Orthotics has officially begun!! My career in custom bracing has started out with bending metal and making a HO. You read correctly...we actually made a device called a HO. It stands for hand orthosis, but everyone seems to prefer the shortened version. It makes for amusing lectures with immature responses from the class.
It looks like nothing, right? Such a small device that took more sweat than seems necessary. It is rather ugly, I recognize this - in fact, I was happy to throw it away after I was done. This was a first day of school learning experience. The only impressive part about this HO is that I really made the entire thing myself - bent the metal, sewed the straps, glued in the foam interface, and riveted the pieces all together. Bending metal = no fun. To get a straight piece of metal to wrap completely around someone's hand is time consuming and much harder than it looks. I think the idea is to be able to make one of these in about half an hour, but this was a two afternoon project in the world of first timers. The only reason a person would really need this device would be if they needed to hold their thumb is this position. Most hand orthoses come with a wrist portion attached - this would be the major reason to put a crazy metal contraption onto someone's hand. Which, of course, in a lovely segue - leads me to our second project of orthotic school...the WHO!!
Hopefully your deductive reasoning skills have kicked in and you have figured out that a WHO is a wrist hand orthosis. This is me modeling the one that my partner made for me. We actually used our previously made HOs and then just added the forearm and wrist components to make this lovely brace. I think having a great manicure and the party nail really jazzes up the hunk of metal attached to my hand. Thankfully, off the shelf bracing has come a long way and this is the old school way to make a wrist and hand brace - I cannot imagine that many people would be thrilled about having to wear this in their every day life. Also, I might add that it is slightly dangerous - I would forget which hand I had it on and go up to brush my hair out of my eyes and a piece of hard metal would poke me in the face. This was, per typical school protocol, just another learning experience. We are trying to get practice bending metal and sewing straps. Bending metal is still something I could take or leave, but I am happy to report that I am no longer scared of the pedal on the sewing machine. We have found a nice rhythm and seemed to get along this week. My velcro straps were top notch :)
I am also happy to say that the orthotics portion of school is going swimmingly. The pace seems much slower than that of prosthetics, but it is hard to say if it is actually slower or if I am just adapting to a learning environment that moves so quickly. We seems to have more time to fabricate our devices...again, not sure if this is actually meaning more hours to accomplish something or that having completed the prosthetics program, I am actually fabricating things more quickly. The most interesting part of orthotics and bracing to me is that you have to really learn all of the pathologies that come along with the need for orthotic intervention in order to really make a great device. We have pathology lectures multiple times a week and I have really been enjoying learning the ins and outs of what a stroke can do to cause a person to need an orthosis; what happens when a person suffers from a traumatic brain injury and what type of interventions can be used in their recovery.
I think that prosthetics has my heart, but I am really going to continue giving orthotics a chance. It does not have the same pizazz as making someone a leg and watching them walk for the first time, but to put it in perspective makes me realize that making a back brace for someone who has been suffering greatly from back pain and helping to relieve that is still a chance to help improve someone's quality of life...and that makes me smile.
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