San Angelo woman's bionic leg a marvel of movement
July 6, 2010
SOURCE
SAN ANGELO, Texas — Her leg comes with a remote control.
It’s a C-Leg, a computer-fitted prosthetic leg that Karen Cross has had for about a month and a half, and a source a pride for the staff at West Texas Rehabilitation Center who have worked with her to attain it.
“They do call it a bionic leg,” Cross said.
The remote control helps the mechanical knee adapt to different conditions and movements, such as golfing or biking.
Cross said that’s only one benefit of the leg.
“I can do a lot more,” Cross said.
She can go down stairs and have the knee bend just right, and her step through rough terrain can auto adjust like cruise control through sensors that take readings 50 times per second.
Kelly Martin, Cross’ physical therapist, said the leg would probably be ideal for young people, such as military personnel, who lost a leg due to trauma.
At a therapy session Martin and Cross walked down the hall and down steps and worked on a balancing machine resembling a Wii Fit.
“She needs to learn when to trust it,” Martin said as Cross walked up the hall with a faint hop.
Cross’ old mechanical leg was stiff when she walked, whereas the new leg bends at the knee when the computer tells it to.
Now she can play more freely with her two children, having returned recently from Fiesta Texas and walking around San Antonio.
She gets a reaction almost anywhere she goes.
“It’s fun in the airport,” Cross said. “They’re all, ‘Wow.’”
Students in the third-grade class she teaches at Lamar Elementary are also fascinated, and they love to watch her go down steps at the playground.
Cross had to go to Salt Lake City, Utah to get training with her prosthetist David Light on how to fit and work with the C-Leg.
Light said C-Legs have been around for 20 years.
“They keep adding new things,” he said.
Light, who himself has a prosthetic leg, said his first leg was made of wood, not titanium and aluminum as the C-Leg is now.
He said one new feature in the 2010 model that Cross has is Bluetooth, which allows her to program settings and activate them with a remote control.
“Bluetooth is a big deal,” Light said. “Before, I had to follow her around with a cord.”
The leg also comes with a charger. Cross said she gets 36 hours of battery life for every five hours of charging.
If the battery runs out, the leg stiffens and becomes like a peg leg.
She even has a converter to charge on the road.
“I can charge my leg and my phone at the same time,” Cross said.
Cross lost her leg when she was 13 to cancer, but she still keeps active, even to the point of going through prosthetic legs.
“If Tupperware made a leg, I could break it because I move a lot,” Cross said.
Light said that if something went wrong with Cross’ C-Leg, Otto Bock HealthCare, the German company that makes the leg, will send her a leg on loan that she can return once her old leg is fixed.
The leg costs between $30,000 to $40,000, and she had to have a letter from her physician to get her health care provider to approve her getting the leg.
The new leg is relatively rare, staff at West Texas Rehabilitation have said. Light said he has only one other patient with a C-Leg.
Ben - Just one more reason why I'm cautiously optimistic about this modern age we are just beginning.
