Although I can walk on my broken foot now, and have been for a few months, it’s still somewhat broken. That is, the bones aren’t properly knitting. There’s pain, but not at the break, rather at nearby joints, and that may be from the atrophy from having used crutches for more than three months. Still, the break should be healing faster, and better. It’s not.

As a way to help with the healing, I’m using a system called SAFHS (“Sonic Accelerated Fracture Healing System”; scroll to the bottom of the linked page to see illustrations), pronounced “safes.” It’s a very-low-frequency ultrasound pulse device, which is reported to help bone healing, especially in cases like my own. The FDA approved it 12 years ago. When the World Cup was played in Japan in 2002, David Beckham broke his second metatarsal (I broke my fifth) just a few months before the games started; he used the same technique (as my doc loves to tell me):

“We have an ultrasound product that’s capable of repairing broken bones. David Beckham wouldn’t have played in the last World Cup if it hadn’t have been for our ultrasound bone healing technology when he broke his metatarsal.”

While my doc at first dissuaded me from using it (he thought it was not covered by insurance and would not be overly effective), I went to see a second doctor who urged me to use the device. Sure enough, sources on the web report rather dramatic improvements in healing when using the device–makes me wish I had started using it a lot sooner. And it turns out that insurance will cover it after all; my first doc had it wrong on that account, too.

Still, it’s not cheap. It costs ¥125,000 (about $1100), 70% of which my insurance pays for, so I’m shelling out $330. I gotta figure that most of that pays for the research & development for the device, because the device itself doesn’t look like it should cost nearly that much. It’s a little thing, almost small enough to call it handheld, with a cord leading up to a small rubber puck-like thing (imagine a rubber drain stopper), which is the pulse generator. With a gel applied, that gets snapped into a belt with a round hole that goes around my foot; turn on the machine for 20 minutes a night, and that’s it. It’s a take-home device, on loan to me until whenever the doc says the healing is good enough.

Let’s hope it works.