Cool? Yes.  Practical? Functional? Not for all amputees.

The world’s first human testing of a mind-controlled artificial limb is ready to begin. A joint project between the Pentagon and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), the Modular Prosthetic Limb will be fully controlled by sensors implanted in the brain, and will even restore the sense of touch by sending electrical impulses from the limb back to the sensory cortex.  Last month APL announced it was awarded a $34.5 million contract withDARPA, which will allow researchers to test the neural prosthesis in five individuals over the next two years.

We’ve been reporting on major advances in artificial limbs for a while now, but this is the holy grail of prosthetic technology. Phase III testing – human subjects testing – will be used to tweak the system, both improving neural control over the limb and optimizing the algorithms which generate sensory feedback. The Modular Prosthetic Limb (MPL) is the product of years of prototype design – it includes 22 degrees of motion, allows independent control of all five fingers, and weighs the same as a natural human arm (about nine pounds). Patients will control the MPL with a surgically implanted microarray which records action potentials directly from the motor cortex.

Researchers plan to install the first system into a quadriplegic patient; while amputees can be outfitted with traditional prostheses, the MPL will be the first artificial limb that can sidestep spinal cord injury by plugging directly into the brain. This isn’t the first brain-controlled interface to be used in humans – we’ve previously reported on Braingate, a system that uses brain impulses to control computer cursors and restore communication to locked-inpatients. But the MPL will offer the first hard-wired neural control of bionic body parts, whether lost to injury or neurodegenerative disease.

Make sure you read the whole thing. Pretty cool, but realistically speaking someone like me will never get something like this.  Much like hand transplant surgery, I only foresee this going to a double arm amputee.   This isn’t exactly a “go enjoy the great outdoors” type of prosthetic either. Give this arm to me and I guarantee I’ll have it broken in a week just working around the house (can you use it as a hammer?)  My body powered prosthesis has a Kevlar-esque harness, steel cables, and a carbon fiber socket and I still break it all the time.  (Snowboarding season is particularly hard on my prosthetic. I had to repair it with ski binding hardware in Aspen last winter.)  Please understand I’m not dumping on this prosthesis for the sake of dumping on it. Advances like this are great for amputees.  But they’re not going to help all amputees.  Technology like this is extremely expensive, extremely finicky, and not very durable.  Hence the reason my expensive Myoelectric arm stays in a box in my attic and never sees the light of day.

This weekend at the Lumberjack World Championships in Hayward, WI I won my 8th log rolling world title. Here is the final match, minus the second fall Darren Hudson got on me (for some reason it wasn’t filmed).

I think I did a pretty good job of covering everything that I wanted to say when I was given my award.  Well, almost everything.  I would also like to say something how the VA health care system once again failed in its obligation to provide me with the necessary care and nearly cost me 2.5 months of training and my 8th log rolling world title.

After spending Monday and Tuesday in our local (private, non-VA) hospital with my wife as she gave birth to our first child, I finally succumbed to my deteriorating condition and complete exhaustion and went to VA urgent care in Minneapolis.  That night I spent 6 hours waiting because they apparently they ran out of doctors and had to call some in (they then had the audacity to ask me to be “extra nice” to the doctor because and was only supposed to work on weekends but got called in midweek).  I had trouble understanding how they were “backed up” when there were only four of us waiting.

Despite the fact I had been bitten by three ticks two months earlier and had nearly all the symptoms of Lymes (and was suggesting the entire time that I have Lymes) I was sent home empty handed pending an out-of-state blood test (that may or may not reveal that I have Lymes Disease, even if I have it).   Had I not consulted with medical professionals outside the VA and acquired the necessary antibiotics my condition would not have improved enough to compete in the Lumberjack World Championships, let alone win another log rolling world title.

As much as I would like to give the VA the benefit of the doubt, I find myself unable to do so based on their prior track record of being unable to provide me with the necessary medical care.  It took me over a year of waiting and a congressional inquiry into my case until I was finally given a prosthetic arm to replace the one I received at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.  (I received a new one within a week of the inquiry).  I bounced around the VA system for year and a half by myself before I was finally assigned a patient advocate to help with my transition from Walter Reed Army Medical Center.  During that time I was unsure how to acquire meds, make appoints, or go through the disability rating process.  And despite my many calls to VA personnel to find out when the appoints were for disability rating, I was informed that after months of waiting I had missed all of them because the “system” made the appointments without sending me a letter or issuing a call notification.  After these repeated displays of incompetence, I cannot give the VA the benefit of the doubt any longer.

To me the moral of the story is clear.  The VA is incapable of providing adequate medical care in a timely fashion.  The system is too big, too bureaucratic, and apparently has no oversight whatsoever.  I have finally learned that if I’m going to receive adequate medical care I need to go elsewhere, even if I have to use my disability payments to pay for it.  It’s a shame that I had to risk 2.5 months of training and my 8th log rolling world title to realize it.

A soldier has spoken of his disgust after his disability benefit was axed despite losing a leg fighting for his country.

Private Aron Shelton, 26, had his left leg amputated in December 2008 after he was injured in an explosion in Helmand province, Afghanistan, a year earlier.

After an 18-month struggle, the Bridlington soldier has learned to walk a few hundred metres with the help of a prosthetic limb.

But as a result of his efforts, the Department for Work and Pensions has ruled this means he no longer needs his £180-a-month Disability Living Allowance.

From September, he will lose his allowance, which he traded in each month in return for the use of a specially-adapted car.

Pte Shelton said that without a car, his dream of rebuilding his life as a taxi driver was in tatters.

He said: “I’m disgusted, shocked and mortified.

“I risked my life and now I feel let down by the Government.

Sounds a bit like my struggles with the VA, only much worse. I waited over a year for a new prosthetic arm only to be ignored and brushed aside.  It wasn’t until a couple congressmen wrote letters that I finally received a new prosthetic arm to replace my worn out one from Walter Reed (within a week, mind you).

He goes on patrols, lifts weights in his spare time and is second in command of his company.

That may not sound unusual.

What is unusual is that Luckett is a double amputee, after injuries he received in combat in Iraq in 2008.

I encountered a handful of other amputees during my stay at Walter Reed who returned to combat. The vast majority were lower extremity, but a couple were upper limb, below elbow amputees (its a lot easier to go back as as leg than an arm).  Make sure you read the whole thing.

I woke up to the sound of my gunner screaming. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!!” He was brushing and patting down his legs. I’m not sure if it was because he thought his legs were on fire, or if it was from the searing burn of hot copper shrapnel and bone fragments that had just entered his legs. Everything was suddenly very loud.

Our gun truck had somehow come to a stop on the MSR. The road through the windshield was unusually dark. Usually lit up like daylight with eight spotlights in front of our gun truck, it was now barely lit by a couple of surviving lights. The smell of burning copper, electronics, and flesh was thick in the air to the point of being nauseating. It’s a smell I will never forget, a smell that still permeates some of my surviving gear to this day. It still reminds me of death.

After a second or two of dazed confusion, I said out loud in a pleading, quiet, murmur to myself, “Oh Josie! Oh Josie!” This was only my fourth mission out since I returned from my two week R&R back home. My young wife of nine months was fresh on my mind, even if we had only spent a total of three weeks together as a married couple.

“I can’t feel my arm!” I groaned. I was trying to open my passenger side door. Instinctively reaching for the door handle with my right hand, I repeatedly tried to push the opening lever but to no avail. I finally looked down at my arm to see why it was starting to burn like hell, and quickly realized why I couldn’t open my door.

Where my right hand and wrist had been seconds earlier was now a mangled chunk of flesh, veins, and tendons. Two white bones protruded out an inch past the mangled flesh. The burning pain was unbelievable. “Oh shit” I thought to myself, “I need a tourniquet”. I was surprisingly calm about it. My right hand and wrist were completely gone.

My training was kicking in. The months of monotonous, repetitive training we had constantly bitched about was now telling me what to do amidst the pain and confusion. I looked down at my left hand to see that it was still there, but not fully functioning. I could only move my thumb, index, and middle finger. The rest were curled up, and numb. Even through the Olive Drab colored flight glove still covering my left hand, I could tell it was extremely mangled and starting to swell.

“How the hell am I supposed to get a tourniquet on now?” I thought to myself. I always made it a point to carry an extra homemade tourniquet my left lower pant pocket. Composed of engineer’s tape, a Gatorade bottle seal, and tongue depressors taped together, it took seconds to apply. This was of course in addition to the fancy Army issue one contained in the first aid kit on my body armor. The medics had warned us if you really cranked down on them, they could break. Never leaving anything to chance, I had been carrying mine around for months prior to my squad leader deciding it was a good idea. It would do little good now. With one hand completely gone and the other mangled, there was no way in hell I could apply a tourniquet to myself.

“Fuck, I need someone to give me a tourniquet” I thought to myself. I wasn’t sure what everyone else in the convoy was doing. We were gun truck #1, the scout truck for a twenty fuel tanker convoy, so we were at least 300 meters ahead of everyone else. Doc Krisko was way back in gun truck #3 so we could maneuver him wherever he might be needed.

Still sitting inside our idling truck, I tried repeatedly using my left thumb to key my radio, but to no avail. “Great, now what do I do” I thought.
I wasn’t sure of the status of my driver and gunner, although at that moment they were regretfully the furthest thought from my mind. Even if they needed help, there would be next to nothing I could do in my state. I could hear them talking to one another, but not over the head sets as usual.

“Hey!” I said to them in an authoritative tone.”Get on the radio, get a hold of truck #3 and get the medic up here! My right arm’s been blown off and if I don’t get a tourniquet on I’m going to bleed out.” I was surprisingly calm as I said it, as if I was issuing one of the many commands I did on these missions.

They frantically tried to call anyone on the radio. First my gunner SPC Oliver, then my driver, SPC Fahlin. I looked over at Fahlin for the first time as he keyed his radio and called over the convoy net. “Truck three this is truck one…Three this is one….” He shook his head no, and said “nothing”.

Little did we know, but every piece of electronic navigation or communication equipment in my truck (besides my personal Garmin GPS) had been completely destroyed in the blast. The expensive new Harris radios, the FBCB2 navigation and communication computer, along with everything else was nothing more than a smoldering pile of electronics.

“I’m gonna see if I can yell to them”, Oliver hollered. Truck two was creeping up behind us looking for secondary IEDs, a common tactic used by insurgents.

“Hey! Hey! We need to get Doc up here! Salzman’s fucked up! His arm is fucking gone!”

As I sat in my truck waiting for the medic to arrive, I started to check myself over. I knew there was no way I could get a tourniquet on myself so I did the only thing I could do. I took my still glove covered left hand and cupped it over the missing end of my right arm. I’m not sure if made it bleed any less but it made me feel better nonetheless.

I started to check my body over for other injuries. I shuffled my feet back and forth. I moved my legs up and down. Everything was still intact. Sweet! I thought to myself. I can still log roll! I always said regardless what happens to me in Iraq, as long as I still have my legs and I can still log roll I’ll be happy.

I checked the rest of my body over. My manhood was still intact. I moved my chest and shoulders under my IBA (Interceptor Body Armor). Everything felt intact.

I sat there waiting for the medic to arrive. The seconds ticked by like minutes. As I sat there waiting the thought of dying went through my mind for a split second. No way. No fucking way am I dying here. Not here, not now, not in this country.

That’s the last time I ever thought about dying.