We had our final transtibial patient fitting and critique early in the week. At the final critique, I had one of those moments that reaffirms why I chose this profession.  The patient model my partner and I worked with for Total Surface Bearing sockets hadn’t walked since his amputation about 6 months prior.  He was in the process of having his first prosthesis fabricated at his local office while we were working with him.  Our patient was a challenging fit, but my partner and I finally succeeded on the second round of check sockets we fabricated.  (My partner and I each made two check sockets). During the initial dynamic alignment, one of our instructors gave our patient gait pointers, such as rock back and forth on the prosthetic foot; take a longer step with his sound limb…
 

Finally, it was time for critique.  Our model was a little unsteady the first few steps, but then gained speed with each step after.  He did a few laps in the parallel bars with one prosthesis from our group, and then switched to the other.  I watched as our model adapted to the different prosthetic feet used between my partner and I, and then take off walking again.  I couldn’t help but smile.  He was walking!
 

Our patient asked to say a few words once he sat down and caught his breath.  He told the class that it’s amazing what standing up on two legs and actually walking can do to improve a person’s spirits.  After critique, our patient took my partner and I aside and thanked us for getting him up and walking again.  It was a heartfelt moment that left me momentarily speechless (quite unusual for me to be speechless!).  I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of moments like this.  I’m excited to hear how our patient gets along with his new prosthesis in the next few weeks. 
 

Transtibial studies are now a thing of the past.  We said goodbye to our patient models until graduation, and survived the final exam.  It’s now on to transfemoral prosthetics…the easy stuff, right?