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- Welcome back I'm Garrett and this is, You Got This.
Today we are going to talk about your basic
suction prosthetic legs.
If you've watched recent episodes in the past,
you've seen how quickly and easily
I can take off my new leg, because it doesn't have a sleeve.
It just has a button. And I pull it off.
With suction systems though,
you got a sleeve and it's bulkier.
I mean, you can see here's my leg.
You can see the extra material between the socket,
the sleeve, all of that.
That said it's simple, it's functional.
It gets the job done without moving parts. They're great.
So that said, I wanted to kinda show
what's involved with taking one of these on and off,
because taking it on and off,
you probably aren't gonna do it a whole bunch.
So I roll that down.
I've added, this could be like a tee shirt sleeve
or anything in this case I've used
a part from an old system, I had,
I had a whole bunch of these.
I just peeled it off and then use electrical tape
to hold it on down here at the bottom.
Oh no, that's going to be hard to go back on but...
So the electrical tape holds it on.
So this protects the sleeve from the carbon.
So it doesn't get holes in it and wear out,
because when your knee bends,
it stretches and expands over that.
And eventually it fails.
You get new sleeves every six months or so
give or take they're designed to wear out
just part of the deal.
So that's it. So then it comes off, no pen or anything.
I have a bunch of socks on in this case,
because this is an older socket. My leg is shrunk.
So the socks fill up the extra space in the socket.
In this case so this sleeve is pretty long,
which is what I prefer because they stay on better
because you get more connection, more surface area,
more coverage and this is going to take me a second.
So we'll look at,
this is one of the longer sleeves I've got,
this One's probably still pretty long,
but you can see it's got about an extr inch and a half,
two inches that go up your thigh and give you a better seal
because there's more surface area.
And so that means you're less likely that when you sit down
that like a small gap open, just cause
it just happens. It flexes.
And then a gap opens releases the air pressure
that you so carefully had when you put it on
and you got to kinda readjust, roll down your sleeve,
put your leg really back in, roll your sleeves back up.
So shorter ones are nice in that
less of your leg is covered up.
So with issues like sweat and temperature and heat,
it's nicer to wear less just like wearing
shorts versus wearing pants.
Same kinda difference.
However, in this case, there's a big trade off
because you lose a little bit of security.
A good friend, he was saying he keeps two sets.
So he has one set of sleeves.
Oh sorry, liners, not sleeves
liners that he cuts really short.
So they're just above the top of the socket,
which in his case, because it's not suspension,
his is vacuum, basically, that's a security.
So the shorter your liner,
let me get this right.
The shorter, your liner is
the less surface area you have on your body.
So if you're sweating and only this much is in contact,
it's not gonna take much for it to slip off.
Whereas if it goes all the way up your leg,
a lot more sweat and slippage
has to happen for it to come off.
And so in his case, he keeps two sets,
one set short so that you can wear it around the house
or when he knows he's not gonna be sweating.
And then if he's going to go on a long run
or do something really active,
he wears the really long ones.
It's hotter, but it gives you a better fit.
And so that's the main benefit there.
So longer sleeves give you a better fit, but they're hotter
kind of the same thing with your liners,
depending on your system.
Here's my current kind of daily driver and you'll see,
it goes up pretty high. I haven't cut 'em.
I've left them the same length.
And then if you compare these two,
you'll see, got an extra couple inches here
on these liners versus the old ones,
because the old ones, these were more reliant on the sleeve
and the sleeve would come up high enough.
And it wasn't a problem.
So that's kinda the quick rundown here's Mac.
Hey Mac, you wanna say hi, come here. Nope.
Anyways, that's Mac.
That's the quick rundown on
suction based suspension systems
and that's it for this week.
Thanks for watching I'm Garrett.
And you've got this.
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