prosthetics in Haiti

Today was my first day in the Prosthetics Lab. It's on the roof and it's a legitimate lab- much better than many places in the US. Sedju. Emanuel, and Miguel are the three guys that work up there. They are really fun. They speak some English but alot of the time I am not sure exactly what is going on. Miguel is the captain of the amputee soccer team. They are pretty awesome- look up utubes of Medishare amputee soccer. I did alot of prosthetics today so I will just share some fun stories from the day. First, an engineer was down here a week ago who is designing an inexpensive prosthetic foot that can be manufactured with plastic in Haiti. Good idea...however...right now Ossur is one of the labs sponsors so all the people have 800 dollar or more carbon fiber feet (like the flex foot). Anyway, so while the engineer was here they switched out all the amputee soccer players feet to the plastic low cost foot. Oh side note- they don't where there prosthetics when they play soccer actually (they use forearm crutches). Anyway, so today the whole team was in the clinic making a bunch of commotion. I asked what was going on and they told me that the soccer players were saying that they couldn't walk with the other foot and they wanted their old feet back. I told him to tell them that they were athletes so they should be able to walk on anything (said as a joke). It was really funny. There was even more commotion as they tried to tell me that they could but still wanted there feet back. Anyway- so we switched their feet back to the dynamic response carbon fiber feet. Story two, one of the guys came back after lunch with a watermelon and gave me a big chunk. We stepped out of the lab to the back "porch" and as I ate.I started to spit the seeds out (there was a small gab between the fence and the hospital wall. All of a sudden I heard yelling and Sedju started laughing. I went to the edge of the porch and looked over and there was a whole line of people crammed between the wall and the fence taking a break from work- oops!! Story 3, I was cutting a cast off after I had filled it with plaster and let it harden and one of the techs came up to me and said "Do you like to cook?" I said "yes!" Then he said "really? Well cut it like you are killing a chicken!" I was confused- he just meant to use more strength but the analogy didn't work since I hadn't ever killed a chicken! ; ) Another excitement was getting called into the OR because of a spinal fracture. Casting the patient in the OR for an unstable burst fracture of L3 made me alittle nervous...now I need to make a brace for the guy to keep it stable until they get someone down here to operate which could be a few WEEKS! Well, more from me tomorrow.