Typical of life in the world of prosthetics...just when I think that upper extremity is not my cup of tea and does not have quite the "wow factor" that making legs does...I get to put on my myoelectric arm!! This is like creating a robot (and I tried that when I was in 3rd grade and it was completely unsuccessful). My myo arm, on the other hand, worked beautifully. It was like watching living art. Okay, I know I am being a little dramatic here, but it was really amazing - and gave me the same rush as seeing someone walk in a leg that I have made.
I had a model patient (not to be confused with a patient model - which he was also). He has used myoelectric arms in the past (this obviously helped because he was well schooled in isolating his muscle groups and using the right ones to open and close the hand), but he does not wear one now - he prefers his hook. I have to brag on myself for a moment because he did say that this was the best total fitting, total contact socket he had ever had. Hooray, self-congratulatory pats on the back...all of that :) I am allowed to brag about the best fitting comment because after wearing the arm for about half an hour and moving around, it began to fit a little too well. Meaning, we could not get the thing off. This is not a joke. We were pouring powder down into the socket, using lotion - it would not come off. I began sweating (bad day to wear a cashmere sweater) and was completely panicked that this poor man was going to have to have my socket cut off his arm. I was worried that it was hurting him and I have to be honest, the student in me was a little worried about the future of my grade if we did not solve this problem. My professor eventually spotted my panicked stricken face and saw three of us tugging on the arm and came up with a magic solution. Air!! Myoelectric sockets have holes drilled into the bottom in order to pull the patient into them (because they are supposed to fit so snugly), so he placed a tube into the hole and blew air in it so it popped off. Phew. I was so relieved. So, the obvious good new is that the socket did come off my patient, the bad news is that when it got stuck it was just in the time period in which we were fitting the sockets - I still had to present my arm to the class for critique! I was not really ecstatic about the idea of putting the arm back on my patient, but he was a good sport and figured if we had to resort to the air to get it off again, it was not the end of the world. The school must pay these patient models a decent amount of money ;)
This is me shaking my patient's hand...my face does not look quite so polite because this was before we had given him a lot of practice and this was more of a hand crushing than a hand shaking. After wearing the arm for 10 minutes, he was picking up his coffee in a plastic cup and easily drinking it and putting it back down. He was able to control the speed at which he opened and closed the hand and the amount of force he used when grasping an object. Like I said, pretty amazing. It was just a really exciting day - moreso than I had imagined. I could not believe that by making this socket and implanting two little sensors and screwing on a hand - fairly simple tasks - the end result would be so awe inspiring. Granted, I did not create the actual hand and the fancy technology to go with it, I just helped implement it, but that was enough to end my semester on a really high note.
Yes, you read correctly...I said end the semester. This was officially the last project of the semester and it was actually my highest scoring project yet! I guess that is the whole goal, right? Continue to improve - makes sense that I should be getting the best grades when I have the most "experience."
So, we rushed through upper extremity...got a crash course and now we will be rigorously tested to see what knowledge we have retained. Next on the agenda is two full days of finals - I believe 8 tests in all. We will be tested on everything from the entire course - all the way back to transtibial (which is a little scary because I am not sure I remember a thing)! After the two days of testing...provided they go well...I graduate. Then they send me out into the real world. Okay, thankfully for me, I am coming back to do the orthotics program in the Spring so I get to avoid the real world for at least another few months :) Next time I post, it should be about graduation - so if I do not resurface, it is because the finals were too overwhelming and I decided to move to the Caribbean and be a bar tender. Maybe if I get tired of studying I will watch Tom Cruise in Cocktail and work on my bottle spinning moves...
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