Last week, Molly and I took Mary Grace over to visit the good people at Hanger to discuss various orthopedic and prosthetic developments such as the award-winning myoelectric i-Limb hand.
Living in Washington, we are lucky to have access to some of the best doctors and engineers in this area of medicine because the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and other military hospitals are based here. Obviously, artificial limbs are very popular among Iraq War veterans, so this is the place to be if you are in the market for this kind of thing. There is currently a great deal of science behind replacing limbs, especially due to the nature of the war that we are currently fighting. As a result of improved battlefield medicine, fewer soldiers are being killed. One negative side-effect that comes with fewer fatalities is the increased rate of limb loss and other non-fatal injuries. The science behind both mechanical and genetic “solutions” for limb absence is astounding; almost science fiction. It is sad that it takes a war to get funding behind something like this, but at least something good is coming from the situation in the Middle East. Anyway, I digress…
Molly and I are very open about the fact that we would rather not have Mary Grace wear a device such as the i-Limb, but we want to be “smart” on the issue and obtain as much knowledge as we can. We are going to look into anything and everything available, and make as informed a decision as possible. We also want to be able to help Mary Grace make her own decision as she gets older and begins to voice her opinion. Ultimately, Mary Grace will decide what she wants, so our main goal is to make sure that we don’t inhibit her ability to choose what she believes will be best for her.
In the end, we were extremely happy with the appointment, and basically found out that waiting is the best decision at the current time. Mary Grace did not lose a limb, so she does not feel as though she is missing anything. The consensus is that adding a mechanical device to her arm at this time will only confuse her and create a situation where she loses the sense of touch on her left hand. Molly and I have found that Mary Grace prefers to use her left hand to touch things, mainly to get a feel for texture and temperature, so taking away the ability to do this seems cruel and unnecessary. The doctors appear to agree with us.
Another major factor in this decision is that Mary Grace can bring her left and right hands together to hold objects with two hands. This is crucial in the decision of whether or not someone wears a prosthetic device. Since she has a wrist and her carpal bones, she has no arm length discrepancy for which she needs a device to make up the difference. We had absolutely no idea how big a deal this was until we met with Hanger, and on the ride home discussed how lucky we feel that Mary Grace has what she has.
It is strange; you would be surprised at how going to this kind of an appointment opens your eyes to how difficult things could be for Mary Grace. As we were sitting in the waiting room, a young boy walked out with his father. The boy’s arm appeared to end around his elbow, which would make it almost impossible to do something like pick up a box or do a push-up. Mary Grace should have little difficulty doing these things. We feel extremely blessed that she will be able to use her left hand to crawl, ride her bike and give us big hugs.
To date, she hasn’t really seemed to notice that she doesn’t have fingers on her left hand, and it certainly isn’t bothering her or slowing her down in any way. We don’t feel the need to make her prematurely notice a difference, and we certainly don’t want to hinder her ability to use what she has. It is incredible to see how she can hold, grab, hit, touch, knock, feel and embrace things with her left hand at eight-and-a-half months old, so I can only wonder what she will be able to do in the coming years.
She is pretty amazing.
