What a Prosthetic Checkup Actually Looks Like
I’ve always enjoyed visiting my prosthetic clinic. It’s one of the few places where I feel completely comfortable asking questions, trying things, and figuring it out as I go.
This visit felt different, though, and it started before I even made it back to the room.
On my way in, a gentleman who had just finished his own appointment asked if he could take a look at my hand. He was considering something similar and wanted to see how it worked in real life. He asked me to grip his hand, and we ended up talking for a few minutes about everything from waterproofing to grip strength to how our residual limbs differ. He has more of a wrist than I do, which changes how a prosthetic is built.
Somewhere in that conversation, I realized I wasn’t just figuring this out for myself anymore. I was explaining it to someone else.
And I’ll be honest, that felt kind of nice.
Once I got back to the room, the focus shifted to the checkup itself. The goal was simple: make sure everything still fit properly and adjust the hand so it responded the way I wanted it to.
Over the past few weeks, I’d been noticing things like grip misfires and occasional noise. What surprised me was the reason behind it. It wasn’t the device struggling to keep up. It was me getting stronger.
As my muscles have adapted, the signals I’m sending have changed. What used to be a clean, intentional movement can now trigger something different entirely. So a big part of the visit was recalibrating that connection.
Which, in practice, looks exactly like what you’d expect. Opening and closing the hand over and over. Moving my arm around in ways that probably look ridiculous from the outside. Testing what happens when I try to be intentional versus when I’m not.
It’s less about “fixing” something and more about refining it.
We also spent some time talking about what’s changed since my earlier visits. Not just in how the hand functions, but in how I use it. I mentioned that I started writing about this experience initially for my own mental health, and now because I genuinely enjoy it.
Before I left, we set up another appointment for about a month from now. The idea is to give me time to live with these adjustments and see what holds and what doesn’t.
Because that’s really what this stage is about.
Not perfection. Not getting it exactly right.
Just getting a little closer to something that feels like me.
