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 🙂

Bloginated Friday, 22nd May 2009 / Prosthesis or amputee stuff
Tag-isms: carbon fibre | Ossur | prosthesis | prosthetic foot | spectra sock

I think the title pretty much says it all 🙂 Last Saturday my little brother, Tank, got hitched (yay!!! :D), and as a member of the wedding party (the best man actually :)), we were kept busy running around, having photos taken, that kind of thing. Now, one of the things with good weddings (and weddings with a good DJ especially!) is that I’m bound to do something stupid, like dancing to Jacko songs from the 80s. It gets worse if I’m in familiar company, like my brothers, other family friends, McAdam, people like that – in fact, particularly with McAdam, we have an unspoken pact that that incidence of 80s Jacko is a requirement to jump onto the dance floor and be idiots. With Wifey, if its a classic 80s tune (e.g. Wham!, Foreigner, Journey, etc), then dancing will also be required. Saturday night featured a lot of this, so understandably there are repurcussions as a result 🙂

By the time we got home and I had a shower, I took a look at my stump and I have to say, even by my standards I did a pretty good job mangling my stump. There was torn skin, breakdown around the main scar tissue across the front, and stress along other tracts of skin where the pressure from suction caused the skin to shrivel and stretch. I ended up staying off my leg for Sunday and Monday, and used my walking stick at work on Tuesday and Wednesday to help it heal as much as possible. To keep it from getting infected, I also slathered on some antiseptic cream on my stump each night before going to bed. Ended up having yesterday off work (I’m still fighting a cold, but was feeling pretty crappy yesterday so took it off to recover), so I went without my leg again, and my stump’s almost back to normal (yay!).

As a result I haven’t been able to go to karate this week, which is a bit annoying as I don’t want to fall behind, and I intend to grade in July so I have to get the quality of my form up to scratch in order to pass. I’m planning to squeeze in some extra classes over the next month and a bit to get there. Will also try and fit in extra training between classes when doing my usual weight training/etc, also.

But in the grand scheme of things, I’m actually kind of happy I mangled my stump on Saturday night – I had such an awesome time that I wouldn’t have it any differently, as I’d rather have a blast and celebrate something as important as my brother and sister-in-law getting married with crazy enthusiasm and gusto (and then spend a week recovering), than have played it safely and not have any physical worries afterwards at the expense of having so much fun 😀

Bloginated Friday, 22nd May 2009 / Prosthesis or amputee stuff
Tag-isms: stump