It is official...I have made my first entire leg. From start to finish - custom socket right down to the size 12 fake foot. It is awesome!!! I think I feel like the man who first discovered he could make fire...it is a feeling that catapults you to thinking you can accomplish pretty much anything.
The day flew by and, I hate to report, but took a 180 in terms of emotions after completing this leg. I love the leg, but the 4 hour lecture after lunch about putting the leg on my patient tomorrow and having them walk around in it and having to change all of these little screws to get their alignment and gait just right, left my head spinning. I hope my lab coat gives me its usual courage and confidence tomorrow because I left this afternoon definitely worried that I have no idea what to do when it comes to actually getting my patient walking. Then I just had to remind myself that until three weeks ago, I had no clue what to do when it came to making a leg either. My professor always says that, in regards to our learning at school, we are "failing forward." I think a much more accepting to way to say we are learning from our mistakes :)
Today we got to put all of the components together to make this personalized and dearly loved socket into an actual prosthetic leg. The first step of this is to make the bottom all messy and ruined and that was upsetting. I mean, the stuff that you put on the socket to bind it to the pylon and the components is actually called 'gunk.' That just doesn't seem right! So after hours of smoothing this thing and being so careful to have it turn out perfectly, I was forced to rough up the end and tape it up and apply a thick layer of grey gunk. Function over beauty in the world of prosthetics apparently. After the gunk, we applied a fiberglass wrapping to add strength and support from the connection of the socket to the components on the bottom. At least this just looked like casting applied to the bottom of my beautiful socket as opposed to all of that gunk...but I still prefer the "before" look. The main reason I still love the "after" look is because it gave me the ability to attach the foot and have, what I hope to be, a functioning leg. I am learning how to use even more tools and after attaching everything, I am learning to add flexion and extension and rotation and height to the leg. These things will all be adjusted in the fitting tomorrow with Mr. R. I need to spend some quality time with my leg, in fact, I am staring at it across the room on the floor of my apartment. My goal is to be super comfortable with making these adjustments before having poor Mr. R be the guinea pig!
I really hope he doesn't mind the fact that my size 12 foot selection was limited to a color that is far better suited for me than him ;)
No comments:
Post a Comment