A nun, a motorcycle enthusiast, a grocery worker, and a teenager walk into a classroom...
It sounds like the beginning of a joke—but today, in the School of Physical Therapy, these folks are here to lend invaluable perspective to a new crop of students in assistant professor of Physical Therapy Bruce Elliott’s and adjunct faculty member Timothy Curran’s Prosthetics and Orthotics classes. “By far, this is the highlight of the semester,” says Curran. “When you get into practice and see patients with limb loss, you’re not going to have the chance to ask open-ended questions.”
The four guests of the program are eager to answer those open-ended questions. “I’m impressed by your good questions and attentiveness. I’m a teacher, so I know when you’re listening,” says Sister Maureen Lewis, SND deN, a feisty octogenarian who, at 81, lost her right leg to a soft tissue sarcoma. “Eighty-one is kind of old to get hit with something like this.” Despite the setback, Lewis has persisted with her active lifestyle thanks to a prosthetic leg she has named “Betsy.” Lewis uses a wheelchair when she is not wearing her prosthesis, but doesn’t care for it: “[the chair] makes me feel more handicapped than I am.”
“You have to make friends with it!” Lewis says of the limb, which she has nicknamed ‘Betsy’.
At the center of another student cluster, Noah Therrien describes the life-changing repercussions of his limb loss, the result of a drug-fueled motorcycle accident. Sober since the 2009 wreck, Therrien, a father of three, credits the accident for his life’s positive transformation: “If you told me now you could put my leg back on but I have to take my old life back, I would say ‘no thanks.’ I have a good life now.”
An experienced mechanic, Therrien has modified his prosthesis multiple times, including adding stiff side panels to make the limb work for him. “When I saw the first design,” he confesses, “I said, this is the stupidest design I’ve ever seen.” Today, he shows off a temporary repair that he made over the weekend—with duct tape.
A dog owner, Therrien’s active lifestyle provided motivation through the difficult process of learning to walk with a prosthesis. “In the beginning, just having [the prosthesis] hurts. You have to get used to it. Weight bearing was the hardest part. Snowblowing was actually my best physical therapy—using a 200-lb machine, slipping from side to side in the winter from hell, cleaning up my backyard so the puppy could go for a walk, was really how I learned to walk again.”
In another group, Kevin Zukowsky, 44, discusses the challenges he encountered when navigating the American health insurance bureaucracy as he learned to live with a prosthetic leg. “The insurance companies are only going to pay for so much rehab,” he tells the group of students. “The classes are never long enough—forty minutes isn’t long enough to learn the kinds of skills you need.”
Kevin, who underwent an above-knee amputation following a motorcycle accident, has gone through three feet, five knees, and 15-16 sockets since losing his leg.
Another visitor has a very different story: Shaun McLaughlin, a cheerful teenager, was born without a leg, possibly a result of amniotic banding (in which fibers from the amniotic fluid tangle around a portion of a developing fetus). Conveniently, Shaun’s mother, Sara McLaughlin, was already a physical therapist: “That really helped in terms of knowing what to expect with a prosthesis!” she says, grinning at her son, who grins back. They are both here to talk about the process of growing through childhood with a prosthesis. Shaun goes through about two limbs per year as he grows.
Shaun McLaughlin, an active student, is also a wrestler. He removes his prosthetic leg when he competes.
“As the parent of an amputee and as a physical therapist,” Sara observes, “The relationship between the patient, the vascular surgeon, and the prosthetist is based on listening and meeting patients’ needs. Every patient has different goals. You need to find out what encourages each patient.” For Shaun, it might be wrestling; for other participants in the limb loss forum, that goal might be independence; capability; a return to a favorite pursuit. One trait unites them: the urge to give their perspectives, knowledge, and experience to the cause of better physical therapy education.
Dr. Elliott provides this final statement about the event: “The purpose of the interview day is to teach my students to view each patient through the uniqueness of their own personal situation, as opposed to reacting to some type of unconscious conditioning. I really try to cultivate the active listener in each of my students by getting them to understand the message of the speaker, all while remaining non-judgmental and patient. The ultimate goal of this exercise is to have my students start thinking about empathy and mindfulness for their future encounters with different patient populations.”