Debbie and Susan hugged her and the three women were going to leave when the doctor came back but he asked them to stay. The doctor began. “Don Fritz talked to me earlier today and told me to discuss this with all four of you. We are doing some experimental surgery here on amputees that gives them more mobility.”

The word mobility was barely out when Carol said, “Like what?”

“Carol, if you could have a functioning knee, that is be a BK, even if it was only sixty percent, how much would it make it easier?”

“Well there are a lot of things that a functioning knee would help even if it was 25 percent. One down side is that a BK stump tends to have more problems with getting sore. But even with that, it would be a plus.”

“What if you had a functioning knee and the advantages of the AK stump?”

“Now I’m jealous.  They have less than half the stump problems I have and more comfort in walking.” Susan inserted.

“I’ll get to you in a minute. In a normal AK amputation we remove the leg, tie the muscles to the bone and close the wound. The surgery we are doing here is a little different. We remove the leg but we will drill a hole and insert a sleeve into the bone like this.” He drew a picture of a stump. “The bone is cut off, we drill a hole from the end and insert the sleeve with a plate with holes over the end of the bone. It is a special alloy that knits to the bone. It is being used now in some artificial joints. In less than a week it will be knitted to the bone enough that you can walk on it if you are careful. Then we connect the ends of the muscles to some special connectors that are pulled through the holes in the plate. We pull the skin over the plate to close the wound but make small incisions to pull the muscle connectors flush with the surface.” He was drawing a picture as he talked. “The sleeve in the bone can hold a stud that is used to attach a prosthesis. The end looks like this.” He pulled out a picture of the end of a stump that had a hole in the center and four small indentations in it. “Each of the muscle connectors has a thread in it too. That is how we connect to allow your muscles power your prosthesis. There is a plastic coating on the sleeves so that the skin will knit to it. The prosthesis connects to the sleeve in the bone and lines to the lower leg connect to the lower portion of the prosthesis to power it. When you want to wear a regular prosthesis you stretch the muscles and lock them to the plate so they don’t stretch up inside.”