If the shoe fits, wear it. If it doesn’t just make something out of plaster, string, and duct tape.

Things have been getting a little more creative in the orthopedic clinic now that we’re nearing the end of the orthopedic patients.  For the most part we have had plenty of the supplies that we need, but the past month we haven’t had a physical therapist, and we have run out of these post-operative braces for club feet called Dennis Brown Bars.   So me and the occupational therapist have been doing our best to give our patients physical therapy (it was interesting!) and I’ve been devising a way to make these bars that we need…

All kids that have been treated for club feet need to wear bracing until they are about 3 or 4 years old, because the deformity will continue to cause the feet to grow inward.  So it is important for the long term success of the casting technique and surgeries that we be able to provide these braces for them.  We ran out of a particular size of brace and shoe that goes with the brace about a month ago.   Since then I have been on a search for someone in town to make these braces for me.  I thought I had a good option with a man that makes prosthetic legs, but unfortunately I found out that the reason he had not brought me the braces was because he had become sick and passed away.  So we gave our condolances and continued the search.

The only other prosthetic maker in town was at the university hospital, so my translator,  Arsene and I headed to the hospital hoping to return with some braces and shoes.  But after an hour of back and forth with promises that they could make the bars and shoes in under and hour, all for the low price of $20….it was discovered that no, we had to go find special shoes in the market, and they would then charge us twenty bucks to screw them in to a 5 cent piece of plastic.  Hmm…no.  Back to the drawing board.  After a fruitless day of looking for shoes in the market, I decided to just go ahead and try to make the bars and shoes myself.

My poor unsuspecting patient was a little 2 year old who already doesn’t like the mean yovo’s such as myself, because we put him in torture devices such as casts.  So we didn’t start off well, but eventually we got him to hold still long enough to mold some splinting material around his feet to make little foot holders.  Then it was up to deck 7 to the workshop to cut some wood and attach the foot holders at the right degree of rotation.   I f0und about 3 engineers who were more than willing to help me out with that.  Then back down to the clinic, where we fastened the shoes on with velcro, and after a small crying spell, it seemed to fit him fairly well.

So here is the finished product. 

The only thing I can really say about it is it’s functional.   I told my friend Jana, the PT who is also a bracing extraordinaire, about the new brace.  She decided that a fitting slogan for a brace such as this was, “If the shoe fits, wear it.  If it doesn’t, just make something out of plaster, string, and duct tape.”    I don’t have plans for mass production yet, but we’ll see.