I Want to Love You, PIT

I am actually starting to believe the title of Prosthetist In Training.  Definitely felt like one today!  I spent so much time looking and modifying my mold today that I thought I saw flecks of plaster falling from the sky when I walked out of school at 5:00pm.  Turns out, that was just rain :)

After a morning full of lectures, we spent the afternoon working on our molds from yesterday.  Still adding plaster in order to make the future socket more comfortable, taking away excess plaster for a better and more snug fit and then sanding the entire thing down to end up with a smooth mold in which to pull plastic around.  This is me and my very smooth, professor approve mold!  Professor approved being the key term here - the problem with having multiple professors is that you ask one to look at it and he tells you it is just about right except for to add or take away one or two things.  You do those things and turn around to get checked and you catch a different professor, who in turn tells you it is almost perfect and good to go except for just one or two small things.  This happened to me a minimum of four times today.  Despite that it makes the process a little bit longer, I really do not mind because prosthetics is a field where every practitioner comes up with their own techniques that work best for them to get the job done as best as possible...and every single person has a different technique.  It is nice to get feedback from different instructors because it gives me a chance to see how they each interpret what we are supposed to be doing and their take on what works or does not work and how they would fix it.  Sometimes I have to hear something said about the exact same thing, four different times, before it finally clicks with me on what I need to do to get it right.  At the stage where I am, which is one of being unsure and really just trying to learn, I feel as though I am really benefitting from having multiple sources of feedback and input and teaching.

After getting the final okay and confirmation that my mold was looking good to go and ready to be used as the template for my test socket, I was able to go get my plastic ready.  Here is my Vanna White impression showing you what the "before" sheet of plastic looks like.  It is a 16x16 square inch of plastic that is placed into an oven that is set to about 350 degrees and becomes very pliable.  The type of vacuum forming we were doing today involved creating a "bubble" form in the melting plastic.  You place the sheet of plastic in a square frame and put it high enough in the oven that the plastic can drop down when it starts melting, forming a giant dip in the plastic (the bubble).  Once the bubble drops down to about half the size of your mold (in my case, this was about 6 inches) then you have to yank this huge square contraption out of the oven, flip it over so the bubble goes on top of your mold (covering it like putting a hat on something) and start working your way down the mold.


Just another one of those aspects of the prosthetic industry that has a short time frame to accomplish a number of things.  You have to be quick enough getting the plastic out and onto your mold before it decides to cool down enough to get hard.  Not only do you have to get it onto your mold, but it has to be centered and then worked down the mold slowly as to not create wrinkles.  Once you have tucked all the plastic around the bottom of the mold and feel as though you have created a seal and you have hand pushed all of the wrinkles out, you then step on the pedal and initiate the vacuum to start doing its job.  It sucks all of the air out and within a few seconds you have a sealed up, air tight plastic covering around your mold - your future test socket!

That big smile is relief at having successfully done a few things - most importantly, getting a smooth and thick piece of plastic onto my mold, but also - not burning myself during the flipping of the giant metal contraption holding my melting plastic, not going nuts on the vacuum activating pedal (in practice I had a bit of a lead foot), and knowing it was 5:00 and this was my last activity to complete before getting to go home and wash all of that plaster off my body.  As you can see by the pictures, this is not a clean and neat job... and regardless of the fact that I much prefer getting my scrubs and a t-shirt dirty as opposed to yesterday's required patient professional attire, I am always ready to get home and de-plaster.  It is also very hard to do things with those giant gloves on - they definitely protected my arms from getting burned, but made me feel very clumsy when trying to do anything that required any amount of dexterity.  Despite having said that I know I can make mistakes doing all of these things and I know that they can be corrected, I still stand in front of the oven watching my plastic drop feeling so nervous about getting all of the actions right on the first time.  I am looking forward to some of these things become routine and habit for me just so I do not feel so stressed before doing a task that takes less than a minute to complete!  I spend far much more time thinking about it while waiting to do it then I do to actually get it done!

Today was a good day.  I do not hate my mold, I do not hate school and I am fully worn out enough to probably sleep without the aid of any medication this evening :)  I feel accomplished and like I have learned a lot and am excited to keep making things and keep getting better.  Next on my to-do list, banging on that metal pipe with a hammer to break up all of the plaster inside that plastic so I can set my mold free and start the ever-so-infamous grinding process!  One crystal clear, silky smooth plastic check socket coming up!!