Recently, our team was speaking with Chris, a patient of our Southwest Center in Dallas, TX, about his prosthetic journey. Chris uses four Point Designs Digits and the Point Designs thumb. After taking his device home the first time, it just wasn’t working for him. So, in December of 2025, Chris was back in Dallas, collaborating with his prosthetist, Rob, and our team of technicians to figure out what would work best for him. After a bit of trial and error, they wound up moving the thumb piece and suddenly, it was perfect– it is now very functional. Chris is pictured below, on vacation and using his prosthesis to enjoy an ice cream cone.

Chris

Chris: “I’m so protective of my device now – I make sure it’s in great shape, not just because I don’t want it to break, but because I wouldn’t want to be without it for the time it would take Rob and his team to fix it. I can do so much now, and my other hand doesn’t hurt like it used to since I would use it for everything.”

When we heard that, it was music to our ears. Our whole team’s goal is for our patients to be fit with a comfortable, functional device. One of the benefits of having a functional device is that the overuse symptoms people with a limb difference sometimes experience will often go away because they can use both the right and left sides. This wasn’t the first time we’d heard that, but we love hearing it every time.

So, it got us thinking – what else do we love to hear from our patients?

When our patients take on a new challenge and succeed:

From our prosthetist Julian of the Midwest Center in Kansas City, KS: “Within the first two or so years of Gerry having his bilateral amputation, his wife Denice called to tell me he’d just finished laying an 1,800-brick patio.”

Gerry Patio

When our patients figure out what prosthesis looks most pleasing to them:

From one of our center patient coordinators, Cindy: “We had a woman come in who had lost a finger and was absolutely devastated. She wanted to get a passive silicone restoration that looked exactly like the one she’d lost. She couldn’t help but think that everyone she passed was looking at her hand. Her silicone finger looked great, but our prosthetist let her know that while they look very much like a finger, they can sometimes slide off since they don’t have the same harness design as other prosthetic fingers. She gave us a call a few weeks later: ‘Cindy! I lost my finger at a wedding! It slid off!’ Don’t worry, she found it. But when she came in to get it adjusted, she decided she wanted to go with a Naked Prosthetics device instead. In purple. She got over the need to fit in and was like, ‘You know, this is me. This is it.’”

When they have goals and tell us what they are, even if they’re not immediately attainable:

We have patients who were injured on the job and would like to return to work, including fire fighters and truck drivers. Other patients have recreational goals like kayaking (like Karen below), camping or rock climbing. Sometimes we’re able to fit them with a prosthesis that lets them immediately accomplish that goal, while other goals are more long term. But knowing their goals helps us personalize their prosthetic care and understand them more as a person.

Karen-Listing

When our patients get frustrated – but push past it:

Our patient, John: “Once I got home with my device, I was very excited to use it. But then, here comes the frustration — which, my occupational therapist, Becky, had warned me about multiple times. I was going to get frustrated. I’m glad that I did tough through the frustrating days, because to me it’s worth it. I’m still taking the time to get used to this and figure out different ways to do stuff.”

When they need something changed about their device and they speak up:

Like when Chris, mentioned above, didn’t find his device as functional as he wanted, so he worked with his prosthetist to figure out the answer. Our patient Lynda was really pleased with the functionality of her device but found it painful to wear after a few hours. “Before my appointment, I took the time to think about what didn’t feel quite right. Even though the pain was intermittent, I made a mental note to discuss that with my prosthetist.” When she took it into her prosthetist, Mac at our Northwest Center in Portland, OR, he examined her palm and discovered that her prosthesis was pulling on a nerve.

Why would having patients bring their complaints to us make us happy? Because we’re only happy when our patients are happy, and we need them to speak up to tell us what we can do to make their fit as comfortable and functional as possible. Being a prosthesis user is a journey, and we want to be there to support our patients every step of the way.

AndyandPetrus-Listing

Removing pain from people’s everyday lives, watching our patients succeed in their goals, helping them process their limb loss and create an extension of themselves that they find beautiful – this is what keeps us going, even through the challenges we may encounter with insurance providers, the limitations of technology or the difficulties in watching our patients go through hard times. This offer of hope is so rewarding to each member of our team.

If you would like to learn more about this type of holistic prosthetic care and how we don’t just fit our patients with prosthesis, but teach them how to use their devices, please contact us. If you’d like to leave a comment, please do so below.

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