My New Leg

Now that Wayne had made a check socket for me, it was time to go back to the shop and do the fitting.

The check socket fitting is one of the most important points in getting a new prosthesis and is kind of fun. As I mentioned in my first post, the socket is the most crucial part of a prosthesis because it is the interface between the amputee’s body and the foot. Prosthetic feet are sexy and get a lot of media coverage, but the socket is where the rubber meets the road. I’ve walked on all sorts of feet from around the world and, while I find some preferable to others, pretty much anything will allow you to walk from point A to point B. The same cannot be said for sockets, though. If they don’t fit well or hurt, the simple act of walking is unpleasant and discouraging.

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At the end of my May 8 posting about getting cast for the socket of my new leg, I mentioned Wayne would be using the cast to create a check socket. A check socket is pretty much what it sounds like: a prototype of a socket used to evaluate and adjust the fit prior to making the final socket for a finished prosthesis. Check sockets are made from a transparent thermoplastic (usually polyethylene), meaning a plastic that changes shape when heated and becomes hard when cooled.

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As Wayne suggested, I spent a couple days surfing the web and thinking about what feet I would like to try. One big challenge for me is that my stump is pretty long, and many of the newer energy storing feet are too tall for me to wear. Some feet come in regular and “low profile” (short) heights, but it’s still a limiting factor and rules out some exciting feet. Here’s a copy of the email I sent him (with added photos from the web URLs listed):

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After the casting, we zipped over to the hospital for my appointment with Dr. David Sayah to get a prescription for the prosthesis for which I had just been cast. Like I said earlier, I’m going about this a little backwards…

I’m a new patient at this clinic, so I had to sit in the waiting room and fill out out a ream of paperwork and questionnaires on my current state of health. By the time I finished, I didn’t know whether to be relieved that I don’t have tuberculosis, Crohn’s disease, rectal bleeding, and so on, or terrified that these are possibilities worth asking about.

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Well, the second step of getting a prosthesis is actually called “casting,” but it usually does involve a lot of plaster. Dara (my friend and photographer for this project) and I arrived at the prosthetics shop a few minutes early and waited in the front office.

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I was so happy to have a physician’s appointment, I called up my prosthetics shop right away and spoke with Julie, the head administrative assistant. When I told her about how I’d been waiting for a while to get some time with a physician to get a prescription, she mentioned a weekly free prosthetics clinic at UCSF where I could have gotten a prescription without having to wait weeks for an appointment. I had been waiting to call her to schedule a casting until after I had an appointment, but, boy, do I feel stupid for not having called her and learned about this clinic earlier.

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My physicians’ office called me on my cell phone while I was working at an internet cafe and told me they had a cancellation. Am I available tomorrow afternoon? Hell yeah I’m available, I now have three weeks before my health insurance runs out to get this thing authorized and have the insurance pay for my new leg.

Yay!