GIMPY SUMMER 2005 Suzanne Tandoc, Byron Morgenroth, and Scott Rome of California Pacific Medical Center and the Quilt! _____________________________________________________________________________ What’s Inside... The Stumps ‘R Us Quilt Raffle Winners! Turn the page Stumps R Us coffers are considerably fuller now thanks to the and find out!!!! extraordinary talent and generosity of long standing Stumps member Priscilla Busch. Priscilla designed, created and donated the exqui- site handmade quilt that was raffled off during the June 4th picnic. All 100 available tickets were promptly sold; Bryon Morgenroth of California Pacific Medical Center was holding the lucky ticket and is now the owner of this beautiful quilt. The quilt pattern, called "Log Cabin", has a different patchwork design on each side and is made from rich fabrics in purple and blue tones. Priscilla not only incorporated the Stumps R Us logo into the quilt, but also patches with intricate and subtle designs of different type of prostheses. Every stitch of the hand quilting is perfect and a marvelous combination of Priscilla's creativity, dedication, craftsmanship and humor. Priscilla was introduced to the art of quilt making in 1969 by Joyce Wilcox, the mother of her high school boyfriend. She was in awe of Mrs. Wilcox's ability to create something beautiful from scraps of fabric and decided, without any prior experience or training, to create one herself. That first quilt took her three years to complete; by the time she opened her own quilt shop in 1977, she and her partner could produce a handmade quilt in one month. In addition to Stumps R Us, Priscilla has donated over 12 quilts to various charitable organizations as fundraisers. Although the quilt shop is now closed, Priscilla can still be convinced to accept orders for custom quilts by contacting her at [email protected]. Priscilla and her husband Robert have been active members of Stumps R Us for over six years and often bring friends and family members with them to various events. She and Robert have two terrific children (Sydney, age 21 and Austin, age 24), two dogs, two cats and one tortoise. She and Robert enjoy traveling and always have great stories to share about their adventures. Thanks Priscilla! Your quilt is wonderful, and so are you! …C.P. Julie Chandler 2 Running Against The Wind A double-leg amputee and his high-tech prosthetics are blazing a trail into able-bodied sports. Will they be wel- comed? The jaw-dropping performance of a teenage sprinter from South Africa named Oscar Pistorius is raising a question once barely imaginable: can a double-leg amputee run fast enough to qualify for the able-bodied Olympic Games? And if he did, would he be allowed to compete? Oddly enough, the first question may be easier to answer: "I have no doubt that Oscar will eventually run fast enough to compete in an able-bodied world champi- onship," says U.S. sprinter Brian Frasure. "He could be ready to qualify for South Africa in time for the 2008 Olympics," Frasure adds, pointing out that Oscar, barely 18, is at least 10 years away from his physical peak. No one-perhaps not even Pistorius himself-is in a better position than Frasure to assess the young athlete's potential and just how far he might go. It was Frasure's world record that Pistorius shattered in the 200-meter dash at the Athens Paralympics last September, becom- ing the first leg amputee (congenital or otherwise) to run the distance in less than 22 seconds. What is more, it was Frasure, a 34-year-old clinical prosthetist, who fitted and helped design the high-tech carbon-fiber "feet"-as athletes call their artificial running legs-that Pistorius wore while streaking past him on the track. "I should have waited until this year to make them," Frasure, who has since retired from competition, says with a rueful smile. Pistorius, born with a congenital disorder that left him without feet, has been competing for little more than a year. "I went from a time of 24.8 seconds in March 2004 to 21.97 at Athens," he says, an improvement that Frasure described as "unheard of." The able-bodied world record for 200 meters is 19.32 seconds, and the bottom-bracket qualifying time for a sprinter going to the Olympics would be 20.75 seconds, just 1.22 seconds more than Pistorius's Athens time. "I can go a lot further-my times should get a lot better," Pistorius said in Athens. A BARRIER BROKEN: South Africa's Oscar Pistorius set a new world record during a men's 200- meter race at the Athens 2004 Paralympic Games on 21 September 2004. True to his word, in February Pistorius shaved more than a tenth of a second off his newly minted record. Equipped with new and improved prosthetics, he was expecting to run even faster in mid- May at the inaugural Paralympics World Cup in Manchester, England, where he will also compete in the 100-meter dash [for results of that event, see http://www.paralympic.org]. In both events he will come up against U.S. Paralympic superstar Marlon Shirley, the only athlete in disabled sports to have a dollar income from corporate sponsorships that's counted in six fig- ures and the only leg amputee ever to run the 100-yard dash in less than 11 seconds. Shirley admires Pistorius but does not think they should be running in the same race, even if technically they are competing in different disability categories. "The length of his legs"-and the fact that they 3 can be adjusted, adding distance to his strides-"gives Oscar an extreme advantage biomechani- cally over the other [single amputee] athletes in the field," Shirley comments. As a single-leg amputee, Shirley cannot augment his height. It may seem paradoxical that a double amputee could have an advantage over an athlete with at least one fully functional limb. Advances in materials technology have greatly enhanced perform- ance levels in disabled sports. The current generation of L-shaped running prostheses are made of carbon-fiber composites-first used in the aerospace industry-which combine great strength and variable stiffness with relatively low mass. Attached to a silicon-lined socket fitted over the residual limb, these "feet" are also extremely efficient springs, returning nearly all of the energy stored when the runner's weight pushes them against the ground. Yet Frasure points out that a prosthetic foot is far less powerful than a natural limb. The prosthetic returns about 95 percent of the energy put into it when "loaded," whereas the muscles in a human leg will return more than 200 percent, he explains. Biomechanical engineers agree, but if you add the adjustable-height factor, suddenly the calculation becomes more complicated. Which is why, if and when Pistorius qualifies one day for a top-level event, some able-bodied ath- letes and organizers may object. "There is no existing ruling on this question, either forbidding or allowing it," says Istvan Gyulai, general secretary of the Monaco-based International Association of Athletics Federations, which establishes qualifying criteria. Even money says Pistorius is going to rewrite the rules. -MARLOWE HOOD PHOTO: ALEXANDROS VLACHOS/EPA/LANDOV Another Stump The Prosthetist answer from Julie Chandler & Wayne Koniuk. Note: These questions and anwers (and more!) can be found on the www.stumps.org website ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Kimberly Peterson in Oakdale, MN...Prosthesis can be made without liners, silicone or otherwise. Although most people are not allergic to silicone, it sounds like you may be. Does your liner have a locking mechanism attached to it? If so, maybe you need to try a different brand of liner. Or, maybe discuss the possibility of a pelite liner or no liner (this is called a hard socket desgn) or a custom made silicone liner with your prosthetist. There are definitely alternatives to the kind of itching you're describing and no reason why you should just grin and bear it. Many of our patients really like the Renegade Foot, made by Freedom Innovations.. It is designed for active amputees, and seems to be minimal failure with them. It sounds like something you might want to try. (This is the same foot Chad Crittenden of Survivor used) The manufacturer offers a free 30 day trial, so there's nothing to lose by giving it a "run". Have you worn your heel height adjustable foot while hiking? We have patients who adjust the angle of the foot to make it easier to walk up/down inclines. You might want to try this and see if its beneficial or not. Good luck! Julie Chandler <[email protected]> 4 Prometheus -A Support Fellowship Made from Sand and Blood My tale is one full of such sarcastic irony (and strange punctuation) that even Ernest Hemingway might appreciate it as a real-life answer the The Snows of Kilimanjaro. I was 16 when I noticed a blister on the bottom of my foot. I am not diabetic and had no reason to fear such maladies, so without much parental supervision or care I went on about the business of being a teenager: dating, fretting about pimples, and working part time on weekends. About a year later I found myself in the hospital getting a summer's worth of intravenious antibiotics for an infection that had wound its way into my bone. I spent the next two summers in the same way…not exactly a break to write about, but a period I have spoken of much more often than any other period in my life.