On July 3, 2019, the life of Dave Cummings ’88 changed forever. While skateboarding in Winter Park, Colorado, he missed a landing and destroyed his left leg.

Cummings knew immediately that the injury was serious. A lifelong skateboarder, he had become accustomed falling the right way. In this instance, though, he came out of a handrail slide twisting and landed without bending his leg to brace the fall.

“It was like a bomb went off in my knee,” said Cummings.

The impact of the harsh landing shattered his tibia and dislocated his knee. In the shock of the moment, Cummings imagined the worst possible outcome.

“I knew how bad my break was. I actually said to Wendie (his wife) when I was laying on the ground, ‘I hope I don't lose my leg,’” said Cummings.

Cummings was in and out of surgery on the fourth of July. His injuries were stabilized, but the tendon and ligament damage done by the bone movement would be incredibly difficult to fix. He left Colorado with a long road of surgery and recovery ahead.

Prior to his injury, Cummings had led an incredibly active lifestyle. He was a skilled cyclist with multiple state titles. While attending SLUH, he found his passion for skateboarding, continued skating into his adult life, and eventually got to skate with notable pros. 

“I grew up in the era of Tony Hawk and those guys,” said Cummings. “I actually got to skate with Tony Hawk a couple of times, which was awesome.”

When he and his wife, Wendie, went on vacation, they would usually engage in some sort of extreme, outdoor physical challenge.

“Our wedding was in Australia and we hiked straight uphill for an hour to have the ceremony,” said Wendie Cummings. “Everything we do for fun together involves going to the mountains. It’s not extreme sports, we just go to the mountains and ride really hard on our bikes or run really far.”

Cummings is also an occupational therapist, so even his day job is physically demanding.

“Literally everything I did before my injury was physical,” said Cummings. “I work in acute care at Mercy Hospital. I worked there for five years and before that I worked at Mercy skilled nursing center for 12 years. And so basically my job was like manual labor as a therapist and acute care.”

A leg injury of such caliber erupted Cummings’ fitness-centered life. All he wanted was to be able to do some of the things he did before his injury again. The doctors tried their hardest to fix his knee and lower leg.

“I had nine surgeries and they basically fixed almost everything that was wrong with my knee,” Cummings said. “I had all four ligaments repaired. They rebuilt my tibial plateau twice. They actually added bone to my femur. They did a whole extensor mechanism transplant of meniscus and cartilage.”

By late 2020, after nine surgeries, Cummings’ left leg was still one and three eighths of an inch shorter than his right leg. In addition, the skin on his leg had become scarred and difficult to operate on. A tenth surgery would have tried to correct his tibia and add length to his leg, and require Cummings to face 18 more months on crutches—and it was possible the surgery wouldn’t even work.

“It was like, where's the finish line? If you're an athlete and you run a long race you know where the finish line is. There are always people along the route cheering for you. Even if you've only done one mile of a marathon, you know where the end is. We didn't have any guarantees each time even if it would work,” said Wendie Cummings.

Cummings was beginning to realize that his original fear of losing his leg could be his only way out. After consulting with doctors, he felt that an amputation would be his best bet to regain his physical abilities. However, an above knee amputation held significant risks.

“It was an above knee amputation, which is much more significant than a below knee, because you still have your knee so you have all the power of your leg and your knee. I was going to lose that,” said Cummings. “So (the doctors) did not want to do an amputation. And I knew the significance of it. But that's when we started thinking about it and then we made the decision.”

After making the decision to go through with amputating his leg, Cummings had the date set for May 18, 2021. One month before the surgery, though, he found out about a new amputation technique being studied at MIT that had the potential for more post-amputation leg function. 

Cummings reached out to the head researchers of the project at MIT, but got no response. He kept waiting, and eventually received a call from MIT surgeon Matthew Carty about a consultation. Cummings’ determination to work toward resuming his active lifestyle impressed the doctors at MIT, and he was accepted into the study.

“Doctor Cardy got back to me a week and a half before my surgery in Colombia,” said Cummings. “He apologized profusely for taking so long and he said, ‘Would you be interested in doing a Zoom consultation? I can explain the surgery. We can see if you're a candidate and go from there.’ I said yes.”

In the surgery that Carty performed on Cummings, the muscles and nerve endings of the lower leg are preserved. Then, theoretically, electrodes can be hooked up to the nerves and send movement signals to a computer model lower leg. With this information, researchers could create a prosthetic leg that responds to nerve signals.

“They're still working out the technology. It may not come of age for 10 to 15 years, but with his surgical technique, you'll potentially be able to put a leg on that you'll be able to control like you control your own leg, which would be amazing,” said Cummings.

In the meantime, Cummings is using a prosthetic from Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital. He has been able to resume some movement, going on longer walks and hikes, but is still unable to move his leg without looking at it. If he is walking on uneven ground, it is easier to trip and fall because he cannot feel the ground beneath him.

“You control everything with your hip, so you have no feeling,” said Cummings. “The microprocessor knee that I have right now, it's a loaner, but the technology is really good. So if I’m walking on a flat surface with no cracks or anything, I can walk almost well enough that you can't tell that I have a prosthetic leg on, which is unbelievable to me. But if you’re walking on the sidewalk or walking in grass, if your foot catches on something and you're not staring at your foot to see that it catches, you don't feel it.”

Cummings remains hopeful about the future. While the possibilities of the bionic prosthetics being developed at MIT are not completely known, Cummings is confident that he is on the path toward improvement. 

“What can we do next to be our next adventure? We have to change our whole mindset,” said Wendie Cummings. “It's hard to explain, like I have high hopes. I cannot wait until our next vacation. If all the timing works out, hopefully next summer we can go back to Winter Park.”