Limb loss Stacey Finley feature 

[Music playing]

[Text on screen: Stacey Finley
Limb replacement patient]

Stacey Finley:
I started riding horses when I was a little kid and I immediately fell in love with it. I became very successful and I started training horses when I was 21 years old. I had some sort of a bent in my spinal cord basically that caused inflammation. We needed to treat it with steroids to reduce the inflammation and it gave me a bone disease called avascular necrosis where my bones were basically suffocated from oxygen and my joints were dying from the inside out and starting to break apart.

Over, I think, a 17, 18-year period of time, I had 43 or 42 surgeries. I had my amputation in July of 2021. I fought and fought and fought and tried to save my leg. And waking up after my amputation was like, to me, total feeling of loss, defeat, failure. You push yourself for your kids, for your family, for everything like that, but physically they could have still dealt with me at the state I was. But without the horses, I would not have pushed as hard to seek out the osseointegration option. Walking, yeah, it was painful I could do it, but riding, I really just couldn't do it at all anymore.

[Text on screen: Jason Souza, MD
Plastic and reconstructive surgeon
Ohio State Wexner Medical Center]

Jason Souza, MD:
She came kind of very motivated to get to a quality of life that she wasn't able to achieve with a socket-based prosthesis that really just doesn't have a high degree of control. Nevermind many of the other challenges that come with it.

[Text on screen: Jennifer Swift, PT
Amputee program coordinator
Ohio State Wexner Medical Center]

Jennifer Swift, PT:
Ohio State is the right team for individuals with limb loss because we can provide such a great team approach. The surgeon, the physical therapists, we have rehab psychology and it really takes that whole team to achieve the best outcomes for the patient. The surgery that Stacey had was a two stage surgery. So she had the first stage where they actually put the implant in and then they kind of close everything back up and then they have a second stage.

Jason Souza, MD:
In many ways, the surgical part of this is the easy part. The way I described it is it's like 10% surgical capability and 90% everything else.

Stacey Finley:
For two years in a socket, I didn't know who I was anymore and I was not living the life I wanted. I was watching everybody else live a life that I had worked so hard for with my horses, with everything else and I mean it was misery. Now instead of being a socket that goes over top and suctions to my thigh, now literally just snaps on and off of the abutment. That takes probably less than three seconds to put on. 100% of the time it's lined up. It never shifts and moves around.

And the other major massive difference is that I now have the feedback that you get when your foot touches the ground. I can feel the difference between walking on grass or carpet even. Previously when riding the horses, I would have no idea if my foot was in the stirrup. And so now if my foot starts to slide out of the stirrup, I know it is and I can make the adjustments. I don't even think about my leg anymore. I don't ever wake up and think of myself as an amputee. The leg I have right now is not the leg that I was born with, but it definitely feels like my leg.

[Text on screen: Ohio State Health & Discovery
For more information, visit: health.osu.edu]

[Music fades]