DUBUQUE, Iowa (AP) - With several turns of the Allen wrench, Adam Weber pops out the small black tube and grabs an angled pylon and clamp.
A few more turns of the wrench and Weber is good to go. He laces up his snow boot, stands up, reattaches his left leg and grabs his snowboard.
“Piece of cake,” said the Dubuque native and Waterloo resident.
The 34-year-old amputee recently hit the slope at Sundown Mountain Resort, west of Dubuque, for the first time since losing his leg below the knee 19 months ago in a motorcycle accident.
“It’s one of the only winter activities I ever partake in, and I have been snowboarding since I was 11 or 12 years old,” Weber said. “That being taken away from me, it was huge. I was distraught.”
Weber worked with Andy Steele, a partner and certified prosthetist at Clark & Associates Prosthetics and Orthotics, which has locations in Dubuque and Waterloo.
“We try to get them back to as fully functional a life as possible,” Steele said. “One of the things he brought up right away was snowboarding. It was the only thing he mentioned that he enjoys doing that he really wanted to get back to.”
After about a year of learning to use the prosthesis and physical therapy, Weber sat down with Steele to discuss the possibility of snowboarding again, the (Dubuque) Telegraph Herald (https://bit.ly/2l4JZr5 ) reported.
Weber thought it might take years. Instead, it took less than a couple of hours.
“It was a matter of him showing us what he needed to be able to do, and we had the parts and pieces to get him where he needed to be,” Steele said. “We had him set up and ready to go in an hour to an hour and a half.”
Weber’s prosthesis consists of three pieces - a socket that interfaces against the limb, a foot and pylon that connects the two.
“In order to snowboard, his knees have to be more bent,” Steele said. “We were able to find a little piece he can put in that flexes his leg more. He doesn’t need a separate prosthesis to go snowboard. We just had to change the pylon (out) and install this one little piece that improves his position, and away he goes.”
Friday was Weber’s second time out using the newly adapted prosthetic. He made a trial run the week before.
“It was awesome,” Weber said as he came off the chairlift after his first run. “It actually felt amazingly natural. I’m not up to full par where I used to be, but it’s the fact that I can do it, which is exhilarating.”
Lying on the side of the road Weber looked down at his left leg. He knew immediately he would lose it. His shoe was gone and his foot badly mangled.
“Every single bone in my foot was broken and the tissue on the bottom of the foot - all of the muscle - was scraped up and hanging from the heel up to the toes,” he said.
Doctors at UnityPoint Health-Allen Hospital in Waterloo would later tell him the technical term for his injury was “de-gloving of the foot.”
Weber was riding his motorcycle June 19, 2015, when he was struck in the middle of an intersection by a woman attempting to turn left. Weber, who was not wearing a helmet, was driving south of Fletcher Avenue in Waterloo, when he was T-boned by a 2002 red Pontiac Grand Am.
The driver, Kaylen A. Brinyark, 30, of Waterloo, was traveling north on Fletcher Avenue waiting to turn onto University Avenue. Brinyark would tell an officer at the scene that she did not see the motorcycle until it was too late, according to a report from the Waterloo Police Department.
“I saw her car yield to turn left, and I had a green light to go through the intersection,” Weber said. “The next thing I see is her car lurched out at me in the intersection. It happened really fast.”
All things considered, Weber feels fortunate to have been able to hobble away from the crash without more severe - possibly fatal - injuries, given he was “riding like an idiot” without a helmet.
Weber wasn’t at Allen Hospital for long before doctors sent him to Iowa City, knowing the extent of his injury would require extensive surgery.
In Iowa City, a surgeon said the chances of being able to save his foot were slim.
“They said it would be a year before I could think about putting weight on my foot,” Weber said. “They said it would take multiple skin and muscle grafts to repair what had been done. I decided my best bet, with the way prosthetics are today, I saw with going with amputation.”
While confident in his decision and pleased with his prosthetic, Weber constantly wondered whether he would be able to regain enough mobility to hop back on a board and carve down a mountainside once again.
“Being able to do it after the accident . is one of the attributes of being able to overcome this,” Weber said. “It gets me back to a normal routine and lets me know I’m not completely held back by this.”
Chad Remmert, business development officer at Clark & Associates, was also on hand Friday to watch Weber hit the slopes.
“His story is truly amazing and the fact that he is overcoming the challenges of limb loss at an early age is something everyone can benefit from,” Remmert said.
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Information from: Telegraph Herald, https://www.thonline.com
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