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- Howdy folks and welcome back to You Got This.
I'm Garrett and today we're gonna talk about water.
Go to the pool, go into the beach, get into a hot tub.
There's so many ways to handle this with a prosthetic leg
depends on context,
I've done a bunch of different things.
So the simplest thing if you're enter a pool or a hot tub,
if I'm in the hot tub, I just take my leg off.
You don't need to move around a bunch in hot tub
so it's easier just to take it off
and put it back on when you get out.
Now, living in the mountains,
it gets cold here and getting out of the hot tub,
drying your leg off, putting your leg
or drying your limb off, putting your leg on,
it's cold for a bit.
So that's less than ideal.
But from what I found,
that is the easiest way to do it,
it's the most comfortable
and you don't really miss out on anything.
Go to the pool, it kind of depends,
sometimes I'll take my leg off.
If it's gonna be more we cannot enter the pool,
if I'm gonna be playing around with the kids
and doing stuff, I'll leave it on.
The beach, definitely needed on.
It's just too much trouble to get in and out of the water,
move around in the waves, and all that.
So, there's a bunch of options.
And what I wanna do today is really dive
into kind of the nuances and the subtlety,
pros and cons of these different approaches
and what you might wanna think about.
So the first thing is, the best possible solution,
if you're gonna be, say you're going on a beach vacation,
you're gonna be in the water a bunch.
You ideally wanna have a backup leg,
not just because it's good to have a backup,
in case something goes wrong with your primary,
but because when a leg gets wet,
especially if you're at the ocean,
you wanna rinse it with fresh water afterwards,
and you're gonna lay it out to dry.
Sand will get everywhere and salt water is corrosive,
you definitely want to be able to take your leg apart
and leave it and use a different leg
while that leg is drying.
And so there's a bunch of options here.
Depending on how you get your socket made,
your prosthetist will often make you a check socket,
or a test socket.
They're generally less durable, than your primary socket,
but your prosthetist can usually make them good enough,
they could get by for like a casual day at the pool.
The ocean might get a little tougher
'cause they're not that durable,
but you could talk to your prosthetist
and figure something out.
'Cause usually there's kind of a leftover socket
after you get your real socket.
The other option and this is what I've done more recently,
is you can actually...
Insurance won't pay for an extra socket,
but when you go and you are getting a new leg,
and insurance is covering it,
you can usually ask your prosthetist
about paying cash for them to make
a duplicate socket, right?
So once they've gone through all the trouble
of making the socket,
it's much lower effort for them to just make a copy of it.
In my case I wanna say it was like three or $400
for the extra socket.
Now, early on, you probably don't wanna do that,
because your leg is going to shrink
and change sizes so quickly.
The socket is not gonna last long,
the fits not gonna be great.
But the upside is, because you're getting new
sockets every six months or so,
that first year, year and a half,
you're gonna have some extra older sockets.
Now, they're not gonna fit quite as well
as your primary socket,
but for things like the pool and the beach,
they'll usually fit well enough to get you by,
so that you can use your old sockets
and just add more socks to fill out the extra space
and still get some use out of those old sockets.
So that's an option as well.
(clears throat)
And of course, you can, in some cases use your socket,
but you wanna be really aware
of how that would affect your foot's warranty
'cause most feet are not warrantied for the water,
the ones that are,
are very explicitly labeled as waterproof.
In the case of my foot that I use
for more like things where I know
it can take and get beat up and all that,
the year after I got it, they made it waterproof.
So mine wasn't technically waterproof,
but because the new ones are
and I'm sure it's close enough,
and it's likely not my primary one so, it works.
So there's a lot to it, right?
It looks Simple enough, but when you're in the water
and depends on the type of system you have,
in the case, mostly but I have yet to use my newer one
in the water I don't think I will.
Just because it's more complicated leg,
but you're wearing socks down in here
and you got your liner, water gets in there.
This whole setup unless you're
like a really casual day at pool,
everything is gonna be soaking wet.
So you're gonna get home after say,
at the beach or the pool or whatever
and you're gonna wanna let take it all apart
and lay it out to dry.
All of it.
That means taking the sleeve off,
and in my case rolling this down,
pulling the inner socket out,
now we're down to this.
Even all these little things, it'll get in there somehow.
I don't know how it does it, but it does.
So I will generally,
I'll take my socket off,
and this is hollow, right?
So it gets in there, It's just it gets everywhere.
So now you're down to your foot
and you think you're good, right?
Nope, this thing will be so full of water and sand,
and the sock needs to dry,
you gotta take it apart and this is tedious.
It gets easier with time, and shoe horns.
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So you'll take your foot shell off
and hopefully one of the other things that's key,
is to either have an extra foot shell, you drill holes in,
or just drill holes in your foot shell
so the water can drain out while you're using it,
and they come in handy.
Usually it doesn't drain enough of the water out
and the sand will accumulate in, but it helps.
So you wanna take your foot shell off,
you wanna take the sock off of your foot,
and not much else you can do with the foot.
And you quite literally, in an ideal world,
you don't have to do this
but if you wanna take care of your leg
and you want it to last,
you kinda have to take everything apart and let it air out.
And then the next day, to go back to the beach,
if you're on vacation whatever, or if you live at the beach,
you gotta put it all back together.
So maybe if you live at the beach,
you get a foot that you truly just don't mind beating up,
but you know it can handle it
and you're not worried if it starts to rust or any of that.
Which, speaking of rust,
every foot and leg part I have ever seen,
all of the screws and the set screws, they come with it,
they I don't know why, I'm sure there's a reason,
they are not stainless steel,
so they corrode very easily.
And you can find a place that specializes
in like nuts and bolts and screws,
and buy yourself they're not too expensive,
a bunch of stainless versions and replace all your parts,
which is what I did,
but I don't think I would have done that if...
My dad just happens to be in that industry
and so I mentioned it to him and he said,
yeah, that's easy to do.
So, you can find stainless parts,
so I've swapped every screw on all of my stuff
with stainless parts.
And again, we mentioned this in the last episode,
when you put it back together you wanna use Loctite
and your Torque Wrench.
One time earlier this year,
we are at the beach and I just cut and saw worn out
I was like doing it right every day.
One day, I cut some corners and just threw my leg together
and rushed out the door.
And I ended up struggling to walk on the beach
because my foot starting to fall off,
and I had to get all the way back to the car
without barely able to lift my leg
because if I did, it keep wiggling loose,
by the time I got to the car,
it was almost ready to fall off.
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So take the time to do it right, and use this stuff.
When you do take your leg apart in this
like we discussed last episode,
as long as you only loosen two screws,
and then tighten those back,
your leg will be aligned the way you had it before
and you'll be all set.
What else do we got?
I think that's really it.
Good said, it's a lot about drying parts,
you want to rinse all this with fresh water,
to clean chlorine or the saltwater,
and that'll play a huge part in helping prevent corrosion.
If you do notice some of your screws
or anything starting to rust or corrode a little bit,
you can put a little bit of WD-40 on there
and wipe it off, and clean it off of it,
and that'll help, give it a little more longevity.
But usually these feet, they're pretty damn durable,
you would definitely shorten the life
by using it in the ocean, saltwater that kind of thing.
but more often than not, it'll be able to take it,
and the way I see it, I wanna go to the beach,
I wanna do these things, I wanna have fun,
and as long as you got an extra foot, or socket,
or however it plays out that everybody's different
as you move on and progress
through your leg changing after amputation,
you end up with spare parts, you end up with spare sockets,
you can usually make something work
and if you can't, your prosthetist can usually help you
with a check socket or something like that.
One other thing that is worth mentioning.
I don't know if there's anything you can do about it,
walking on the beach,
especially like loose sand in a prosthetic leg is rough.
Because normally your ankle, will adjust to the sand
and how unlevel it is,
but with a prosthetic foot because you don't have an ankle,
the ankle doesn't really give or flex.
That transfers up to your knee and your hip,
and it can be painful and uncomfortable
walking on loose sand.
And so, we go to the beach,
I definitely try to gravitate towards more packed sand,
and that's helped,
but at the end of the day, get out there have fun,
make the most of it,
and it's gonna be a little more inconvenient
but it still works and you can still get it done.
So that's all we got for today.
Thanks for watching, We'll see you next week,
You Got This.
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