Making Eli’s New Leg

We are in the process of getting Eli’s 3rd leg made.  I noticed about a month or two ago that his current leg was too short.  I could tell when he stood that his hips weren’t on the same plane, and then of course the leg started to fall off a ton when we were shopping at Target and Eli was sitting in seat of the cart (always a sign!).

We’ve had 4 appointments with Jay (Eli’s Prosthetist) in the past week and a half and probably have 3 more to go until we get the leg.  Eli has done so well through this whole process.  He is such a big boy and cooperates so well with Jay.  I continue to be amazed by him and I can’t even express how proud I am of him.

The first appointment Jay made a cast of Eli’s leg.  At the beginning he cried a bit, but then we started reading his favorite book and he was totally fine.  I love his sweet smile in this photo.

At the second appointment Jay had a test socket made and Eli got to try it on to test the fit.  Grace was sleeping in my Ergo carrier, and big boy Eli did completely fine letting Jay take off his old leg and try on the test socket. 

Jay had to make some adjustments to the test socket, so we went back for appointment #3 to try on the second test socket.  He was a rock star once again and just read why Jay checked out the socket.  He even did fine when Jay had to use the “tickle stick” inside the socket. 

Our fourth appointment was yesterday morning and Jay had a test leg made.  The test leg was a bit too long so here Jay is putting plates under Eli’s left leg to figure out how much he needs to shorten the test leg. 

Eli’s has valgus of the knee, so Jay is trying to correct this with the new leg.  He is doing two main things: making the top of Eli’s new leg higher so that it will gently push the outside of his knee in, and aligning the foot extremely to the inside so that when Eli walks his leg will be straight.  To be able to align the foot extremely to the inside, Jay has made Eli a foot out of wood, rubber and conveyor belt material.  He couldn’t use the type of foot that Eli has now, because currently his foot is bolted to the bottom center of the socket.  Jay wants the foot in his new leg off to the side, and so he will attach the foot that he is making to the socket in a different way.

Jay has also designed the leg so that Eli will weight bear on his heal pad (in his current leg most of the suspension is around Eli’s knee.  After Eli’ walked for a bit, we took the leg off and looked at Eli’s leg.  His heal pad was really red and it was quite upsetting to me.  Jay explained that the heal pad is not used to pressure, so it’ll just take time for Eli to get used to this new fit.  Bearing weight on the heal pad is ideal, because Eli will  have more stability, etc.    E will probably wear the new leg only a few hours at a time for the first few weeks, until he adjusts.

This appointment was hard for me emotionally.  This leg fits differently and I am sure feels quite different and Eli had a bit of a hard time walking at first.  He didn’t cry or complain, just limped a bit and then would get tripped up a bit while walking.  As his mom, that’s hard for me to see. I think I just got overwhelmed emotionally worrying about how Eli will do with this new leg.  It is hard because, it’s just such a big deal (we are talking about my child’s leg) and I just have to have faith that it will work out.  The best part though is too see my amazing child and be reminded, that of course it’ll work out one way or another.  His strength and joy comforts me in my moments of weakness.