Education Day

Day two in the books! The day opened with some amazing lectures on advanced prosthetic rehab. Jon Batzdorff, team leader and prosthetist, put together quite a team! Chris Fantini, prosthetist from the VA, started the lectures with reports of prosthetic technology advancements and reminded us all to be creative with patients' goals and our resources! Laura Burgess, physical therapist from England, followed to teach us about preparing for prosthetic running. A great foundation is SO IMPORTANT for advanced activities and she told us how to get it done! Jon educated the group on how to design appropriate sockets and alignment for transfemoral running to keep the patient healthy and happy! I followed with a bit about transtibial and transfemoral running. I love speaking about prosthetic running. It felt like Christmas morning for me! :-) Mark Spence, prosthetist from Australia,

finished up with a lecture on transtibial socket fabrication and alignment for running with some fabulous visuals to make sure the crowd understood! "The crowd" was filled with Ukrainian prosthetists, physical therapists, technicians, and patients. They are all so eager to learn from us, but we are also learning so much from them! Tomorrow I start to teach them about exercising with a prosthesis and Laura will burn their core. I was crazy enough to agree to allow them to lead ME in exercises on Thursday......... Should be interesting! :-) My best part of the day? One patient was telling me about his interest in adaptive Crossfit. I told him that he should follow my friend Jared Bullock on social media as he posts about adaptations for athletes missing a limb. The patient answered, "Oh, you mean Red?" That is right! Jared's friends call him Red. Apparently, they already know each other through social media! AMAZING! If you are a past patient of mine reading this, please always remember that the world is watching and you are inspiring to us all! I attached a picture of the lawn where we will work out tomorrow and a hilarious poster I found with old school exercises. Here's hoping we step it up a notch from those exercises tomorrow! ;-)