No Tricks and A Nice Treat

As an adult, Halloween is pretty much an non-existent holiday.  At least when you are in Prosthetic school.  There were no costumes, no candy and thankfully, not a lot of tricks today.  I did wear black pants and an orange (more like copper) sweater and fun Halloween socks to get into the spirit.

My treat of that day was that I was able to get Norma up in my leg and walking fairly well.  I say fairly well because she is 75 years old and I think that has to be taken into account when judging her on her walking skills in general.  She does not walk with perfect gait in her current prosthesis and she uses a roller walker to get around...so, getting her walking in the parallel bars perfectly is an unattainable goal. I was very pleased to get her up in the socket and feeling comfortable and walking back and forth with no issues.  She is not one for a lot of fuss and readjusting so I was lucky enough to get it pretty close on the first couple of tries.  I had to make some minor adjustments in height and trim lines, but as far as the socket (the most important part of these trans femoral legs), she said it felt really good.  She was not crazy about the knee or foot that I had attached to the leg, but to be honest, we were not really given a lot of options and I am not that crazy about the knee or foot that I attached either.

Tomorrow is a full day of critique - I am actually looking forward to it because I feel as though I know very little about trans femoral gait and I really need the exposure to seeing 18 different legs walking back and forth to help me learn.  I am up first in the presentations which also makes the day easier - I can get mine over with and then be able to focus the rest of the day on analyzing gait.

The last two weeks have been moving at a slower pace at school (because we started a new topic), but the schedule next week looks like we are back to running at full speed.  Casting and leg making and critiquing all in a matter of days again.  It is hard to say which pace I prefer - getting to leave earlier than 5:00 every day is pretty nice and the stress level is way down, but the days tend to fly by much quicker when we are under the pressure of a much smaller time window.  I am sure by this time next week, I will have decided for sure that I prefer to slower pace :)