Post by castmenow on Dec 3, 2018 11:28:03 GMT
I was a child in the 60s and early 70s when there were a lot of metal and leather braces around. My maternal grandmother wore a single KAFO after a stroke. The girl next door had hip and leg problems and was in a series of double hip spica casts for a long time, then some leg braces. There was a boy at school who had Perthes disease and wore a KAFO with a patten bottom and a small metal frame under his good foot to raise that up. A girl who lived on the other side of the road had a broken leg at some point and wore a below knee cast with a large leather boot over the cast. There is no trouble pinpointing how I became to be so interested in orthopaedic devices and wanted to wear my own from at least 10 years old, now being in my mid 50s.
My lifelong desire for the past 45 years finally came true almost 2 years ago when my wife anf I finally came to some compromise about braces, and here they are. I can say that this has been the best present I have ever bought myself. Just sitting down with them on produces indescribable feelings of happiness and of things being right and they are everything that I hoped they would be. Having the braces and wearing them from time to time has certainly helped to bring a lot more equilibrium to my life and I hope to be change from a glass half empty to a glass half full person. When I am wearing them I feel as though the world is right and that the braces belong on me.
I found an orthotics manufacturer near where I live who was willing to produce my braces without any medical need or prescription with payment cash in hand. It was quite weird visiting the orthotist, who did not ask any awkward questions or cause any problems, although I was extremely self conscious. I had a visit for measurements and one trial fitting prior to the braces being finished and all seemed well, but the fitting was quite cursory, perhaps because of the awkward situation, and I only stood up, never sat down in them.
Once I got them home, I started to find that I had got what I paid for, I had chosen this orthotics manufacturer not only because they were local, but also because they quoted a low price. However, as I became familiar with the braces I noted shortcomings in the fit and function. The quality of the braces is not in question, they are well made and from proper materials, but the fit was out in areas such as the location of the knee and hip joints and the shape of the uprights putting pressure on areas, all factors related to the quick measurement and fitting sessions. Luckily I had specified that the braces had adjustable length sections between the ankle and knees and between the knees and the hips so I was able to make the required changes. I have had to.
I am an engineer and have a small home workshop so I have been able to sort all of this work myself, however, in retrospect, I do wish that I had paid the extra and gone to VB and got a set of braces that had been properly fitted from the beginning. However, I must say that I have really enjoyed doing the work on the braces and learning more about the construction of leg braces, reading up on fitting braces and developing new skills in leather work, which is not something I have carried out before.
Wearing the full HKAFO is hard work, especially with the abduction bar fitted. I took a tumble in the early days trying to do swing through locomotion with crutches. Since then I have decided to only use swing to locomotion and have found that this is more stable even if it is more time consuming. I can go without crutches without the abduction bar, but I can only take very small steps and turning around is very slow. Even sitting in a swivel chair and wanting to turn around is very slow because the hip hinges prevent a lot of things you can do whilst wearing KAFOs alone. I can remove the KAFOs from the TLSO if I wish and wear them on their own. Sitting at the computer and deciding I want to lean forward to look at something closer up brings the reminder that the hip hinges do not allow you to bend forward like that, you can only bend to 90 degree, the same with the knee hinges. Getting things from low down cupboards is hard. I tried to pick something off the floor squatting down, you cannot do this as the knee hinges only go to 90 degree or slightly over so you cannot get your body weight stably over your lower legs and you cannot kneel down. They are much more restrictive than I thought they would be. I weighed the braces and they are 14½ lbs, a lot of extra weight to move around when using crutches.
I have written about my experience elsewhere so you may have seen this elsewhere. More picture can be found at my Flickr page.
My lifelong desire for the past 45 years finally came true almost 2 years ago when my wife anf I finally came to some compromise about braces, and here they are. I can say that this has been the best present I have ever bought myself. Just sitting down with them on produces indescribable feelings of happiness and of things being right and they are everything that I hoped they would be. Having the braces and wearing them from time to time has certainly helped to bring a lot more equilibrium to my life and I hope to be change from a glass half empty to a glass half full person. When I am wearing them I feel as though the world is right and that the braces belong on me.
I found an orthotics manufacturer near where I live who was willing to produce my braces without any medical need or prescription with payment cash in hand. It was quite weird visiting the orthotist, who did not ask any awkward questions or cause any problems, although I was extremely self conscious. I had a visit for measurements and one trial fitting prior to the braces being finished and all seemed well, but the fitting was quite cursory, perhaps because of the awkward situation, and I only stood up, never sat down in them.
Once I got them home, I started to find that I had got what I paid for, I had chosen this orthotics manufacturer not only because they were local, but also because they quoted a low price. However, as I became familiar with the braces I noted shortcomings in the fit and function. The quality of the braces is not in question, they are well made and from proper materials, but the fit was out in areas such as the location of the knee and hip joints and the shape of the uprights putting pressure on areas, all factors related to the quick measurement and fitting sessions. Luckily I had specified that the braces had adjustable length sections between the ankle and knees and between the knees and the hips so I was able to make the required changes. I have had to.
- Change the location of the knee and hip hinges.
- Bend the uprights around the knee joints to match my leg shape to relieve pressure on the fibular head.
- Fitted extra aluminium bands higher up on the thighs and moved the cuffs up by about 4” so they sat much closer to my gluteal crease as the cuffs were mid thigh.
- Changed the pelvic band from 2mm aluminium to 3mm stainless steel as it was weak to accommodate an able bodied person and over the first year the rivet holes started to open up.
- Made up a short abduction bar to fit between my ankles to rigidly lock the KAFOs together, either when wearing just the KAFOs or the HKAFO. The real idea of this was to add something to the braces that meant that especially when wearing the full HKAFO that I could not walk at all and needed to use the crutches for all locomotion.
- Added cable release mechanisms to the braces so that each leg can have the knee joints unlocked with a single hand.
- Made an adjustable length section between the hip hinges and the chest strap as the chest strap had moved due to the changes in the knee and hip hinge locations.
I am an engineer and have a small home workshop so I have been able to sort all of this work myself, however, in retrospect, I do wish that I had paid the extra and gone to VB and got a set of braces that had been properly fitted from the beginning. However, I must say that I have really enjoyed doing the work on the braces and learning more about the construction of leg braces, reading up on fitting braces and developing new skills in leather work, which is not something I have carried out before.
Wearing the full HKAFO is hard work, especially with the abduction bar fitted. I took a tumble in the early days trying to do swing through locomotion with crutches. Since then I have decided to only use swing to locomotion and have found that this is more stable even if it is more time consuming. I can go without crutches without the abduction bar, but I can only take very small steps and turning around is very slow. Even sitting in a swivel chair and wanting to turn around is very slow because the hip hinges prevent a lot of things you can do whilst wearing KAFOs alone. I can remove the KAFOs from the TLSO if I wish and wear them on their own. Sitting at the computer and deciding I want to lean forward to look at something closer up brings the reminder that the hip hinges do not allow you to bend forward like that, you can only bend to 90 degree, the same with the knee hinges. Getting things from low down cupboards is hard. I tried to pick something off the floor squatting down, you cannot do this as the knee hinges only go to 90 degree or slightly over so you cannot get your body weight stably over your lower legs and you cannot kneel down. They are much more restrictive than I thought they would be. I weighed the braces and they are 14½ lbs, a lot of extra weight to move around when using crutches.
I have written about my experience elsewhere so you may have seen this elsewhere. More picture can be found at my Flickr page.