lumberjack in a desert

Archive for the ‘Amputee’ Category

Cool? Yes.  Practical? Functional? Not for all amputees.

The world’s first human testing of a mind-controlled artificial limb is ready to begin. A joint project between the Pentagon and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), the Modular Prosthetic Limb will be fully controlled by sensors implanted in the brain, and will even restore the sense of touch by sending electrical impulses from the limb back to the sensory cortex.  Last month APL announced it was awarded a $34.5 million contract withDARPA, which will allow researchers to test the neural prosthesis in five individuals over the next two years.

We’ve been reporting on major advances in artificial limbs for a while now, but this is the holy grail of prosthetic technology. Phase III testing – human subjects testing – will be used to tweak the system, both improving neural control over the limb and optimizing the algorithms which generate sensory feedback. The Modular Prosthetic Limb (MPL) is the product of years of prototype design – it includes 22 degrees of motion, allows independent control of all five fingers, and weighs the same as a natural human arm (about nine pounds). Patients will control the MPL with a surgically implanted microarray which records action potentials directly from the motor cortex.

Researchers plan to install the first system into a quadriplegic patient; while amputees can be outfitted with traditional prostheses, the MPL will be the first artificial limb that can sidestep spinal cord injury by plugging directly into the brain. This isn’t the first brain-controlled interface to be used in humans – we’ve previously reported on Braingate, a system that uses brain impulses to control computer cursors and restore communication to locked-inpatients. But the MPL will offer the first hard-wired neural control of bionic body parts, whether lost to injury or neurodegenerative disease.

Make sure you read the whole thing. Pretty cool, but realistically speaking someone like me will never get something like this.  Much like hand transplant surgery, I only foresee this going to a double arm amputee.   This isn’t exactly a “go enjoy the great outdoors” type of prosthetic either. Give this arm to me and I guarantee I’ll have it broken in a week just working around the house (can you use it as a hammer?)  My body powered prosthesis has a Kevlar-esque harness, steel cables, and a carbon fiber socket and I still break it all the time.  (Snowboarding season is particularly hard on my prosthetic. I had to repair it with ski binding hardware in Aspen last winter.)  Please understand I’m not dumping on this prosthesis for the sake of dumping on it. Advances like this are great for amputees.  But they’re not going to help all amputees.  Technology like this is extremely expensive, extremely finicky, and not very durable.  Hence the reason my expensive Myoelectric arm stays in a box in my attic and never sees the light of day.

And I thought our VA system was bad.

A soldier has spoken of his disgust after his disability benefit was axed despite losing a leg fighting for his country.

Private Aron Shelton, 26, had his left leg amputated in December 2008 after he was injured in an explosion in Helmand province, Afghanistan, a year earlier.

After an 18-month struggle, the Bridlington soldier has learned to walk a few hundred metres with the help of a prosthetic limb.

But as a result of his efforts, the Department for Work and Pensions has ruled this means he no longer needs his £180-a-month Disability Living Allowance.

From September, he will lose his allowance, which he traded in each month in return for the use of a specially-adapted car.

Pte Shelton said that without a car, his dream of rebuilding his life as a taxi driver was in tatters.

He said: “I’m disgusted, shocked and mortified.

“I risked my life and now I feel let down by the Government.

Sounds a bit like my struggles with the VA, only much worse. I waited over a year for a new prosthetic arm only to be ignored and brushed aside.  It wasn’t until a couple congressmen wrote letters that I finally received a new prosthetic arm to replace my worn out one from Walter Reed (within a week, mind you).

First you need some background on this story to understand the utter incompetence of the Canadian Government’s handling of the G20 Summit and the usual liberals that swarm to these events to wreak havoc. From Hotair (follow link to see videos):

A palate cleanser via Iowahawk, who subtitles this one “Rage Against My Allowance.” Say, how come there are no cops around to cuff this black-bloc idiot? Well, funny thing: On Saturday, Toronto PD decided to avoid confrontation as anarchists and far-left dregs of various stripes burned cars and smashed windows in the name of “human rights” or whatever. That didn’t sit well with the public, so theychanged tactics that night and ended up beating people the next day who, er,weren’t rioting. No estimates yet on the total damage, but according to Toronto’s mayor, it was a “mistake” to hold the summit there. How’s that for a vote of confidence in the city from the man in charge?

Now enter John Pruyn, a Revenue Canada employee from Thorold, Ont., and 57-year-old amputee.

In the early evening, Mr. Pruyn and his 24-year-old daughter, Sarah, were sitting on the lawn of the provincial legislature — the so-called “designated speech area” — waiting to meet Mr. Pruyn’s wife, Susan, from whom the pair had become separated during the afternoon march.

At the same time, a line of police began advancing on the crowd of protesters, most of whom Mr. Pruyn says were simply relaxing on the grass.

“The police came up to us and said, ‘Move!’ so I tried to get up,” said Mr. Pruyn, who lost his left leg above the knee 17 years ago in a farming accident.

“I fell back down and my daughter yelled out, ‘Give him time. He’s an amputee.’ I guess the police thought I was taking too long … then all of a sudden the police were on top of me.”

Mr. Pruyn claims his head was kept on the ground by an officer digging a knee into his left temple while other officers yanked at his arms.

“One of them was yelling, ‘You’re resisting arrest’, but I wasn’t resisting anything. I couldn’t move.”

He says police then ordered him to start walking, but when he informed them that he couldn’t get up because his hands were cuffed behind his back, an officer grabbed his prosthetic leg and “yanked it right off.”

“Then he said, ‘Hop!’ but I told them I couldn’t because it hurts for me to hop on my right leg,” Mr. Pruyn recalled. “Then the cop said, ‘OK, you asked for it’ and two officers grabbed me under my armpits and dragged me away from Queen’s Park towards the police vans.”

Make sure you read the whole thing. I wish I could say that this type of treatment is limited to Canada, but it isn’t. I regularly have to deal with stupidity in the official capacity when I fly and deal with TSA.  Rather than deal with their inconsistent procedures in dealing with amputees, I simply take my prosthetic arm off and send it through the scanner with my laptop and shoes.  Unfortunately leg amputees are not as lucky. While returning from the Vail Veteran’s Project in Vail, Colorado a couple years back a TSA official asked a fellow Veteran and leg amputee from Walter Reed if he would hand over his crutches and hop through the security without them.  A year later on the way back from a snowboarding clinic in Park City, UT another fellow Veteran from Walter Reed and double below knee amputee was basically molested in the little glass security booth by a TSA official who was clearly unsure or untrained in proper search techniques.

Its been a while since I’ve posted something creepy and disgusting so I figured, why not? Sorry about the delay on this, I forgot to publish the draft.

Via Jammiewearingfool:

And this little piggy turned into a thumb.

A Long Island woman’s big toe will adapt to function as a thumb after doctors performed a rare transplant operation to replace the vital missing digit.

Shannon Elliott, 25, lost the thumb and two fingers from her left hand in November when a firework exploded in her palm. Elliott happened to be walking by when someone in a passing car tossed the explosive out a window.

It blew up when she bent to see what had landed and tore apart her hand, reports WABC.

“I was devastated. … My fingers exploded into pieces,” she said.

Stony Brook University doctors suggested the toe amputation to restore mobility to Elliott’s hand, and performed an 11-hour surgery after Elliott agreed to go forward.

“To me it was a no brainer. I’d rather lose a toe and gain a whole hand,” said the mother of two.

I know how she feels.  Because of some serious shrapnel damage from getting blown up in Iraq, my ulnar nerve was severed and my ring finger was damaged beyond repair.  Because of this my one remaining hand was cut to pieces by doctors at Walter Reed and pieced back together. Check it out.

They did what is known as a ray section, where my entire ring finger – including the metacarpal – was cut out of the middle of my hand. My hand was then reassembled with my pinky next to my middle finger.

The vast majority of people do not notice that I only have four fingers left.  Unfortunately my pinky is completely unusable because of the ulnar nerve that didn’t heal.  Still, as the above woman can attest, its better to have part of a hand then no hand at all.