A One Handed Blog

3D Printed Leg

Last week I got to spend a day at Singularity University, they were running one of their 9 day executive programs and I got an invite to come along and check it out.

Luckily I picked the day that they spent the afternoon touring IDEO’s offices and TechShop and it was while we were at TechShop that designer Scott Summit presented the work he’s been doing in the field of 3D printing.

The Naked Leg

What blew me away was he’s been working with an above knee amputee to ‘print’ him a new leg.

Essentially they 3D scanned the guys other leg, reversed it on a computer, designed in a knee joint and then 3D printed the entire leg as a single component!

Scott had a couple of reject/test legs that he passed around. Simply amazing. I can see how this could revolutionize prosthetic development. Whilst the leg didn’t contain fancy computer chips to control the knee, it’s apparently very functional and only cost about $5,000 to make. I’m looking forward to connecting with Scott further to explore the work he’s doing.

There was a CNET reporter at the presentation also, you can read his article online: 3D printing changing prosthetics forever

I got a message recently from a high school senior who’d visited my blog, he had a birth defect that affected one of his hands and had recently become more conscious about it in social settings. He asked if I had anything to share.

Well this got me thinking, really thinking, what was it I had learnt since losing my hand 3 or so years back that I might be able to share? For what it’s worth, here’s what I came up with.

First, right at the beginning my mindset was that whilst I might have a disability, I didn’t consider myself disabled. My disability wasn’t who I was, it wasn’t my ‘identity’ or how I saw myself. I decided to have fun with my disability, to challenge my disability and be playful about it with others.

Secondly, I refused to see myself as being any different. I knew that if I started to see myself differently then other’s would pick up on it and feel differently, even awkward, around me, which I would then pick up on, which would then re-inforce my own negative feelings and start a vicious cycle. If you see yourself differently from how you wish others to see you, don’t be surprised when you perceive that others see you thus. If you feel incomplete, or disabled, or disfigured or whichever way it is for you, then with that in your mind you’ll start to perceive that that’s how others are thinking of you, it’s all bullshit, but, that’s just the way the mind works.

Thirdly, I look odd, people will stare, it means nothing, it’s just a natural reaction. Hell, when I catch myself in the mirror I stare, my body lacks symmetry, the human mind is used to symmetrical bodies. The question is, what does it mean to you when you catch someone glancing your way? Whatever you think they are thinking, I can guarantee you are wrong, you have no way of knowing what the other person thinks, so I prefer to believe they find me so incredibly attractive that they can’ help but look my way. I just smile, be open to questions or just continue on my way. Forget the stories you tell yourself about what you think they are thinking, again it’s bullshit. Generally I’m oblivious to it, but occasionally I’ll catch someone and it makes me smile.

Here’s a great video on this very topic:

I hope that this might help someone in some small way, remember you get to decide the meaning you attach to an event in your life…why not make that meaning serve you rather than hinder you.

I met Deny (he’s 22) a few weeks back, I was introduced to him via TouchBionics since he lives in the Northern California area and was very interested in the i-Limb hand after losing his hand in an industrial accident, back in December.

He dropped by with his sister, Rebecka, on their way to his medical appointment in San Francisco. Deny’s hand was literally ripped of when his jacket got caught in a machine at work and for someone barely a month post accident, he’s recovering extremely well, and for someone only 22, has a great positive outlook on life. It was interesting to swap “war” stories, he was comparing the feelings and sensations he gets with what I’d described on my blog during my recovery.

It was great to meet Deny and hopefully, in time, he’ll be able to get fitted for an i-Limb hand and I hope he enjoys as much success with it as I have.

For Halloween this year I simply took the glove of my i-Limb hand, put on a leather biker jacket and pants, added a pair of sunglasses and voila, Terminator!

This photo was taken at a friends party (they go all out decorating their house). Just after this photo was taken someone came walking past and as I spoke they turned around and said to their partner, "hey, this one speaks", before she realized I wasn't a manikin but a real person. So I guess it must have been pretty convincing.

Next year I'll have to get into the gym so I also have the muscles to match the costume.

While I was in Grand Cayman on vacation I took the chance to try out a closed circuit re-breather. This is different from normal open circuit SCUBA gear in that you re-breath the same air.

I remember when these units first started to be available for recreational diving a good few years back, it always peaked my interest, so I couldn’t miss a chance to finally give one a go.

DiveTech run a re-breather experience course for an afternoon (highly recommend giving it a go if you get a chance), Steve Tippets ran the course, another Brit and really good instructor. To my surprise I didn’t get to try one in a pool, as I had expected, but I got to go on an actual shore dive with it. After spending a bit of time in the classroom on safety and dive theory we then got familiar with the re-breather. After some basic skill tests, to make sure I could operate everything with one hand,  we got kitted up for the dive.

We walked down the pier and climbed into the water, swam out a little way and then descended. That’s where the difference between normal diving hits you, the buoyancy control is very different – breathing no longer changes your buoyancy the same way it does with normal open circuit gear. It’s not untypical for first timers to bounce around on the bottom or keep hitting the surface as they try to get accustomed to the re-breather. Fortunately, I bounced once, settled down and then got the hang of it…which meant we could then spend the whole time actually diving. The biggest difference you notice is how quite it is, with no bubbles escaping you can literally swim into the middle of a shoal of fish and have them swimming around you, normally your breathing would have scared them off.

The buoyancy control is quite different to normal diving, normally breathing out causes you to sink as you lose buoyancy, and breathing in causes you to rise. Well, with a re-breather it’s the opposite, although to a lesser degree. After a while you get use to it, but every now and then it catches you out as you try to breath out to stop rising, to only then rise further.

All in all great fun and many thanks to Steve. I might be back one of these days to take the full course.

Kerry and I just got back from our diving vacation in Grand Cayman, 10 days of fun with 8 days of diving. I got in a total of 19 dives, we took a NITROX course and I got to play with a closed circuit re-breather (but more of that in a future post).

This was our first dive trip since my accident, although we did do a dive in Fiji last year, the diving was great as you can see from the photo (which is actually me!).

As expected I didn’t really have any problems diving one handed. Kerry made an alteration to my wetsuit before we left, cutting the left arm and sewing up the end so I didn’t have the loose arm dangling around. It worked very effectively and kept my stump nice and warm. I got a new console dive computer so I didn’t need to wear my dive computer on my left arm, but other than that everything was normal.

It was good to be back diving properly, we stayed at Cobalt Coast and dived with DiveTech, that run the dive operation there. The owner and staff at the hotel where great, so was the food and the dock runs  right out from the dive shop at the hotel so the diving was really convenient. I highly recommend the whole setup if you want some serious diving. DiveTech run a great and friendly operation and are setup for any kind of diving you could want (we ended up diving NITROX the second half of the trip).

Dan Sorkin is the founder of the Stumps ‘R Us amputee support group. We came across Dan last year, a few months after I was back up and about after my accident. The Stumps group are a light hearted, fairly irreverent bunch of amputees and as part of the group’s charter, Dan, (who lost his left leg in a motorcycle accident), takes members flying. He’s an avid pilot, and has been flying for over 50 years!

Kerry and I hadn’t had a chance to go flying with him and his wife Jodi, but finally at the end of last month we managed to get a day…and as it turned out, what a gorgeous day it was. We met Dan at Buchanan Field airport in Concord were a friend of his keeps their plan. The plan was to fly from there to San Francisco, over the Golden Gate bridge and down the coat to Half Moon Bay for lunch.

It was a lovely blue day, not too hot or cold and really clear. We jumped in the plane, I sat in the front with Dan, Kerry in the back with Jodi. Dan got clearance from the tower and off we flew. Flying over the Bay Area makes you realize just how beautiful it is, the views were wonderful as we flew at 4000′ over the hills toward San Francisco and then down the coast to Half Moon Bay. It was interesting to be back in the air again in a small craft, I haven’t been up in the air like this since my paragliding accident. I realised how much I missed the feeling and enjoyment of free flight.

We landed after a 30 min flight at Half Moon Bay airport, parked up and got out to walk to the Ketch Joanne restaurant…now this is the way to get around town! After fish & chips and fun discussions over lunch we headed back to the airport to fly home again. Dan kindly let me fly the plane over the Golden Gate bridge, right over the middle at about 1500′! Not something you get to do everyday.

All-in-all, a great day out and yet another benefit of being an amputee

Kerry and I joined the Stumps ‘R Us crew for a tour of the San Francisco Giants baseball park that Dan Sorkin (the Stumps organizer) had arranged. We’re not big baseball fans per-se, but, it was a fine afternoon and seemed like fun to go look around the ball park.

I highly recommend anyone take a tour if you’re in the San Francisco area, the park is absolutely gorgeous and offers views of the city and bay you won’t see anywhere else…particularly up on the top level. We had a great time walking around the park, both inside and out, learning a bit about the history of the Giants and baseball. You never know maybe I’ll go watch a game one of these days, although watching baseball appeals to me about as much as watching cricket back home…

On our last day in Fiji Kerry and I took the opportunity to go diving, something I’d been wanting to do and hadn’t had the chance since my accident last year. I’ve been diving probably 17-18 years now, after learning at Exeter University back in the UK and becoming an instructor shortly thereafter.

Now, I didn’t expect to have any particular issues diving, since you don’t really use your hands much underwater anyway, but, it did feel good to get back in the water again…and I’ve never dived in water quite so warm, it must have been 30 degrees Celsius!

As you can see from the photos I’m using rental kit. Since I lost my left hand I didn’t really need any modifications to the kit (if I’d lost my right hand I’d probably want to invert the regulator so it came over my left shoulder).  I wore my prosthetic liner on my arm, which is a silicone based liner, for protection and to help keep my stump warm (since I don’t have great circulation). Obviously I didn’t wear my prosthetic, not sure it would fair too well under water.

The dive was great, not the most spectacular per se, but just great to be in the water again. I really didn’t have any difficulties diving, I could easily control my buoyancy with my right hand and otherwise everything was just as normal. So don’t let not having an arm stop you from jumping in the water…diving is too much fun to miss out on.

I was talking with Julian, our friend here in New Zealand, where we’re staying this week, and he reminded me of a dive trip we did to Jamaica a few years back, where a group of us helped this guy who was a quadriplegic go diving in the sea (since most of us in the group were instructors)…if he had the determination to overcome his disability and go diving there’s certainly no excuses for the rest of us.