yeah.

So I, I made, Yeah, I made quite a good living doing that up until the crash.

And then of course, during the crash and the 10 years that followed, I've only recently quietly bowed out of the IT industry and dedicated my.

All of my time and efforts to my, my invention.

So.

Yeah, and I think, you know, the, the IT industry itself, I think is changing dramatically.

As you said, there's things that are that, that who, who knew we would be carrying a computer in our hand in the form of an iPhone the way.

Oh, absolutely.

You know what I mean?

And I know it's changing every day.

It's multiplying itself, you know, in doing some research on you.

And then you had met.

You'd already experienced some serious medical challenges earlier in your life from some of the other interviews that I've watched you in or listened to you in, including a major chest procedure when you were like 12 and a fractured skull when you were 23.

Correct.

A lot for someone to experience between 12 and 23.

Can we talk a little bit about that?

How to change your outlook on life?

Well, it taught me what real pain was.

And I can tell you to this day, I've got a top three for pain.

Number one was.

Was when I was 12 years old and what had happened.

The reason why I had my chest rebuilt is I had a condition when I was growing up where my ribs grew together and they pushed it and made a bump.

It's not uncommon, and a lot of kids grow out of it.

In my case, they thought it was cosmetic to begin with, and then realized as I.

As I grew that there's a possibility that this could restrict my lung capacity or organ growth.

So I went into the IWK and went under the knife.

I still remember the good doctor's name, Dr. Jacob Antonio.

This specific procedure, I don't recall the.

And I could look it up quite quickly, but.

But what they did is they.

They basically cut out that section of my.

Of the middle of my chest and rebuilt my chest, wired me back together.

And I had a year of no contact sports and no.

No real physical activity outside of, you know, just basic, you know, walking, maybe a little bit of badminton or something like that.

But they.

They wanted everything to.

To heal properly.

So I was.

Yeah, I was pretty.

Pretty quiet on the athletic front during that.

That year that followed.

So the.

The worst pain being when I woke up from surgery and they wheeled me from the intensive care unit into my room.

And the.

It was the bump going onto the elevator and off the elevator that I remember as being the worst pain of my life.

That was number one.

And then number two, believe it or not, was back spasms.

That.

No, I believe that I just developed from just poor posture.

So as I'm driving and a lot of people do this, I had an armrest that I would just lean in a little bit when I was driving.

And then, because I do that when I drive, when I would get to the office, oftentimes I would do the same thing.

And over time, what happened is it just created a little tiny curve.

My back, which was easy to correct just by.

I removed the.

The armrest and no longer used it, and everything got better.

But one.

One day I was.

Yeah, I was about 30, and I was standing in the bathroom, and all of a sudden I just get this.

This pulse in my back and I hit the floor.

Like, the pain just.

It was absolutely debilitating.

Hit the floor and just.

It's a bit of a sidebar, but if anyone.

Anyone out there, you know, your posture is very important.

Alignment is very important.

If, you know, if.

If you.

If you have an opportunity to address any of those things early and not have to go through that, do it.

So it'll yeah.

And then, and then next was a lot of, a lot of the pain just going through multiple surgeries with the, after the car crash.

But that was over, over a long period of time.

And like I said, I've got my, my top three.

I know, I know one and two are specific times.

Number three, there was multiple times they're kind of, you know, blurred with painkillers that I was on some pretty heavy painkillers during the, during the, the 13 surgeries over and a half years that followed.

But yeah, but if you don't mind me asking, what happened with your accident for example?

I, I told you I was a cop, I was a sergeant and I worked a traffic unit.

So we investigated quite a few accidents.

I don't know the weather difference from Calgary to where we live.

I live up in Woodland Park, Colorado, which was about 8,500ft up.

So we were, you know, Pikes Peak, the big famous Pikes Peak we have that was, we lived on the backside of Pikes Peak.

So our front yard was basically the backside of Pikes Peak.

And then I worked the pass up and down the pass that we had there.

So I saw some pretty crazy accidents within that arena.

Can we talk a bit about, about, about yours?

And that's a lot of operations to go through, through with that.

Yeah.

So yeah, so if you're the, if you were the officer on the scene, I would made your job easy.

It was very simple accident.

And the investigation took all of, you know, two minutes I think because so in Calgary we're, we're on a plateau, so we're about almost a kilometer above.

So 800, I think it's between 800 and 1,000 meters above sea level.

And during the wintertime in January is when the crash happened.

It was snowing, icy roads.

I was driving home and as I tell my children, for multiple reasons, I want, I want to instill a little bit of common sense and a little bit of fear at the same time.

I tell them I was driving too fast for the conditions is how I describe it because I was driving my voice Mazda 3 and there was a slight, an ever so slight curve to the, the road to the left and my front right tire just caught a little bit of the snowbank and just sucked me off the road.

As soon as I was off the road I had no control over the steering and dead in front of me was a frozen tree and I had time to react.

So I was basically, I was standing on the brake when I hit the tree.

But as it was described to Me later, it's like my, my, my foot hit the tree doing 40 or 50 kilometers an hour, 30 or 35.

So I wasn't, I wasn't going incredibly fast, but they said, you know, it's, you hit it at a good velocity and something in that chain had to give.

So the weakest part being the ankle and the lower tip fib just exploded on impact.

So, so yeah, the, and the, and the reason why I say the, the officer.

So the just by happen stance was, it was, I was very fortunate as when the crash happened, the cab was filled with this white powder from the airbag, which I never experienced before.

I thought it was snow at first, didn't realize how badly I was injured and tried to get up out of the car.

And then I realized I had the, the floppy foot from everything being destroyed, my lower right leg.

So I grabbed the door frame and just threw myself out onto the sidewalk.

And then the, a police officer just happened to be driving by an adjacent street and he saw the wreck, doubled back, and he was there in under a minute and a half, two minutes.

And then he's standing over me when I, I make the genius move to call my wife instead of call 91 1, because I was in shock, didn't, wasn't thinking straight.

So, so I call my wife and I'm just like, hey, babe, I'm sorry.

I crashed the car.

And the officer standing over me saying, I need you to hang up the phone.

I need you to hang up the phone.

So I said, I'll talk to you later.

Either the officer wants me to get off the phone, I hang up the phone.

Ambulance was there within a few minutes and they loaded me up.

And just so you know the level of shock I was in, they get me in the ambulance and I, I knew I was injured badly.

Like, I knew I was bleeding and my leg was crushed.

But they get me in the ambulance and they're, they're like, okay, Mr. Robinson, we're going to cut off your, your boots and your pants.

And I'm like, I'm like, yeah.

I said, that's all right.

I, I just got these boots the day before and they're comfortable leather pull on.

They were just super comfortable.

So of course I, I, I said, hey, can you just take off the boot?

And they, they're just completely deadpan, just, Mr. Robinson, you can lose the boot or you can lose your foot.

Which do you want?

And I said, okay, cut off the boots.

And that's, that's when I, that's, that's when the morphine took and I, I passed out and woke up in the hospital a day and a half later.

So, yeah, it's, it is a horrific accident from that perspective, you know, a thousand percent.

It's interesting, the wake up call we get.

Yes.

Like that happens.

Do you think those experiences made you more cautious or more determined in life?

I mean, that would be a good question.

I'd say a little more, yes.

I'm more cautious with driving on icy roads.

I grew up, I grew up in driving on icy roads with standard shift but, you know, without automatics and, and so Nova Scotia, it's notorious for freezing rain, so we would have the, the entire.

Everything's coated in ice, so I learned how to drive on ice.

That wasn't an issue.

The, the issue was I was, I wasn't driving like, I was driving on ice.

They.

They clear the roads quite well here in Calgary.

I just happened to hit a slick patch and got a bit of the snow bank, then lost control.

So, so I'm, I am more cautious.

I would say I, I'm.

I'm more cautious.

A little.

I have a touch of.

I would say I have a touch of PTSD from the experience because I, I'm a little, I'm a little shorter.

I have a little shorter patience when a driver does something hazardous.

Hazardous around me.

And, and I work on that.

So, you know, understandably.

Yeah, yeah.

So I, I have to work on that.

It.

It.

And I think we.

Anybody that's been through any kind of a situation like that, there's got to be some form of ptsd.

And you know, people, when you mention ptsd, we all think of, you know, soldiers, cops, firefighters, paramedics having PTSD because of the, A lot of the traumatic incidents that they go through.

But we normal, regular people.

Is anything that is a traumatic incident that has taken place in your life that has an effect on you negatively in such a way that, that it affects the way you behave, the way you work, the way you operate, the way you think.

And it can happen to any one of us from any kind of an incident like that.

Just a little psa.

Thank you.

Yeah, but who's.

I'm assuming you have a wife and you have kids, right?

I do, yeah.

Yeah.

So they were all there for you, I'm sure, during this whole journey.

I can't thank mine enough for everything that I went through.

I think family and friends are something that we really.

We learn to value even more when we go through something like this.

Yeah.

With my wife, I believe I won the lottery with her because, and I've said this before, that she didn't sign up for it, and one lady made a comment to me and said, no, no, no, she did.

You know, for better or for worse, right?

And I'm like, yeah, I guess so.

But I, you know, to put her, to put her through that, I. I couldn't help but feel a little bit of guilt about it.

But she was there and she looked after me, basically.

Three kids.

So me and, and the two young ones, because I lived for the better part of two years in a hospital bed in our front living room because obviously climbing the stairs to our bedroom was just.

Is an added burden that I just didn't need at that time until.

Until we, you know, until finally we fixed it with surgery.

13.

So, yeah, my kids were.

My kids were fantastic.

When the, when it first happened, they were three and six.

So they were.

They're just wonderful.

No, five and.

Sorry, five and two.

When the accident first happened, when I, When I invented the, the first X leg, they were.

Yeah, they were three and six.

So, yeah, having.

Having those kids around was an absolute godsend because it's really hard to, to be.

To feel sorry for yourself when you've got these two.

These two beautiful children where everything's an.

An adventure, everything's new, everything's a mystery, and they're.

They're curious and asking questions and they want to help.

And they're always, hey, dad, do you want to, you know, it's time to play?

I'm like, of course it is.

Right?

Like, yeah, let's play.

So I didn't.

It was a good thing to have.

To have those, you know, those innocent souls constantly bugging me for my time.

Because like I said, it didn't give me.

Didn't give me much time to feel sorry for myself or, you know, get down about things.

So.

A daily reminder, but it's a daily.

It's a.

It's a valuable daily reminder of those.

The gems we.

That we have in our lives.

I have two.

Two daughters.

They were very young when I went through my stuff as well, and, you know, they were nothing but encouraging.

So I'm very happy that you, your wife and your kids were there with you through this journey and allowed that to inspire you to continue to heal and helps you to come up with a solution.

What'd you learn.

Anything.

What'd you learn about yourself during all this?

Anything change about you?

Your personality?

You.

What'd you learn?

Yeah, I'd say my.

My personality's changed.

Yeah, it's, it's a tough, it's a good question because I, I'm always an optimist, I've always been.

And I would say that it's taught me, if it's taught me anything, it's taught me that, you know, we're often stronger than we, we know.

So until you're tested and you have to go through something like this, I couldn't imagine having to go through 13 surgeries.

And at the same time I was working as an IT consultant, so I was, I was taking, I was on painkillers to help through, through that whole journey, which is a love hate relationship I have because they worked, they killed the pain, but at the same time I knew, I knew they were doing damage to my body.

So it was always something I wanted to get out of my system as soon as I could.

And I would say that, yeah, it's, I'd say I'm a, I'm, I'm a little bit, a little more hardened than I used to be.

But I'm also, I think, I believe I'm more, I'm more humbled.

And yeah, I would have to say that I'm more empathetic now than I used to be, having gone through the experience of losing my mobility and then trying to find out, find my way back to, to walking and then eventually running again.

So when I had the car crash, I shattered, like I said, everything exploded in my, my lower leg.

And that took a long time to, to fix.

Over the course of two and a half years, 13 surgeries.

And due to, there's so much soft tissue damage and some mild bone infections, so we couldn't, they couldn't quite solve it.

Every surgery was supposed to be the last.

At the same time, I also fractured my right wrist so I couldn't use traditional crutches.

I had to use a special forearm crutch.

And I've had three surgeries on, on the, on the wrist and yeah, it's in pretty good shape.

I've got some, some funny nerve stuff going on with carpal tunnel that I need to have looked at at some point.

But past that I, I can't complain.

So, so yeah, I would say it's, it's, it's changed me for the better, Michael.

Now I, I think the best way to put this and someone challenged me that they asked me this question, they said if you could go back and talk to your 20 year old self, what advice would you give?

And so being being born in 74, of course I, I've seen all the back to the futures, right?

So, you know, you think about the timeline, what would I change?

And all I could think is, I don't want to.

If I change this, if I change that, I'm going to mess up the timeline.

And I sat there and thought through it and I really, the reason why I'm sharing this with you is because I like the answer.

I came to and I, I, I believe it's, I believe it's the best answer to the question that is,.

What.

Would I, what would I tell myself?

And I, I wouldn't tell myself anything to change the course of my life to get to where I'm at, because I'm, I am content.

I like where I'm at.

I could have done without some of the pain and things could have been different, but if they were different, doesn't mean that they would have been better, right?

So I, I looked at it through that lens and I said, if I had a chat with my 20 year old self, I would just sit down and say, you know what?

Life, you're going to have ups and downs.

You're gonna have good times and you're gonna have some really bad times, but you're tough enough, you're gonna make it through it.

Just know that and have faith.

Brilliant.

That's brilliant, actually, because, you know, life can change in an instant.

And I've been asked the same question by other podcasters that I've been on the show with.

And you know, the, the back to the future analogy, I never used that.

I, I need to, I'm going to borrow that from you.

It's yours.

Thank you.

Thank you.

But yeah, it's one of these things that when I look back on this, you know, would I change anything?

The same thing, same thing.

You stop and think about what I changed, what's happening to me right now, and I think that, you know, you're correct.

The trajectory of my life could have been completely different than what it is now.

And I would probably be some disgruntled, I was, I was a sergeant taking the lieutenant's test on the way up the line.

And I've had people that worked on my team that went on to become chiefs.

I probably wouldn't have been a grumpy, grumpy old chief of police, mad at the world.

You know, you never, you just never know.

But it, but where I'm at right now is I'm in a comfortable place.

I got to watch my kids grow up.

You know, I get to walk my first daughter down the aisle, see her marriage flourish, my second one soon, you know, and I love what I'm doing now, and I have touched a lot of people's lives when I was a police officer.

But, you know, I've had, like, probably more than about 650 conversations now through.

Through this podcast that I never would have had if my life had taken.

If I'd have stayed on the same trajectory that I was on, you know, and anything could happen.

You know, we had cops back there.

Cops are shot all the time.

You never.

You just never know.

So I don't think I would change anything either.

In spite of the pain, in spite of the constant, you know, having to reflect, I wake up with bad days.

I know, I. I know you wake up with bad days as well, because those kind of injuries stay with us.

So, you know, there's days I wake up and I.

And I have reminders like that, and you kind of go, wow, why me?

For a little bit?

And you have a nice cup of tea, you have a nice cup of coffee, and, you know, you kind of relax and you think back, and pretty soon you're.

You're over that little hump, and then you're back to enjoying life again.

So very cool.

I'm glad that you've.

You.

I'm glad you reached that conclusion the way that you did, because it couldn't be so different.

Thank you.

The question, please.

When you were looking during this time period, I know that you said you had been an IT consultant, what were you looking forward to past that before?

Because, I mean, this.

What you ended up doing was basically redefining your purpose.

Like we mentioned earlier, you found new purpose in your life, and that's to help people the way that you're helping them.

And I think that that in itself, you know, not just from a perspective of being, you know, an owner, an inventor that you see the realization for, but I think the reality of helping someone that, you know, what kind of pain they went through and what it does for them has got to be, you know, an amazing open door to this chapter of your life.

Yes, absolutely.

I mean, it's not really a question, but.

No, you know, I mean, but I can.

I can speak to it.

I. I know what you mean.

And it was.

It's just.

It's one of those things that's organic.

I didn't.

I didn't feel like I.

It was a.

A choice.

Like, once I.

And once I built the first one.

Yeah, I. I didn't.

I didn't really look back.

I. I still.

I Worked as an IT consultant until earlier this year when I just quietly bowed out.

And I'm dedicated to this full time, but I, I had to work with, I worked like it was on weekends, evenings.

That's how I would spend my time.

Of course, my first job, of course is, is being dad.

So I make sure that's taken care of.

Second job is the nine to five to make sure, hey, all the bills are paid.

And then I've got this side project building the X leg.

And I was, I was very fortunate.

I've worked with some really brilliant people to help me because the first one I built, I built it for one person for, for me, for my leg had some adjustability, but it wasn't a product at that point.

It was simply a, it was a prototype.

It's a pretty cool looking prototype.

It's very, it looks like something out of Mad Max because my, well, my welding skills are not, are not great and so it's very steampunkish and.

But it worked and I, I was able to prove that this is something that, that can, that can help other people as well.

And once I, once I had that, that epiphany, I, I didn't, I just knew I had to, I couldn't drop it.

I couldn't leave it.

I still had to work.

I still had to do all those other things in my life.

But even when I was going through, just to give you some insight into the, like my, my recovery, my journey, when I was going through my surgeries, I would often book the surgeries on like right before long weekends or, or like on a Thursday or Friday so that I could work right up until the surgery, have the weekend and then be back to work on Monday, whether I'm doing it remotely or going into the office.

So I had to, I pushed myself pretty hard to, to balance and juggle all of that.

And the funny thing is that I thought when the day came where I could just focus on one thing being, hey, I'm just focused on, on the X leg now and, and making this device available to other people.

I, I thought, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna have, I'm gonna have a little more freedom, a little more free time.

And that's not the case.

I just work harder, that's all.

See, that's hardcore, bro.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Look, I had five doctors that told me I've been, I would be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life.

What were the doctors telling you?

So the doctors, I had some, I had some great surgeons so my orthopedic surgeon, who I, I still, I still speak to to this day, he actually helped me get in front of.

There's something called grand rounds that they do every month or every quarter at our, our major local hospital where they gather all the old orthopedic surgeons and show off new technology.

So he's helped, he's helped get me in front of those, those groups so I could just show them, hey, this is another option that's available for patients, and so it helps drum up some local interest in, in the device.

So, so yeah, the doctors, the, they were always optimistic about the next surgery.

We're going to figure it out.

And, and we would make little changes, little adjustments, and they'd always consult with me about, you know, because it's my body, obviously, right?

So there's, there they say, well, okay, this time we're gonna, we're gonna do our bone graft.

We're gonna take the bone from your hip instead of using cadaver bone because we, we want to give you the best chance.

Didn't work.

Didn't work.

And they, they, at the same time, they had to, they had to present all options.

So after surgery, 7, 11, they proposed.

They said, you know, you do have the, the option.

We know that going through this, you know, seven surgeries, now you're, we're looking at, you know, the seventh surgery.

We have to, we have to make, give you the option, you know, we can amputate if you like.

And they've made a lot of advancements with prosthetics.

So if this is, you know, it's something to consider if, if that's something you want to do.

So I took that in and took a couple days to think about it, went home and kind of, I did a mental exercise where I plotted the course of my day already having dealt with lots of mobility issues and thinking maybe life, maybe it would be easier if I had a prosthetic and I can get rid of the crutches or crutch alternatives because I tried the, you know, I walk the freedom leg, the, and the knee scooters.

And they all have their purpose, they have their place, and they work in certain situations.

I, I, yeah, I not cast any shade on, on any of the existing devices.

They're just not as versatile as what I, what I ended up creating.

But so the doctors, they had to offer that as an option.

And so I did the mental exercise.

I get up in the morning, I go take a shower, I get the kids ready for school.

I, I jump in the vehicle I drive to work, and all of the different things that would change in my life as a below knee amputee.

And then I went back to the doctors and I said, okay, well, I've thought about it and I asked them the question.

I put it, I put it back to them.

I said, do you, do you think you can save my leg?

They're like, yes, we think we can save your leg.

And they were adamant to do it because the reason being is they had fixed the ankle joint on the first try and that was the hardest one and the most troublesome to fix.

So they fixed it perfectly.

So the bald, like, even to this day, my ankle works like, I've got 95% range of motion in my ankle.

And so they were, they were very ecstatic and happy that they were able to fix that.

It's just a tibia they couldn't fix.

So, so as soon as they said, yeah, we can save, I said, then we're not going to amputate.

Let's keep going.

And then after surgery 11, they made the same offer and I asked the same question and they said, yes, we can save it.

And, and then what they had proposed for surgery 12 is they proposed doing a bone transplant.

And what that involves is cutting, taking my fibula from my left leg, my good leg, and transplanting a portion of it along with the surrounding tissue.

With blood supply already established to the bone, they would tie into existing arteries and veins on the injured leg and chop out a section two and a half to three inches of the tibia that's not healing, replace it with the portion of the fibula along with all the surrounding tissue, and voila.

I would, that was, that was what they recommended.

And at that time, I said, okay, I've still got one good leg.

I said, do you want to?

Because what they would do is they'd load me up with hardware and they would send me on my way and they would say, put weight on the, on the leg.

We want to see you bear weight.

Because what that does is it, it initiates bone growth.

So I, I said, well, let's try it one more time.

If it doesn't work, then you guys can cut into my good leg and take my fibula.

So, so yeah, that's, that's how it went.

I, we did surgery number 12.

It failed.

They said, okay, so you want to do the bone transplant?

I said, yeah, let's do it.

They said, yeah, you'll be, you'll be down for about three days, but you'll be able to walk around on crutches after, after that using your, your still good leg.

And then, you know, the, the injured leg that's got all the, all the new, the new bone and, and additional hardware.

So that was not true.

It was three weeks before I could actually get around.

But, but yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't take that back.

It was a rough three weeks.

But, but yeah, I, I got through it.

And the, the interesting thing about the way the body works is so in my right leg now, I have, I still have a plate that runs from my ankle to my knee, a bunch of screws, my fibula that, that healed my tibia and portion of my fibula.

So two, two fibulas and a tibia in the right leg and a bunch of hardware my, my left leg where they took my, my fibula from.

It's very interesting that like the whole procedure is quite amazing because they chopped it just below my knee and just above my ankle.

So they took out that entire piece of bone and then they took the section that they wanted to use.

That surgery was 16 hours and three doctors.

So one orthopedic surgeon, vascular surgeon, and then plastic surgeon.

So that, that whole process, when it was done, of course, the question I, I have, you know, anyone, anyone would ask, what's going to happen to my left leg?

You're taking my fibula away.

So now am I going to be able to walk?

They're like, yes, this is not.

And the amazing thing is it's had no impact on my range of motion.

And what happens with, with the, the leg when you remove the fibula is it only takes like maybe 10 or 15% of the actual weight borne by that leg and only in certain situations, right where you would be leaning a certain way and it would actually load weight through it.

So what happens with that bone is that the tibia, it becomes, it densifies so it becomes more dense and it becomes slightly bigger as well to support the weight.

Because your body reacts to the additional weight that your fibula, it realizes your fibula is not there anymore and it reacts to the load and it, it makes that bone stronger and bigger.

So yeah, nowadays I, I run 5 km every morning.

I haven't done it.

Well, if I don't do it in the morning, I do it in the evening.

And, and yeah, try to, try to make good decisions around diet to help help extend my, my good health as long as I can.

Because that's amazing, actually.

Yeah, that's what a journey in regard to all of that.

I didn't realize that when you think of removing your tibula that there's not going to be anything there.

And yeah, I would, I would.

I could see that.

I could look, I can see.

I can almost feel that apprehension.

Should I stand up or should I not?

Because if I fall, then it's going to damage everything else that we've just worked on and then some.

So.

Wow, that's crazy journey.

That's a crazy journey.

I'm glad that you had very positive doctors and people that were in your corner for this whole journey because, you know, when you get most of my doctors, I'm not naming anybody's name.

So it.

We're okay.

The doctors in Colorado, when you go through.

When I had to go through a retirement hearing because it was an on duty injury.

So, you know, they send you to these four doctors and then the fifth doctor makes a determination based on the other four doctors and they say you either come back on the job or you go home and kind of a thing.

And the consensus of those five doctors was that I was going to be in the wheelchair for this, you know, for that.

And I was in one for about four years and felt sorry for myself and I was angry and I was upset and, you know, resentful, you depressed, you name it.

I went through it until my daughter leaned down in front of me when I asked her what she wanted for her wedding present and she said, I want you to walk me down the aisle.

Because she saw something in me that I, I had lost that, that hope within that.

So I sent out about finding at the doctors that would listen to me.

And I found an orthopedic surgeon that we, Dr. Bergoff, Robert Berghoff here in the Phoenix area that we went in to see him and he says, what, what's your objective?

What do you want to do?

And I said, I want to walk her down the aisle.

And he went, yeah, we could do that.

There was no hesitation.

So that immediately gave me more of a strength upon that, that allowed me with the faith in the doctor, that doctor and then another doctor, Martin Sheldon, that allowed me to continue to build upon that so that I could get out of that wheelchair.

And I haven't looked back since.

So I appreciate, I'm grateful that you had people in your corner because they could have said, no, we can't do anything for you.

This is your plot, your lot in life now.

But it allowed you to come back to where you're at today.

I think that's fantastic.

Michael, that you name, you named the good guys though, Right.

So that's, that's nice.

And I'm going to do the same.

So a shout out to Christopher Ryan Martin, who is my orthopedic surgeon, and he, he did the majority of the surgeries and he's still a big proponent of, of mine for, for the X leg.

And yeah, that's fantastic with it.

Yeah, it's, it's cool when we have people come into our lives like that and, you know, we never would have met them if whatever incident put us in that position.

We never would have met those people and understood and it changes you.

Like you said earlier, it changed you, it changed me, this kind of an incident.

And I think that for the better, because we have to stop the old cliche, stop and smell the roses.

It gives you an opportunity to stop and really smell the roses.

See what's around you, see who's around you, see, appreciate life a little bit more because how much it can change in an instant and, you know, value each and every day that we get up in the morning and can walk in and get a cup of coffee without struggle or, you know, strife and still play with our kids.

And you know, even, you know what, even if it hurts a little bit, I'm, I'm happy.

I'm happy to take a little bit of pain.

You know, like if it's manageable and I don't have to load up on, on a bunch of drugs to get, to get up and get that cup of coffee, then, you know, it's.

If it's manageable, I can still smile and do it.

Right.

You bring up a good.

Yeah, makes me think you, you bring up a great point.

And having, having the doctor that I did made all the difference in the world because I had never thought about this until you just mentioned it, but if he had have said to me when I asked the question, can you save my leg?

If he had replied and said, I don't know, or I give it a 50 50, I.

My thought process would have been different and I could have.

My answer to the amputation question would have been maybe a discussion with, with my wife and family.

It didn't get to that point because he said, no, we can do this.

We can.

We can save your leg.

And he was right.

And, and they, they did.

It took, it took a few more surgeries to get there.

But yeah, between my stubbornness and his expertise, we, we got it done.

We, we call it tenacity.

Yes, that's right.

So I, Yeah, but that's right.

Resilience is what I, I like to.

Say our wives call it stubborn, we call it tenacity.

And yes, yes, yes, that's, that's cool.

What was going through your mind the first time you put your idea onto paper?

What gave you that idea to create that?

I know that, you know, we, we want to touch upon this because I think it's a brilliant opportunity for people to understand that, you know, all it takes to inspire your life or to, to help yourself or to help others is like an idea and a thought.

What, what was the moment that you kind of went, I think I need to do this for myself, and.

And then realized that, hey, this could actually work for somebody else too.

Yeah, it's a, it's an odd story, the way it came to be, because I was just lying in the, the hospital and I was just thinking to myself about all the devices I'd tried after one of the surgeries.

Right.

And I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm there looking at the crutches and all I could think is how, how difficult it is to navigate the world with crutches.

For anyone who doesn't know if you haven't used them, they look easy.

But to use them properly and not injure yourself, you put all of, all of your weight through the palms of your hands.

And so it's like doing the rings or the pommel horse in gymnastics constantly.

So you need to have some.

Pretty.

Good upper body strength just to do that.

And to do it properly, you need to keep your shoulders down.

You can't.

If you have your shoulders up here, or you put weight underneath the shoulders, which some people do wrongly, what happens is you, you damage your shoulder joints and the nerves in your shoulders.

So in the US every year, there's 40,000 injuries duty simply using crutches.

And the vast majority of those are shoulder injuries.

Right.

So you have, you have that.

And here in Canada, it's, it's just with the basic math, it's around 4,000.

That's pretty, that's a pretty substantial number for a device that's supposed to help you recover causing injury.

So I'm sitting in the hospital bed and all I could think is, I just need a crutch for my leg.

I don't need a crutch for my whole body.

I need, I just need to get weight off my leg while I, while I recover.

And so I just sketched it up quickly and said, well, this works similar to a prosthetic.

So for your listeners, if anyone hasn't, hasn't seen it before the X leg is a.

It's an exoskeleton that elevates your foot off the ground.

It's got a, A hinge at the knee and a thigh cuff and a calf cuff and a cage that wraps around the back of your.

Your calf.

The legs are adjustable.

The, the thigh cuff, it.

It comes in 13 different sizes now, but that was the original design is.

I just, I wanted something to elevate my foot and give.

Give some time for the.

Yeah, the, the bony heel.

But more, more importantly as I want a mobility.

So to use crutches to go a half a block or get around the house, it's great.

It's not a problem.

But if you need to follow your friends to go four or five blocks to the new lunch place, by the time you get there, you're sweating, your muscles are all cramped up, you're breathing heavy, you're in a dress shirt with a bunch of sweat.

Going down the road, it's not a good look.

And lunch is over.

Yeah, exactly.

And you're a little.

You're a little slower, trying to keep up with the, with the crowd.

So.

So what I wanted is I wanted a crutch for my leg.

So I drew it up and I'm like, this, this is simple.

It's easy.

Let's go find it, right?

So this.

To my wife, I'm like, I know somebody makes this.

Let's find out who makes it and we'll.

And I'll go get one.

So we scoured the Internet.

We looked everywhere.

We couldn't find anything, anything remotely like it.

And I'm like, okay, so someone must have patented this.

Maybe I can get on a beta test program.

Someone's making this.

I know they are.

And so the, in case anyone doesn't know, the, the patent databases are publicly available.

So the U.S. canadian, Chinese, Australian, you can, you can look them all up.

The publicly available, just.

You can do your own patent search.

So I did my own patent search and couldn't find it anywhere.

There's nothing, Nothing patented like it.

So of course, I'm thinking this doesn't.

Doesn't seem right.

So I contacted a patent agent, spoke, had a quick chat with them, said, hey, you know, can you guys do a patent search for me?

And they said, of course we can, for a small fee.

And so I pointed up, yeah, so I pointed up the money because I'd gone all.

All the, you know, this far down the rabbit hole.

And they came back a week later, they said, yeah, there's no previous Art.

This is, you know, it hasn't been patented.

And then of course, the next question is, you know, do you want to patent it?

So quick chat with the wife, like, yeah, let's band it.

I mean, it makes sense.

I'm pretty sure that this works, right?

Like, I work in, so I'm a computer engineer.

I, I have a pretty good mind for mechanical engineering.

Weight loading like that, it's just something innate where I, I just, I know, I know how to, I know how to load weight, right?

So.

But I can't do the CAD drawings to do the design, but I can build it.

So.

So in any case, I, I start the patent process and then the tech techie in me, I start thinking about it.

I'm like, there's, I think I missed something.

There's a reason why someone else hasn't done this yet.

I just, I'm missing it.

I, I must be missing it.

So I scrambled out and grabbed a, a MIG welder that was reconfigured to weld aluminum, which is not something that you normally do.

You don't weld aluminum with, with a MIG welder.

You normally use a TIG welder.

So.

But I was able to dial it in and use it.

Like I said, my, my welding skills are, are not great.

But I built the first one in under three weeks.

And after building it, I, I just started walking around the house with it.

And there's some nuance to the design, which I'll still fit into the original patent.

So I wasn't a concern.

But I'm, I'm walking around the house and I'm, I'm getting excited.

I'm like, this, this is working.

I'm like, it works.

I have a crutch for my leg and so I, I go and I grab the kids that were, you know, they were three and six at the time.

And so my, my youngest one, Olivia, and my, my older boy, Caesar, and I said, hey, hey, guys, you wanna, you wanna go to the park?

We have a park across the street from our house.

So they look and they're like, oh, daddy's got a new leg.

Let's go.

Right?

And I'm like, well, I'm like, not quite, but let's, let's go.

So grabbed a soccer ball and, and went to the park with them.

Now, I wasn't jogging or running around, but I was walking around kicking the ball with my kids, hands free and pain free.

And at the time I was in between surgeries, so I'd had a broken plate.

I've still, I've still got copies of the X rays from that, that day.

I had a broken plate in my, in my leg, snapped in half along with a bunch of broken screws.

So if I had to put 5 or 10 pounds of pressure I would have caused, you know, a little bit of internal bleeding and lots of pain.

And I, because I built the device, I was, I trusted it and off I was or off I went with my, with my kids.

We, we have some old video from, from that day which is, that was kind of the, the, the turning point where I, I knew, you know, this is what I was going to do.

I was, I was going to bring this to, I was going to bring this to market.

I didn't know how I was going to do it at the time.

I just, I was determined that this is something I need, I need to bring to the world.

So the first, the first version that I built, I cut up a pair of crutches to use for the, the side members which are now proper like 3 quarter length feet and then grabbed a bunch of aluminum from Home Depot.

And the first thigh cuff that holds, holds the weight, uses a conical shape of your thigh to hold the weight.

Like a prosthetic was an Ikea cutting mat, one of the bendable ones I just used.

What, what was at my disposal.

Right.

So I'm like, I, I walked into the kitchen, I'm just, I'm looking around for things and I'm like, I grabbed this and I'm like, hey, can I use this?

She's like, use it for what?

And I'm like I need to cut it up.

I'm going to make it X like thing.

And of course she's like, she's like go ahead, take it.

And yeah, I used that and a bunch of leather belts and that was the first version.

And.

Very cool, very cool actually, you know, and again, spark of an idea, a necessity.

And here we are.

I mean it's phenomenal, phenomenal.

It's been a wild ride, exciting journey.

Like I say, I'm dedicated full time to it now.

So.

I'm partly nervous but very excited to be focused and doing everything I can to get this out to the masses.

My main goal is to bring down the price, get it covered by insurance.

There's a whole, there's a whole stream.

Yeah.

With, with the, I mean it is registered with Health Canada and the fda, but to get it covered by insurance, that's a whole other conversation that we can have in the future.

But hopefully I will have crossed that Bridge by the.

By the time we chat next.

So insurance is a.

Insurance.

Yeah.

Insurance itself is a journey and a conversation, especially here in the United States.

For sure.

Yeah.

Anyway, we still got a little bit more we can run through, though, if you don't mind.

Certainly.

We've talked about the accident.

We've talked about the long recovery.

I understand both of those.

All of those, actually.

In that moment in the hospital when you began to get your idea and what has culminated to.

And I love the fact that you were able to test it yourself without having to bring somebody else in for it, number one.

And I'm sure that had to be inspiring within itself.

And you got to play with your kids like.

And I don't take this lightly.

I don't take this lightly.

You got to play with your kids like you used to, like a normal, regular human being.

And people do not understand that.

May not understand that statement, but when you look at it from a perspective, I may never do that again because of the circumstance that took place.

Being able to do that again is a feeling that is very hard to put into words.

Agreed.

Agreed.

Yeah.

I think you did a good job, though.

You know, when life, we have a choice in life, and sometimes we have bumps in the road and we have obstacles that are placed in front of us, but I've always found that, you know, we have to make a choice.

Do we accept what was given to us or do we strive to move forward and make a change to improve our lives and those around us?

And, you know, I try to encourage people to do the latter, to, you know, change your circumstances and change those circumstances of the people around you.

If you have that opportunity, grasp it.

Because it doesn't always come up.

It doesn't always come up.

And you don't want to miss that opportunity.

You didn't miss that opportunity, which I think is a brilliant thing to do.

I mean, you weren't planning on building a medical device when you were 20 years old.

20, 30 Years old.

You never thought about it.

And then when you did, you were just trying to find a better way to get through life, to be an ordinary day.

Yeah, I. Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

I.

And you're right.

The.

Those opportunities when.

When they're put in front of you, it's.

It's never.

It's never, hey, this is.

It's.

This is an easy decision, and this is an easy step to take.

Oftentimes it's more difficult and harder to get up off the couch, go for.

Go for that 5k, run if, if that's what it is, that's going to make you better, stronger, healthier.

But I mean, that's, that's part of what I learned from the recovery.

But bringing a new medical device to market, it's no easy feat in itself.

And there's lots of stuff that I, I went into this blind.

I, I just knew I had to do it, so I had to learn as I went.

And it was challenging, and there's, there's times where I was frustrated, just like the recovery.

But it's, it's one of those things where you, you're.

Yeah, I think you put it, you put it very well, Michael.

If you, if you're presented with an opportunity where you have two paths, it's sometimes.

Sometimes the easy one isn't the best one, and you're investing sometimes in yourself or you're investing in your.

In the people around you.

But, yeah, it's.

It, to me, it's.

It's already paid off.

I mean, I'm still, I'm still running a.

A small business trying to.

Trying to make this grow and become.

Make it available to everyone without any, Any burden of.

Of price, which I am.

I am looking to bring down the purchase price as soon as.

As soon as I can.

I never envisioned it costing so much to manufacture, to be honest with you.

But.

Yeah, well, I think that expectation comes with anything that comes about.

I think that, you know, with time, I'm sure that that will improve with.

When it needs to improve, it'll be able to improve.

And hopefully, because I, being someone that's gone through, you know, similar journeys, a lot of the things that I was utilizing in my journey in the beginning, it was, is the insurance going to cover this?

And if not, can we afford it?

And, you know, being in a situation, yours as well as mine, when I was sitting in a wheelchair and they're going, yeah, this could help you, but it's going to cost this, but the insurance will cover it.

And you have to stop and think, well, okay, if we want to pay this bill, or when I got my police pension, my police pension was like 40% of what I was actually making without overtime.

So you kind of go, do we cut corners?

And eventually people would just give up.

So I applaud you for striving to make it affordable for people and to get it down to where it needs to go, because I think it comes from inside.

It comes from your heart.

It doesn't come from a monetary perspective.

Sure.

Thank you.

And you're right, and I am Working, I'm working hard at it.

I'm, I expect that I'm going to be able to reduce the price before, before the end of the year.

So it's, yeah, it.

Thank you, Michael.

I, I, yeah, I couldn't have said it better because when I originally had this vision and I saw the first version, I, I wanted to, I wanted to sell for the same, the same as a competition like an Eye Walker or something like that, but I can't, I couldn't, I couldn't find my way to do it.

The first versions that we, we started making, they, they cost just over 1500 dollars Canadian to manufacture and I had to do at least, at least 10 units at a time to get.

Wow.

To get that, that price.

So yeah, it's anyway, the, yeah, the, the business side of it's boring and it's not, we don't need to jump into that right now.

If you want to, if you want to ask me questions on the next, on the next show about it, I can, I can tell you more.

But yeah, we'll delve a little bit more.

I, I get, I always have a, I have a, what they call it, almost question.

If you couldn't have known what that sketch would have led to, who you would meet or how the life might change, your life might change because of it, basically.

If you had not made that decision, where do you think you'd be today if you had not made that decision to put a piece of paper in front of you, put a pencil in your hand and say, I'm not going to accept this.

I, I want to do this.

If you never would have picked up.

That paper, if I never would have picked up that paper, I would likely still be working in it.

I'd probably be a little grumpier and because it's having, having gone through 10 surgeries and then all of a sudden I invented something and then I built it because I, I thought I missed something and I proved was fairly euphoric and it gave me, it gave me motivation to just grind ahead with my recovery with, you know, I think it, it put a spark back in my, in my eye, you know, to, to just it.

I think it, it lit me up to just forge ahead.

And so I think I would have, I think I would have carried on.

Like I said, I, I don't, I don't see anything different around my recovery.

I would hope that I would still have the same focus on, on my health that I do now.

But.

Yeah, that's a great question, Michael.

I've never been posed that before.

So.

Call it the almost question.

Yeah.

So if I was.

Yeah.

If I'd almost made it.

Yeah, I.

It would have.

It would have definitely changed my life.

I probably would.

I probably would have ended up playing a lot more guitars.

So I thought those were.

Are those paintings or are those actual guitars?

No, they're.

They're guitars.

Yeah.

Very cool.

So.

No, I was a rock star in my own mind.

When I was in my 20s.

I had a small band and I had a lot of fun and just a small group that we.

We just played around locally and we were amateurs, like absolute amateurs.

And people, they paid us money to go to their establishments and play music.

And the music would cover our bar tab and supper, basically.

That works.

So the.

Yeah, it was.

It was a.

It was a lot of fun.

So I would think that would be.

That would be the.

With the only significant.

Yeah, I think I would have played a little more music.

That's.

That's.

Yeah, that's it.

I'm happy to be doing what I'm doing and actually trying to give something back, but music gives something back too.

It's just a.

You know, it's.

Yeah, but the.

The difference here is that you can still play music.

Oh, I can still play music.

Yes.

This hand still works.

I can still throw the football.

Exactly.

So that works.

Yeah.

You have everybody.

Absolutely.

Yep.

So, yeah, if you're looking, you want to see more or learn more about the X leg, there, there's a YouTube channel you.

There's a bunch of links off our main website, which is just go to HTTPs://www.xleg.ca or a short version that we use these days, just xleg, xleg ca and you'll see the X leg.

There's videos there that you can see.

There's frequently asked questions.

You can learn more about it there.

And I'll make sure it's in the show notes so that everybody can just click on it and get to you and find you.

Now, this is one more thing before you go, so I have to handle.

One more thing before you go.

What's something about you we haven't talked about today, but maybe words of wisdom that we can give to others that may be going through the same journey that you went through.

What would you recommend?

What would you tell them?

Well, yeah, this might be a bit of a heavy hitter, but I'll drop it anyway.

One of the challenges I had with my recovery was I was on painkillers for the better part of eight years going through that journey, I was rightfully.

Because I had surgeries that over the course of two and a half years and then additional surgeries on my, on my right hand, I had three bones removed.

The append.

Carpentectomy, I think is what it's called.

But it allows me to still be able to throw the football, play guitar and have proper range of motion instead of fusing the bones.

So what they do is they remove the bones and then they wrap the ligaments and tendons around in place of the cartilage and the human body once again, it will turn.

It will slowly turn that material into.

Into cartilage.

Wow.

And it will act like.

It will.

It will basically act like the original cartilage.

It's not, it's not 100% success rate.

So like they said when they gave me the surgery, could be five years, could be 50 years.

It'll last.

But the.

So, yeah, this is a bit of a hard hitter because the, the painkillers were a tough one.

I had a great pain management doctor, Dr. Robert Tangay, who helped me wean off.

It was oxycodone I was on.

And as you everyone knows, with the opioid app epidemic, there's, there was.

We had problems, you know, clear across North America with patients being cut off from.

From the drug that they were addicted to as a result of the doctors and then having to go to the street and then get bad drugs or hooked on something worse.

Thank God that wasn't part of my journey.

I was able to, like I said, work with a great pain management specialist and just slowly taper off.

And that's a, that's a completely different discussion.

But yeah, you know what if, if you can dream it, you can do it.

So if it's, if it's getting off a addictive painkiller like that, or building something new and bringing something to the world or, or getting better and coming through your recovery, I would like to say you're.

You're stronger than you know.

That would be my, my one message is you're stronger than you know, and until you're tested, you don't know it.

And the people around you are very much key to, to the successes you have.

So be good to the.

Be good to the people closest to you and the ones that.

The ones that show you love.

Yeah, brilliant, Brilliant words of wisdom.

Brilliant words of wisdom.

So I, I agree with those wholeheartedly.

This.

I wish, again, I wish we could talk for another hour.

We'll have to come back.

But in the meantime, I I'll make sure everything's in the show notes so they just can click and I'll follow through.

And I thank you for sharing your journey with us.

I I appreciate your words, your wisdom and and your journey in itself.

Thank you again, Michael.

I appreciate your time.

Absolutely.

Sometimes the most unexpected chapters of our lives begin with something we almost overlooked.

With something we almost didn't do.

A question, a conversation, an idea that nearly we dismissed.

And perhaps that's something worth thinking about.

After today's conversation, what might be waiting for you to notice?

That's a wrap for today's episode.

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And until next time, have a great day, have a great week, and thank you for being part of our community.

I'm Michael Hurst.

This is One more thing before you go.

Thanks for listening to this episode of One more thing before you Go.

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