With around 35 degrees C and sunshine, I figured it was time to trim my hedges. It’s a pride and show performance thing to do that myself. So I did.

I applied ample antiperspirant spray on my stump first. That would be to limit sweating underneath the silicone liner. I was not in the mood to go back and forth cleaning the stump from profuse sweating.

Then I taped the safety latch of my machine into the “pressed” position to allow for left-handed only operation (don’t try this at home, kids).

After that I went for it, using a V2P Prehensor (this time a model made from very sturdy plastic) and one of our new PUPP+CH+EN wrist units.

The work contained two hours of full height trimming (ground to overhead level) in full summer sun / heat.

I used a cheap supermarket anti perspirant.

After about two hours of heavy work in the heat, the arm was mildly wet, but there was no huge fluid accumulation and the skin was not soggy. The silicone liner was still in place. The prosthetic arm had not slipped over my stump (even though I wear standard 16 cm Upper X Ossur liners that are actually too big and not customized material).

This is relevant to mention – people go nuts over a number of what they believe are “functional” prostheses. I would suggest to take function to the test and get them to do a full width plus overhead hedge trim with their arm.

The claw covers of the V2P Prehensor got nudged a wee bit. These are replaceable materials though, using these up is a feature. In the worst case, a damaged claw could also be replaced individually.

I required a large number of extremely fast pulls to correct the prosthetic grip on the rather heavy running machine. This may have caused a rubber to snap. And it definitely damaged the steel cable connector. Both rubbers and steel cable connectors can be rather easily replaced. The wrist unit was heavily strained and repositioned a number of times. The V2P Prehensor suffered significant torque, the stiff claw covers almost came off twice.

End result – neat and me, crazy from the heat:

Result

• Cable and harness – passed
• Cable connector – damaged [replaced today]
• V2P Prehensor (plastic edition) – passed
• V2P claw covers – almost fell off twice  [known issue, being fixed currently]
• PUPP+CH+EN wrist – passed
• Socket – passed
• Stock silicone liner plus antiperspirant spray – passed
• Prosthetic weight – just about passed

Comment

I currently do competitive swimming, and I am not doing too bad there, and I do have the impression of having a well tuned muscular setup.

But these two hours of hedge cutting with relatively heavy machinery, with a rather narrow line between socket remaining in place and slipping off due to profuse sweating, I would be very surprised to see many other people cook up better performance with heavier prosthetic arms.

The light weight of my socket, the light V2P Prehensor (plastic build!) and the immediacy of cable control alongside with a non slipping fit over the work time were factors without which I would have given up earlier, or made a lot more breaks in between.

Of course we are all wondering how these new myoelectric arms such as Otto Bock’s Michelangelo arm would perform here seeing as if they allow for subtle thumb repositioning. And nowhere such as here is that thumb position so relevant. Not having a subtle thumb reposition at my disposal, I did small wrist adjustments all the time throughout the process of cutting to allow for slightly different muscles becoming used.

Still, I did reach a peak of what I could possibly do here and so really, I am looking forward to seeing more of that.