Paradigm shift

“It’s amazing what they can do these days”. When I first lost my leg in 1992 I became sick of that ancient bromide by the third utterance. I’m fairly sure they were saying that to Roman centurions in the 3rd century after losing a fight with some crazed Celt. (Even then the saying was probably old, they’ve found evidence now of an Egyptian prosthetic toe).

I didn’t argue with those that said it, things had improved over what was even available ten or twenty years prior to my losing a leg. However, the basics were still the same, my first leg was held on with a leather strap that went around my thigh, for better hold I could attach it to a belt that went around my waist. My first foot was a SACHs, followed shortly by a Seattle Foot. Good for most things, but essentially the same design as those used by my medieval ancestors, just newer materials.

Prosthetic arms were in the same situation; same designs with newer materials powered by the amputees’ shifting of their shoulder and back muscles.

The bottom line was that whatever I could get was going to be less powerful, adaptive, and useable than what I was born with. I would have to learn how to make do with a tool that was limited and thus limited me.

I know, I know, right now over half the readers of this article are thinking, “The only limits are those you set for yourself!” or something very similar. But even so, we all know that although we can climb mountains using our prosthetic limbs, we have to take into consideration the mechanical limitations of the tools we have. And essentially a prosthetic limb is a tool.

And that is the crux of the matter. The tools have changed.

Oscar Pistorius is about to be told he can’t compete in the Olympics because his prosthetic legs give him an unfair advantage. Think about what that means. If you have two athletes with equal training, motivation, and physical aptitude, one of them has all the limbs and parts they were born with, and one of them is a double amputee wearing prosthetic legs…

HE’S BETTER THAN THE OTHER GUY!!

The prosthetics we now have access to can make us superior to those with limbs most folks are born with. It gets better, we now have in development and production arm limbs that are controlled by the nerves in the chest, allowing arm amputees to move their limbs by thinking about it. Add to that the development of an arm that, “…offers more strength than is available in its flesh-and-bone equivalent…” This means that you could soon have an artificial arm that is controlled by thought and is more powerful than the Governor of California’s arm. (And you know someone at DARPA or the Pentagon is funneling money into that research).

The new Proprio foot calculates what it should do, it’s not a simple mechanism that springs the foot forward, it actually anticipates and accommodates to the wearer and the terrain. It won’t take much for the mapping of nerves in your stump to be synched up with something like the Proprio foot and give you a foot that you can move by thinking about it. It’s already possible to turn light switches off and on by thinking about them.

We are not on the verge of great changes, we are in them. As amputees we are uniquely positioned to take advantage of, and even participate in, this paradigm shift. Where will we take it?