Five Stories About How Prosthetics Change Lives

[Music] as long as prosthesis have been around people have been really focusing on making it look like a hand and move like a hand but our hand is not just a grabber a hand is a touch his touch that engages you with the world is touched that engages you with people a prosthesis without touch is a tool that giving touch we're giving back a hand I worked in a factory setting before I lost my life I was doing some cleaning under out from underneath a shredder type machine and I'm grab material that was in my hand and pulled my hand into the machine I didn't think that I'd ever have the sensation of touch or anything back again and then my prosthetics told me about the research program up here in Cleveland they hope to be able to give me the sense of touch [Music] the research that we've been doing is reconnecting the man to the machine basically learning how to take what the prosthesis feels and translates that the person using it feels it for the brain to feel touch as being their actual hand is really important that we activators stimulate the wires that the brain always used to get from the hand what we do is we implant cuff electrodes and then we apply really tiny amounts of current that activate those wires and that information then goes to the brain so we've been learning how to place this information on that nerve so the brain thinks it's his hand they can feel not just buzzing but also a touch of pressure like somebody putting a finger on their hand and in fact we've been able to see that intensity of the artificial stimulation mimics the intact hand so big blow the first time they put sensation on everything it was just incredible it was like wow it could actually feel an area in my hand a certain area tingling and vibrations and stuff small soft block I said just an incredible feeling bringing the prosthetic home with the sensory hand on it and being able to feel and everything's changed life considerably it's just little things that people take for granted brushing teeth to be able to hold the toothpaste and be able to squeeze and tell how hard I'm squeezing this I don't squeeze and I go every place it makes it a lot easier we're at the point where subjects can use their prosthesis at home they can have sensation while they're at home it makes them two-handed again it brings back their hand and makes them whole [Music] Musha La Salette and she was 2 years old from landmine I thought that I should do something for her dr. Turk I Chi roquette is working with the world's first elephant hospital located in Thailand since it opened more than four thousand injured and sick elephants have been treated I'm the first one who invented the artificial leg for the elephant [Music] using his knowledge as an orthopedic surgeon dr. touch I designed musha's artificial limb when she was just a baby accounting for the elephant's weight and size as she is grown pressure on the prosthetic has increased causing it to break so a new one is created every few years this is a challenge for me too every time we fix admit you improve it this must study stronger please know in the textbook sometimes try an error when she obeys me careful can be and she know where the candy she use her trying to go into the pocket she know I did operation on her food of 15 years ago but can she remember me she liked to come closer to me she showed a sigh of salute our happy at least means so much for her she can lead normal life as she should be [Music] [Applause] shipshape hi guys hi bubbles hi Walter hey dolly hey mama hi baby hi Albie Jenny's farm didn't start out with animals that were missing limbs it just happened to come to her farm and she felt well prosthetic technologies helped me it could certainly help them I can't imagine not having an artificial leg because I lost my leg at ten and I'm quite used to it it's thanks to medical science that I'm able to live this normal life and for these animals I want no different for them hi Felix what goes on it Woodstock Farm Sanctuary on daily basis we're home to right now around 300 rescued farm animals they've all come from bad places and they get the veterinary care the health care that they need on a daily basis he's feisty can you come help me with Felix they're all actually in the front pasture little Felix came to us as a as a baby lamb and he had come from a big sheep farm and overnight some sort of predator had gotten in and they found little Felix with his leg chewed off and so I spoke to my prosthetist the gentleman who makes my legs Erik many clinicians would have went out to the farm I don't have any experience with fitting prosthetics on animals very few people in the country do so I figured if I could take what knowledge that I do have and apply it to the animal like we get them to utilize a prosthesis and it wasn't until we got hooked up with SUNY New Paltz and their 3d printing lab that we were able to make something pretty cool and cutting-edge for him seeing him walk on the leg was absolutely amazing from my limited interactions with him he isn't necessarily the most outgoing sheep in the world it's actually very sheepish but what he ended up doing was he started running away from us which was amazing we were just jumping for joy that he could actually get up and run keep up with his flock he looked like he was a very happy sheep if we could do this more on other animals we wouldn't have to you know put them down most of the world doesn't fully understand it they think of them as just farmed animals but we hope that that changes and that's part of the magic of what we do here they get pastures to roam in access to the Sun and to the grass they live life the way they were intended to live there's no greater joy [Music] when I was a kid I always played with Legos I built cars planes motorbikes but now I built an arm [Music] meet David Aguilar my name is David Aguilar I am from Andorra and I'm 18 years old when David was born his right arm hadn't fully developed this is the my right arm growing up it was quite annoying because I received a lot of commentaries like oh you don't have a hand or something like that and while some would see this as a disadvantage David is just a regular kid he likes EDM he goes by the name hand solo get it he has an embarrassing dad he goes to school this is my school and he can open doors with his Lego arm so cool growing up he was obsessed with Lego so much so he wanted to make it a part of him literally I build my first prosthetic arm when I was 9 years old and I build it around my hand it started being a boat unfortunately the Lego bricks weren't strong enough and it wasn't for another nine years till he would try again this is mk1 this is LEGO Technic it's like the sophisticated part of Lego I can do push-ups with this thing so it's quite strong when I first build the arm and it was fully functional I went to the mirror and I was like that model the mk1 only took five days to build of course like any good adventure he got straight to work on an upgrade and this is mk2 it has a battery that works like a biceps and it has this fishing cable that ties up in here when I fix this to my shoulder I can do this and the arm closes I can stop in the middle and move it by myself when I first brought this they were all really amazed because how can somebody create a hand out of Legos I was a normal guy and when I build the yarn everyone was like you're awesome you're you're really smart they told me they are really proud to be to be my friends it's amazing it's not every day that you'll see an amputee walking along with a peg leg and then begin to tap-dance my name is Evan Ruggiero and I am a one-legged tap dancer it's fun I sort of tap dancing when I was six years old it's something that I fell in love with I knew that tap dancing would always be something that I wanted to do for the rest of my life when I was 19 years old I had a pain in my right leg I was diagnosed with osteosarcoma bone cancer and on May 21st 2010 I had my right leg amputated above the knee I was devastated I just thought having a tap dancer be diagnosed with cancer in his leg I remember my tap teacher showing me footage of peg leg Bates who was a great tap dancer way back in the day you know had it not been for that footage I would have never thought that I could tap dance again [Music] when I put that pegleg on for the first time and I started making those rhythms I felt a part of me that came back and I felt like my old self I was able to teach myself how to dance again I just let muscle memory kick back in and I tried not to think about making a step hop step with my peg leg with just peg hop peg and changing around the vocabulary of the step I performed in New York City there's definitely been an audible gasp in the audience once or twice while I walked out on stage tap dancing is a very personal it's very much about the emotion a lot of times you can tell when a tap dancer is happy by the way he's dancing despite having a diagnosis with cancer I was able to overcome that and I was able to go back to the things that I loved the most so it's always gonna be a very different emotion that is tied to the artform you [Applause]

Channel: Great Big Story

Views: 35,909

Rating: 4.9574056 out of 5

Keywords: great big story, gbs, lag, documentary, docs, great big reels, human condition, life-changing, nature & animals, biography & profle, tech & science, prosthetics

Id: xLqYL2nGwQc

Length: 14min 10sec (850 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 08 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

This has absolutely nothing to do with bionicle. It should go to R/lego

[u/TeckFire]

This is Mankind’s first step to becoming Bionicles

First we make prosthetics

Then we attach them

Then we cover ourselves with them

Soon we BECOME them

And then, after boarding a gigantic robot, we are transformed... our history is lost to the time before time, and we end up hearing about the Great Spirit

Like it or not, this is the next step of human evolution

[u/Moargoth]

How do I go kaita with my girl?