We were struck by the fact that everywhere you
looked there were amputees.
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FDR Memorial |
I have a close friend who lost the use of his legs
in a tank in Viet Nam. Gerry says he has
probably gone through five wheelchairs in the 43 ensuing years. When I asked
what changes he has seen he stressed that materials allow the weight to be
about 30 pounds now, against an earlier version, which weighed 65 pounds. FDR, recovering from a weakness from his bout
with Polio had a chair that is depicted in his Washington, DC Memorial as weighing
close to 80 pounds before it was captured in marble.
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Eric Lorence |
As to why there has been a decrease in the number of
spinal injuries and an increase in the number of surviving amputees, Gerry
speculated that the Armored Vehicles and Humvees are better able to absorb
shocks from IEDs than the tanks of Viet Nam.
The explosives have also become better, as have medical treatment
protocols and facilities. Warriors who would have died from the same injuries
in earlier wars are surviving to be fitted with prostheses and reenter productive
society. Those who might have died from
spinal injuries are living.
And competing.
![]() |
The Blade Runner |
As I write this the Paralympics are ongoing in
London. The name comes, not from the
fact that the contestants have fewer limbs, but from the fact that they are “on
an ongoing parallel path with the Olympics”.
The idea started in 1946 as a vehicle for WWII injured veterans to
regain dignity and honor. Now open to
all manner of physically handicapped persons, including “The Blade Runner”
Oscar Pistorius, who also ran in the Olympics, it has become a showcase for literally
more than a thousand contestants.
![]() |
Jerrod Fields |
In my early days in the Navy I had an engineering
friend who was working on his Doctorate at MIT, trying to invent a
mind-operated arm. Dave’s dream is now
everyday reality and the hands and arms, and occasional other body parts are
more likely to be myoelectric driven than driven by cables. And the materials have affected the weight of
prostheses too. As with Gerry’s
wheelchair, which can pop off its wheels and store easily in a plane or car,
the artificial legs, arms, feet and hands, contain carbon rather than just metal,
strong and light, allowing ease of movement.




To paraphrase Dickens, “God bless them, every one.”
On a lighter note, my next post will describe a
recent trip to a Neil Diamond concert, where the audience contained fans whose
ages ranged from seven to more than Neil’s seventy years. Oh, oh, oh, times have never been so good… so
good…so good…so good!
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