My foot no longer squeaks :)

Sean — Fri, 22 May 2009 00:04:50 +0000

I’ve been having problems with my artificial foot for a few months now – whenever I’ve been walking around, it’s been making loud squeaking noises – sounds like squeaky shoes cross with a squeaky floorboard. I thought it might have been to do with the foot enclosure, but when that got changed over, the problem persisted. I had to drop by my specialist’s rooms on Monday to get a new silicone liner for my stump, and while I was there he had a look at it – we thought it might have been the spectra sock (the sock that goes over the artificial foot mechanism, which in turn goes into the foot enclosure – protects the actual foot mechanism from damage), so we plonked another one over the old one after the existing one didn’t show any wear-through. Problem persisted, and so we took off both, and put only the new sock on – worked a treat!

Turns out the problem was that that fine amount of carbon fibre that had gradually rubbed off the base of the foot and into the spectra sock had caused a ‘sheen’ to form on the sock, and it was the rubbing of this synthetic sheen against the base of the foot that was causing the problem. So yes, no squeaky foot any more, which makes me happy

For those interested, the following are what a spectra sock and what my foot looks like/similar to:

Click for more info, or check out the ‘Leg stuff’ gallery, it’s all in there. Both products are from Ossur, and their prosthesis section on their website is here if you want to find out more info on either of those pictured above. I’m not sure if my gear is actually Ossur stuff, but it looks similar At least, as far as those pictures go anyways

Gisoku Budo - musings of an amputee martial artist » Ossur

My foot no longer squeaks :)