life line - call a friend : )

Today was a very busy day for prosthetics. First of all I needed to make the TLSO for the patient with the unstable fracture. I was informed that we were out of plaster bandages, so it took awhile to find the supplies. Once we had the supplies we went and casted the patient for the brace in the ER- you need more than one to do this type of cast. It all went well but because of his injury and lack of supplies we couldn't do a bivalve casting technique (casting the front and then the back so you have two pieces that fit together). We had to do a clamshell casting for the tlso (leave a portion on the side open). This isn't a problem- it just takes a bit of art to sculpt the missing side. Good thing I enjoy an art project every now and then. : ) I did take some measurements so that I would know the circumferences. After this, FIVE prosthetics patients came up. One of the patients was a little girl who was having pain on the bottom of her residual limb. I took a look and even a small touch to the end was painful. It looked like her tibia had grown alittle and she had no distal padding on the end. The problem was that her limb was only 3 inches from the knee. I talked with Sidgu and we brainstormed everything we could. I kind of thought that she might need revision surgery so I went down to get the ortho surgeon. He took a look and said that he would do what I thought he should do but hadn't ever operated on a kid. He said let him know if he should operate....this put me in a cold sweat. If she had a longer residual limb i would think no problem but its so short as it is. Well...I decided this was a time to use the life line "call a friend:)" I went on the roof and called Todd at Shriners Childrens Hospital. He was super helpful and after discussing the situation we decided revision surgery was really the best option. I hope it goes well.
Next a casted 2 ladies for above knee prosthetics. There was another lady who wanted a prosthetic but she was really swollen so we gave her a shrinker and told her to come back.

Well sorry- that was alot of detailed prosthetic info....but I guess that was what was on my mind at the end of today. The good news is that - guess what, I have learned quite a bit the last couple years in school! : )