What no one ever told you about artificial limbs

“Do I have any extra arms kicking around here?”

It’s not a question most wives hear from their husbands.

“How should I know?” I lovingly replied. “Don’t you keep track of them?”

Jon’s owned at least three prosthetic arms in the years since his original right one was amputated after a farm accident in 1995. People rarely see him using a prosthesis because he finds it more trouble than it’s worth for normal daily activities. But when performing serious outdoor work, his prosthesis gets at least as rigorous a workout as his muscles and joints—but with no natural healing component when it breaks.

Thus, a large Rubbermaid box of spare parts and attachments has been part of our household belongings for years. All are the work of Larry Lawson from Winnipeg, who has been Jon’s prosthetist all this time. Larry has built and rebuilt these arms, sometimes swapping out parts or beefing up strength to make them more endurable for jobs like pounding fence posts.

So, with his real arm suffering from over-use and his appointment with Larry still a week away, Jon was asking me a valid question. I’d “borrowed” a spare arm for a prop three years ago when the Prairie Players staged my short play, Sleeping with a One-Armed Man. He probably wondered if that one had ever been returned to the box.

All of this got me thinking how little we knew about prosthetics before they became part of our lives and how my readers might find the topic interesting. It’s a fascinating line of work. Part medical practitioner, part mechanic, part artist, part counsellor—prosthetists must also be business savvy, especially if they run their practice alone. They acquire an intimate knowledge of their client’s vestigial limb and they understand the changes that will come with atrophy. They need to grasp the client’s individual needs, know the type of work the artificial arm or leg will be expected to perform, and do their best to ensure a comfortable fit. Each is unique.

Whether or not a client still has their original elbow makes a colossal difference in the usefulness of a prosthetic arm, something that never would have occurred to us before. Jon does not. His prosthesis is completely mechanical, operated by shoulder movements.

A 1930's prosthetic arm

Although we’ve all seen impressive videos of myoelectric hands that seem even more sophisticated than the flesh and bone kind, the reality is that basic arm prosthetics have changed little since World War II. Advancements are being made every day, “somewhere, out there,” but for most amputees, cost puts them out of reach. State-of-the-art prosthetic replacements are complicated medical devices, powered by batteries and electronic motors, and they can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. For children, the difficulty of handling them—plus the child’s rapid growth—makes the investment impractical.

3D printing of limbs is gaining ground and reducing costs, so the future could look much brighter—for others, if not for Jon. For kids with missing fingers or even an entire hand, designs for these 3D printed prosthetics are readily available for free on the internet. They are not made to look like the original hand, but are produced in bright colors and patterned after super-heroes, dinosaurs, and Transformers. They’ve become so cool, able-bodied children wish they could have one.

Meanwhile, at our house, we’re convinced the most technologically advanced arm any human can ever invent will never be as complex as the kind God assembles in the darkness of a mother’s womb. We cannot out-create our own Creator. If we could, we’d have figured out by now how to regenerate lost limbs and they’d be superior to the ones we’re born with.

It kinda shoots a big ol’ hole in the theory of evolution. And further reinforces the notion that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.

Stay safe, everyone.