The story below is a preview from our July/August 2024 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!
Artificial limbs, like those from Virginia Prosthetics, are giving victims a new and rich life.
Dan Smith
Chelsea Patsel works on a new foot.
You have to wonder how you would react, having just been T-boned by a car on your motorcycle, lying on the highway looking at the grille of the car that hit you and seeing your dismembered foot lodged there.
Elijah Lawson, an automobile mechanic from Christiansburg, had that opportunity a while back and he took the philosophical long-view. He had suffered the loss of his foot, a lanced spleen, a broken second foot, a broken hip and an injured bladder. He was not in good shape.
There was an attempt to re-attach the foot, but that failed. Still, two months later, he got an after-market foot from Virginia Prosthetics in Roanoke and discovered, as he suspected, his life was not over. “I drove home from the hospital,” he says, smiling.
Dan Smith
“I drove home from the hospital.” -Elijah Lawson
The 29-year-old’s new “learner foot,” as he calls it “took some getting used to. There was a little learning curve. Adjustment is just practice.” He’s back to hiking these days and running is on his to-do list. He’s riding a new 900-pound motorcycle, as well. On the way home from the hospital, he stopped at Shelor Mitsubishi to ask if his job was still there. It was.
On the day of the Roanoker interview, there was another sign of re-adjustment. “I’ve been dating this girl,” he says, “and tonight I’m going to ask her to be my girlfriend.” Life, he insists, “hasn’t changed a whole lot, but my tap dance career hasn’t taken off yet.”
According to Pro Medical East, 2.1 million Americans have lost limbs and that will likely double by 2050, primarily because of diabetes, which is all but epidemic (285 million cases today could grow to 435 million in six years). There are 185,000 amputations a year in the U.S. Vascular disease is responsible for 54% of them, backed by trauma—like Lawson’s—at 45%.
The average cost for fixing this broken body is between $5,000 and $50,000. It is also worth noting that 30% of those who lose limbs suffer depression, post traumatic stress disorder and anxiety. Men account for 75% of amputations and 70% of prosthetics are below knee.
There are ongoing studies involving stem cells that could regenerate lost limbs and other studies linking the brain with a computer for limb control.
Doug Call leads Virginia Prosthetics these days and has since 1991 when he bought it from his father-in-law, Fred Murko, the 1966 founder. He’s worked there since 1983. There were seven employees at the beginning and that has been as high as 70 but is 59 now. Call sold the company to Ossur of Iceland in 2018 but remains as the president.
“We had researched with Ossur for years,” he says. “There was a lot of vertical integration.”
Patients are provided by physician reference (including the Veterans Administration in Salem) and Virginia Prosthetics has a significant presence in this end of Virginia with eight locations from Richmond west. Excel’s Hangar Clinic in Roanoke is also a major player. “It’s a neat thing we do,” says Call. “We help a lot of people.”
Call says delays in payment from insurance companies was primarily responsible for the sale of Virginia Prosthetics. “Three to six months was not atypical,” he says. “We sold just before COVID and kept everybody employed throughout.”
The concentration with the prosthetics is on comfort and safety, but, says Call, “As a body ages, it changes and prosthetics wear out and have to be replaced. Each of the prosthetics is custom-made in Virginia Prosthetics’ plant on Williamson Road in Roanoke.”
Call dates the development of prosthetics to the Civil War. “All wars have helped develop technological extrusion,” he says. Now, micro-processors are beginning to be used, especially in knees and hands. “They are very expensive and experimental, but they are out there. Upper extremity prostheses are only about 2-3%, but the opposing thumb is now unique, fitting hands and being bionic. We’re closer to playing the piano than to just pointing with the index finger.”
Dan Smith
Doug Call (left): “You don’t get into the field to get wealthy.” Phillip Call: “There is a lot of business in what we do.”
Call’s 31-year-old son, Phillip, a certified prosthetics and orthotics specialist with a new MBA (from Virginia Tech), has been working for his dad for a while, mostly on the financial end. “There is a lot of business in what we do,” he says.
“But you don’t get into the field to get wealthy,” says Doug Call.
“If you don’t fight those [financial] fights,” says Phillip, “you don’t help people. We design, fit, evaluate, get impressions to have devices fabricated using computer imaging.” That’s all very high-tech, but “some of our technology is older than me.”
Virginia Prosthetics works “with the person to re-learn how to walk, talk, go to the bathroom, navigate inside and outside the home. When we bring in new amputees, they often roll into the office and walk out. That is the most gratifying part of the job. It reminds us of why we got into it.”
The product is ever-changing with new technology and materials delivering “no real reason people should be able to tell you are disabled,” says Phillip. “It increases what [the amputee] can do. We provide the tools to manage symptoms to help get through the day.”
Although, says Phillip, “plaster of Paris still has a place,” Doug says, “We’ve gone from artistic to scientific.”
Want to learn more about the life-changing world of prosthetics, including insights from Rebecca Whitehill, founder of Second to Nature? Check out the latest issue, now on newsstands, or see it for free in our digital guide linked below!
The story above is a preview from our July/August 2024 issue. For more stories like it, Subscribe Today. Thank you!