Waiting For an Arm and a Leg

Thinking Through Every Step

When a soldier loses a leg, she spends hours in physical therapy simply learning to stand. Stockwell started out on crutches. Next she stood using two canes. Then one. She stood on one leg. She stood and threw a ball. Finally, she stood on a C-Leg and hobbled down some parallel bars. In time, she walked free of bars. Then she pulled her seated physical therapist around the room, harnessed like a horse with some long stretchy Therabands. Running is the last step, the ultimate sign of the wearer´s success at managing body-machine mechanics. She had tried to run on a leg without an artificial knee, which forced her to kick with a circular eggbeater motion. The effort exhausted her.

Her prosthetist, Elliot Weintrob, had another idea. One brisk day in early spring last year, Weintrob, Stockwell and her husband, Dick, who is also a soldier, drove to a track in northern Virginia. Stockwell slipped into a socket consisting of an Ossur Total Knee attached to a bouncy Ossur Flex-Run Foot, a spring shaped like a large upside-down question mark. The knee could swing forward freely but did not have the C-leg´s ability to catch and lock if she started to fall.

"I'm scared," Stockwell said to her husband. She tucked some hair behind her ear.

"You can do it," he replied softly. They walked to a middle lane and he whispered in her ear, "Take off!"

She took six choppy long steps, her prosthetic leg flapping forward. Out of habit, she made the eggbeater motion. Weintrob pointed this out.

"I feel better," she said hopefully. She started again, an awkward rise and collapse to her gait. She stopped, her face flushed, tendrils of hair twirling around her face. She started again. You could tell it hurt by the quick, short steps she took, her arms pinched against her body. She ran like she had stubbed her toe-over and over again.

Eventually, she got the hang of it. Months later, she managed to make her leg work well enough to compete in road races and triathlons, where she uses an arm-cranked bike. Last fall, inspired by her experiences, Stockwell began studying prosthetics at a Minnesota college, all the while convinced that her chosen field will ultimately become obsolete. A century from now, she says excitedly, prosthetics won´t be necessary: Doctors will be regenerating limbs!

At the track last spring, though, her back was sore, her backside was chafed, and she was tired of thinking about where to place her left leg next. "Every step," she said. "I think about every step."

Suzanne Sataline is a Wall Street Journal reporter in Boston.