This past week, we began to narrow down the ideas that we wanted to work with Dr. Vargas on, and we began to look further into the background behind each of the ideas. Accompanied by clinical observations were discussions with Dr. Vargas on how these designs could be implemented and how they present in his clinics. For the adjustable ankle-foot orthosis project idea (AFO), we observed consults with cerebral palsy, spina bifida, and neuromuscular disorder patients that used AFOs. We discussed ease of use, frequency of AFO changes, and efficacy of the device. To implement a novel AFO, we have also been looking into different joint types that we could implement to allow the AFO to rotate around different axes.
A picture of one patient’s night time AFOs that I got from their parents with permission.
We have also discussed the idea of a bionic arm with Dr. Vargas to improve on the current mechanical prosthetic upper limb design. We want to discuss more with Dr. Vargas the main reasons for his desire to move to an electronic design, though, because this will affect our design. For example, if his main goal is to decrease the amount of force the child must apply to the arm to control its opening and closing, a purely mechanical design that facilitates this process may be possible. We have been lucky enough to meet with David Melendez, who is currently working with Dr. Vargas on prosthetics, to discuss where he is in designs and directions he could see the project going as well including considerations we need to prioritize. One problem we foresee with this project is getting Dr. Vargas and Mr. Melendez on the same page, however. They have different ideas of which design is best for production and patient use, so we will need to work with both of them to create a design that can be easily reproduced and provides maximum benefit to patients.
Mechanical arm models that Mr. Melendez currently has. We hope to modify this design to make it bionic or improve the mechanical design.
As far as training is concerned, it has been difficult to deal with injury in Costa Rica because of my limited access to recovery modalities and therapies. I have been doing what I can and trying to get back to running in a smart way. For now, my training has consisted of doing all of my easy runs and workouts on the elliptical, which is definitely not as fun as running unfortunately, but I am staying fit the best I can and doing rehab exercises at Smart Fit and on the Terrace when I have time! I have also started my secondary medical school applications after a short weekend of celebration for finishing my primaries. Back to work!