Earning My Own Trust

I mentioned a few posts ago that we have been taught to either trust our cast or trust our measurements and that I did not think I was at a point where I knew which one to trust (or if to trust one at all).  Today I learned that I should start trusting myself!!  This week it was trusting my measurements over my cast.  My patient, Norma, has a very "fleshy" limb with a lot of residual skin and tissue - this means my cast came out looking a little deformed...much harder to trust that shape.  My measurements, however, were dead on.  I spent the 9 hours last Thursday using those measurements to modify and honestly, I was a bit worried that Norma was not even going to fit into the socket.  Looking at my cast, it seemed as though the socket I made was going to be too small.  According to my measurements, it was going to be a perfect fit.

Thank goodness I trusted my measurements on this one!!  I went into this morning's fitting highly anticipating not being able to get Norma into the socket and prepared to do hours of modification in order to make a socket that worked...color me shocked when it went on perfectly the first time!!  I had to fix a few areas (lower some of the brims and trim up the wall in the back), but these were pretty minor.  I will take using a torch or a heat gun and a little more grinding any day over having to pour another plaster mold to modify again.

Norma said my socket was really comfortable (and as you may have deducted from the previous post about her, she is a tough cookie to please) and she stood in it for quite a while today.  It felt really great to have such a big success on my first trans femoral socket (it would feel great on any project) and I was high-fiving myself all morning about it.  This could mean that the next socket goes horribly wrong, but hopefully not :)

Because I did not have to re-pour and re-modify and re-pull another socket, I was able to take the afternoon off school!!  Three hours of freedom to run errands...the rewards of successful suction and total contact.

We do not see our patients again until next week - that is when we will be getting them up and walking on these legs - we will be attaching all of the knee and feet components tomorrow.  I am just keeping my fingers crossed that next week's walking goes as well as today's fitting, but for now, I am taking one victory at a time...this was a nice one.

*Part 2 of CAF Weekend still to come...