Edward Theuns crashed while navigating a high speed decent during the stage 13 time trial at the Tour de France, sustaining a compressed fracture of the T12 vertebra.

Theuns was flown to Ghent where he underwent successful surgery to stabilize the fracture on July 17th with the diagnosis a minimum six weeks in a corset to minimize movement and assure proper healing. His team's website caught up with Theuns by phone to find out how everything is going.

"I had surgery two weeks ago, on Sunday, and after two days in intensive care I was transferred to a normal room until the Friday when I could go home," explained Theuns. "Now I must wear a corset to keep the body stable, so I don't rotate or bend. I can get out of bed and walk a little, but it's quite limiting in what I can do. The first day I was still quite tired and did long naps, but now I am feeling stronger. That is already a good sign.

"The fracture has to heal, and that takes about six weeks, and until then I have to be careful in what I do – I can't do any wrong movements. I can only do things with my back straight. I have been going to a physiotherapist who is performing exercises with me to get my legs moving, as all the laying in the bed is not good for my body." 

In three weeks Theuns will be re-evaluated to ensure everything is on track and until then he is severely restricted in his movements, spending the majority of his time immobilized.

"It's been more frustrating as I feel better that I am not able to do things," continued Theuns. "Yesterday I did 20 minutes pedaling a home trainer at the physio with the corset on. The main thing is the fracture has to heal, that takes time, and there is not much you can do about it.

"Right now I am going to the physio every two days, but I hope in 1-2 weeks I can go every day to help keep the atrophy of the muscles as less as possible because if you are in bed the whole day, things can go fast in a bad direction!

"The pain is okay. There is more a strange feeling in my back when I do movements from left to right. The most pain I have had was from laying the whole day in the same position on my back and could not move and had continuous pressure on the same points; that started to hurt a lot. It's not fun, but if I look back at the crash, I realize it really could have been worse."