This is what the training room looks like on the morning of a patient appointment. My station was all set up with my finished leg waiting and ready to go! Paul came in and he did not seem like he was much in the mood for being there, but he was a good sport and let me and my partner try our legs on him multiple times in the four hour allotted time. The first fitting is just putting the leg on, seeing what needs to be changed, taking the leg off, changing what you can, and putting it back on again to see if it is fitting any better. At first it seemed as if my leg was not going to even fit on Paul - he was having a hard time getting down into it, but after a little tweaking and some lubricant, he was able to get all the way into the socket comfortably. Phew. I was able to get good suction (meaning the leg was not going to fall off of him when he started walking) and he said that the socket felt really good. The only major issue I had was that there was a big gap one the side and back on the socket. It is just where a lot of fleshy tissue can go so it may have had tissue in it when I casted him and depending on the way he was standing during the fitting, it might have moved around...regardless, it was too big in that area and needed to be fixed. The quick fix is to put silicone in the socket to see how much filler you need and to let it mold to the patient's body in order to be able to create a better fitting socket later.
This is what my giant clump of silicone looked like in my check socket. This seemed to do the trick and I was able to get Paul walking back and forth (bending the knee and everything) for the last part of the appointment. We are actually going to create a second socket for these patients - we have just been making test sockets and throwing them away after one time, but because this is our last big project, we are going to really make the whole leg and try and make it look somewhat professional. The way to go about making the second socket is to fill this plastic check socket with plaster and create a whole new mold. The beauty of making all of your modifications and putting the silicone in this socket is that when you pour plastic and pull out a new mold, ideally, it should be exactly the mold you are trying to achieve and not need any more modifications. We will take the second mold and use that to create a flexible inner liner (for comfort) and then a more stable and finished socket. This is the part where we get to be creative and use fun fabrics and make cool legs. I cannot wait!!
I will post another update tomorrow and by the weekend, I should be caught up. In real life (not in this catch up world on the blog), we are fitting our patients tomorrow with our finished legs and will have a critique on Monday. By Monday, I will be up to speed on here so we can all experience the critique in real time together :)
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