Quick Note to Bob:

Dude, I totally get how this foot works now.  And no, you can't have it back.

No, actually, I don't completely get it, but I'm starting to.  I had this astonishing breakthrough yesterday while cruising the local necropolis.  For those in the know, this picture clearly illustrates what I discovered about this foot that makes it so much more useful to me in my particular walk-everywhere-over-every-kind-of-terrain lifestyle than my last perfectly satisfactory (and possibly slightly holy) foot (the Endolite Dynamic Response foot).  For those not in the know, or for those who may be shopping for a new foot themselves, I shall explain.

First, let me pull back to show you the whole picture. (Click to enlarge.)

Can you see what's happening here?  If you have ordinary, functional, organic feet, what you can see here is something you probably take for granted:  side to side flexion, allowing the entire sole of my foot (and all the traction of the bottom of my shoe) to remain in contact with the ground.  This is very important for someone who goes up and down as many hills as I do, and over as many diverse textures.  The texture shown here, for example, is that of age-worn slippery shoe sole on essentially small river rocks, also worn smooth.

This was the angle of descent, incidentally.  (Click to enlarge.)

Yes, I was walking down that not-exactly-path, more like a rainwater run-off, to get to the road below.  Not a big deal for someone with all their original body parts in good working order, but not the easiest or safest thing for someone with a stiff-from-the-ankle-down doll foot.

My previous foot flexed brilliantly from front to back, which gave me a lot of spring in my step -- and the amount of spring was adjustable via a little key through the back of the heel.  This one doesn't do that at all, not as far as I can discern at my large size/weight and small shoe size.  The loss of this spring is not important to my long term goals, as I am not a runner but a walker, hiker, and climber.  It confused me, though, because I've been using that spring to walk and strategically employing it to climb and even climb downward for over four years.  At the same time, the side to side flexion created by a split metatarsal spring in the new foot (there's your cloven hoof, Ron; it's there, but hidden under all that pink plastic) plus some really superior new alignment in the whole leg to which I was not yet accustomed were together making me feel unstable when I stepped on the foot in ordinary forward walking.  I didn't realize the foot was actually adapting safely to the angle of impact.  I thought I was rolling off it, that it was too narrow.  Not true, however.  While I've lost some forward spring, I've gained safety in downhill walking and for all surfaces that are not evenly flat.

Neat, huh?  I can't wait to learn what other tricks little Barbie can do.

Okay, back to the tour -- tomorrow.

Comments

[Jana]

Do you have a little rotator at the ankle too? I just love mine. If you don't have one, you might want to ask your prosthy about it. It means that you can pivot a bit at the heel w/o moving your foot which is awesome when you have no pivot at the knee and very few of your rotator muscles left at your hip (you might be blessed with a few more of those that I have, tho, depdending on your style of amputation).

[Sara]

Actually, you see that blue ball quite a ways above my ankle? (You can't tell because of the photo angle, but it's about 5" above the cuff of my shiny pink cosmesis.) I will write more about the blue thingy another time, because it is worthy of its own post, but it is both a shock absorber and a rotator (and it comes with its own spiffy little air pump so I can adjust the flexibility myself). And yes, it is very, very cool.

My hip muscles have not been compromised by amputation at all, but in my previous mechanical leg, I would always run into situations where those or other muscles wanted to go one way and the leg wanted to go another, and the suction socket always meant that the leg won (which is really the safest choice, I guess). I run into far fewer of those situations now, because now the whole system has more give in several directions, and that is just WAY more comfortable.

[Bipolarlawyercook]

So cool. Engineers rock.

[Sara]

BLC, you're right, they do! And they're pretty cute, too, in my experience. ;)

The coolest thing about something like this for me is how many people over how many generations contributed to it. Yes, this has some of the latest innovations available within the limitations of the strictly mechanical, but precisely because it is made only of springs and screws and pneumatics and hydraulics in different kinds of materials, it's hardly the inspired work of just one genius at a solitary drawing table. Many geniuses, and many other amputees before me, contributed to what I'm walking around on, one way or another.

And this is just more of the kind of legacy I talked about in the last post, how many people have made us who we are today, and how diverse were their walks -- literally, in my case, their walks -- of life. It's boggling and wondrous.