The Tube accident victim who GREW leg bone two inches so doctors can finally fit bionic limb after 15 years in world-first op

By Richard Shears and Julian Gavaghan

Last updated at 1:24 PM on 13th February 2012

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Marny Cringle couldn't have leg fitted before because stump was too short
Left leg amputated above the knee after falling under an Underground train

A woman who lost a leg when she fell under a London underground train is to receive a bionic limb in a remarkable world-first operation after successfully growing bone.
Marny Cringle 42, of New South Wales, Australia, lost her left leg in the accident in 1996 but because the remaining stump was too short she could not be fitted with a prosthetic one.
She faced the rest of her life on crutches or in a wheelchair -

Help: Marny Cringle, 42, poses on crutches - but in a few months time she will have a bionic limb after doctors were able to grow as before the stump had been too short
The painful procedure works by attaching tiny screws and periodically adjusting them to encourage the bone to stretch and grow by just a fraction of an inch at a time.

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Now surgeons want to fit a bionic limb to her femur, allowing muscle and bone to grow around it.
The artificial limb will become an extension of her body - the first time someone will have had a bone stump lengthened and a bionic limb fitted to it.

BRIGHTER FUTURE FOR THOUSANDS
Until now, many of those who had their legs amputated above the knee could not be fitted with a prosthetic limb because the remaining bone stump was too short.
But thanks to Marny Cringle - who grew her femur two inches through a painful process of having screws fitted and then gradually adjusting them to lengthen the bone - thousands more amputees could now one day walk again.
When she undergoes an operation in April at Macquarie University Hospital (pictured above) in Sydney, Australia, the 42-year-old will be the first person in the world to have a bionic limb fitted after growing bone.
Recent advancements in bionic limbs mean Miss Cringle - and many others like her - could live a relatively normal life with almost complete mobility.

Bone and muscle will grow around the artificial leg, which is powered by batteries and can detect small changes in movement and direction using motion and speed sensors.
Also, Using hydraulics, valves close and lock the knee in place when standing upright.

And, despite being fitted with hi-tech gadgets and lithium batteries, bionic legs, which cost around £50,000, can weigh as little as 2.9lb.
Orthopaedic surgeon Dr Munjed Al Muderis, who will head the operation to fit the artificial limb, told Sydney's Daily Telegraph that the procedure was 'the future for amputee patients worldwide.'

Thanks to modern surgery and her agreement to put up with painful procedure, Miss Cringle hopes to have the bionic leg attached to her leg stump as soon as April - and then surgeons and scientists will monitor it as tissue grows around the top of it.
'Just to be able to walk with two hands free is something I'm really looking forward to,' she told the paper at her home in Bolwarra, north of Sydney.
'And to be able to cuddle someone without having to have crutches hanging off me - it's those minor things.'

A former Australian wheelchair tennis champion, Miss Cringle added: 'I've beaten the odds with growing the bone as much as it has and so I know it is going to happen now. I've come too far for it not to.'

Miss Cringle was following her dream of overseas travel and working in London when she was hit by the train, her injuries so severe that she was not expected to live.
She had suffered severe head injuries, broken ribs and spinal discs and pierced lungs - in addition to losing her leg which was amputated above the knee when she was rushed to St Thomas' Hospital, London.

An accomplished violin player, she said that music had helped her with her recovery.
In an interview with the Catholic newspaper Aurora five years ago, Miss Cringle said that people had often doubted her capabilities 'but just because my circumstances have changed it doesn't mean I have changed.'

She believed the reason she was still alive was to allow her to continue achieving.
'There must be a good purpose to be here, something left for me to still do. I just haven't found it yet.'

Now she and surgeons hope that she and her new limb will give hope to many others who have suffered similar injuries.
The new generation of bionic limbs are an enormous improvement on old prosthetic ones.
The combination of motion and speed sensors and advanced computing mean they can detect small changes in movement and direction.
Also, Using hydraulics, valves close and lock the knee in place when standing upright.
And despite being fitted with hi-tech gadgets and lithium batteries bionic legs, which cost around £50,000, can weigh as little as 2.9lb.

"The Harder the Goal, the Greater the Glory"

It's the beginning of January, and for runners it means one thing: time for the kickoff to train for the Cellcom Green Bay Marathon.

If you're thinking it's too cold or you can't go the distance, the guest speaker for the marathon kick-off party Wednesday night is a living example that there are no excuses.

For Sarah Reinertsen, it's never too cold or too windy or too late.

Not having a leg? That's no excuse for her, either.

"I'm on the course, I think often times people see me come by, see my prosthetic leg, and there's this sort of flash and glimmer and it's like, 'Wow, if she's out there suffering on that thing, I'm going to make it today, too.'"

She explains, "I lost my leg when I was seven years old. I had tissue disease as a child so they amputated above the knee when I was just a kid."

For the first eleven years of her life, Reinertsen didn't run because she thought she couldn't.

Then she met a woman running with a prosthetic leg, and her world changed.

"That really changed for me, having a role model and opening up the possibility," she said.

She went from learning to walk with a wooden foot to running with a carbon fiber leg designed to replicate the fastest animal on land.

"The engineer, designer was looking at videos of the cheetah and looked at the kickback of the hind leg, and that was his inspiration to make a better prosthetic running foot for a human."

It unleashed her inner runner.

At 13, she broke the 100-meter world record for female above-the-knee amputees.

She ran the Great Wall Marathon in China.

And in 2005, she became the first woman with a prosthetic leg to finish the Ironman World Championships. It took her 15 hours to swim 2.4 miles, bike 112, and run another 26.2.

"The harder the goal, the greater the glory," Reinertsen says. "Certainly the feeling of crossing the finish line was a feeling I'll never get back -- unless I do it again."

Those accomplishments now make her a role model for others.

"One of the things that I love is that every weekend in almost every state in this country, you can sign up for a race, you can be a weekend warrior, you can feel like a kid again, get out there and get active."

Violinist Sophia Hummell keeps a steady hand

Make a list of the requirements for playing the violin, and the first few items are pretty obvious. Love of music, a good ear, dedication - check, check, check.

What about two good arms? Now that's where you want to be careful about jumping to conclusions.

Sophia Hummell confounds any glib assumptions about what is and isn't possible on the musical front. The spirited 18-year-old San Francisco native was born without a full right arm, but she's been playing the violin since the fourth grade.

She makes it look easy, too. The key is a specially designed prosthetic - what Hummell calls her "violin arm" - that attaches to the short stub of her arm with a suction device, while a mechanical grip on the other end is attached to the bow.

The result is an apparatus that has allowed Hummell to keep pace with her fiddling peers. She plays in string quartets and in the chamber orchestra of the Villa Sinfonia Foundation, a nonprofit run by violinists Lynn and Roy Oakley. With the orchestra, she's performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and played the national anthem for a Giants game, and just last month she was the soloist in one movement of a Vivaldi concerto at the orchestra's annual concert.

To spend any time with Hummell is to encounter a young woman who seems to simply breeze past whatever obstacles life may throw her way. Though she has a variety of prosthetic arms for different activities, she says she feels most at home without any of them - using one hand, along with the occasional teeth and toes, to negotiate the world.
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Double amputee battles triathlon and wins silver

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

By Ian Williams, NBC News Correspondent

BEIJING – The first time I met Andre Kajlich he was dodging Beijing traffic – in a racing wheelchair.

"Oh yeah, it was good out there," he told me, a huge smile on his face. "You should have seen the look I got from the bus driver."

Kajlich had traveled from his Seattle home to the Chinese capital to take part in the world championship of one of the world's most demanding sports – the paratriathlon. And taking his wheelchair for a spin on the highway was just one of his ways of tuning up.

Kajlich is a double amputee. When he lost his legs in a subway accident eight years ago, doctors doubted he would ever walk again – even with prosthetics. But he was determined to prove them wrong.

"No matter what, I was going to do everything I could do," he said. And entering the grueling world of the triathlon is just his latest challenge, winning a place in the Beijing contest after just one year in the sport.

"It gives you perspective on what you are capable of, really of what everybody's capable of," he told me. "You can choose what you want to do, and once you make up your mind you are going to get there no matter what it takes."



Inspiring others
It's an inspirational message he's been taking to other young American amputees. He and his sister Bianca, an actress, are counselors at the annual Paddy Rosebach youth camp, a summer gathering for 10- to 17-year-old amputees, which was held this year in Clarksville, Ohio.

"I try to get them to look at their goals and to focus on those and to make up their minds, make the same choices I did, that you are going to get there no matter what, and try to put the other stuff aside."

And he told me that he in turn had found the young amputees a huge inspiration as he prepared for Beijing.

The triathlon took place around (and in) the Ming Tombs Reservoir at the foot of the mountains that rise to the north of Beijing. It had been the triathlon venue during the 2008 Olympics.

For more of the story Click here

TEDxOrangeCoast - Amy Purdy - Living Beyond Limits

Here is a patient of ours Amy Purdy, who speaks on using life boundries as a springboard to enhancing life for yourself and others. That limitations are only limited by your imagination. Watch and gain inspiration from someone who lives, breathes and leads by example.

Bernabe Duran

Our World: 'Pushed to the brink of what our bodies can be pushed to'

Photo by TRISTAN SPINSKI // Buy this photo

It's a chilly Friday night in Bonita Springs. The bleachers overflow with fans as the stadium lights kick on and eleven softball players jog into right field to warm up. These men have been through hell. They've braved bombs and bullets and shrapnel and rockets and fire. And now they are on a mission: to show that life goes on after war. Outfielder Daniel "Doc" Jacobs, pictured above, 26, flops onto his back to stretch. Jacobs, a U.S. Marine who lives in San Diego, lost his left leg below the knee after being struck by an Improved Explosive Device (IED) during a routine patrol in the Sunni Triangle in Iraq in February of 2006.

It’s a chilly Friday night in Bonita Springs. The bleachers overflow with fans as the stadium lights kick on and eleven softball players jog into right field to warm up. These men have been through hell. They’ve braved bombs and bullets and shrapnel and rockets and fire. And now they are on a mission: to show that life goes on after war.

Outfielder Daniel “Doc” Jacobs, pictured above, 26, flops onto his back to stretch. Jacobs, a U.S. Marine who lives in San Diego, lost his left leg below the knee after being struck by an Improved Explosive Device (IED) during a routine patrol in the Sunni Triangle in Iraq in February of 2006.

After two years in rehab, Jacobs has returned to full duty. Part of his job includes traveling around the country with the Wounded Warrior Amputee Softball Team, a collection of U.S. Army and Marine Corps veterans who have lost limbs post 9/11 while serving their country. The team averages two games a month against police departments and fire departments across the United States. On this night they play the Bonita Springs Fire Department.

Every member of the team has a story. Second baseman Tim Horton, 27, of San Antonio, served two years and eight months with the U.S. Marine Corps, with a full year of that service spent in the hospital after and IED struck his humvee, spraying his body with shrapnel, breaking his wrist, both elbows and taking his left leg below the knee. Horton said after 50 surgeries, he’s stopped counting. What he and his teammates can count on is his athletic ability, which he demonstrated by back-pedaling into center field and a diving catch to end the first inning.

Head Coach David Van Sleet also works for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, specializing in prosthetics. Van Sleet says he put the Wounded Warrior Amputee Softball Team together last spring after marveling at the scope of athletic talent returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with severe injuries.

“After they were injured, they didn’t know if they were going to live,” Van Sleet said. “They didn’t know if they were going to walk again. They didn’t know if they were going to play sports again.”

After much brainstorming, Van Sleet put a national call out to VA hospitals, military bases and other organizations that might point him towards the best veteran amputee athletic talent in the country. Hundreds answered the call. Twenty made the cut.

One of the chosen few was Sgt. Randall Rugg, a 34-year-old native of Monroe, La. who now plays catcher. Rugg served with the U.S. Marine Corps from 1999 to January of 2004. His unit was ambushed on March 22, 2003 in Iraq. Rugg survived five rocket-propelled grenades hitting his vehicle. Like so many of his teammates, he lost his left leg below the knee.

Rugg says his transition to civilian life was difficult. There was no camaraderie. The two jobs he landed upon returning were fraught with office backstabbing. It was every man for himself, Rugg said. So when a representative from his VA called him, asking if he would be interested in playing softball with fellow amputees, Rugg jumped.

“Hell yeah. I’ll be there,” Rugg said.

“It’s therapeutic,” Rugg says. “It’s like being with family. It’s like going home to see mom and dad for the holidays and being around people that love and accept you. It’s the same thing with this.”

“We’ve been pushed to the brink of what our bodies can be pushed to,” he said. “Sometimes my leg - it’s sweaty. It hurts. But the job’s not done. I push it to the end.”

The Wounded Warrior Amputee Softball Team is a nonprofit organization that depends on charitable donations to continue their outreach and advocacy across the United States. If you are interested in learning more or donating to the Wounded Warrior Amputee Softball Team, visit their website: www.woundedwarrioramputeesoftballteam.org, or call: (703) 549-2288.

Teen's goal: Eliminate phantom pain in amputees

Thursday - 11/10/2011, 1:50pm ET

Katherine Bomkamp is seen with her invention, which is designed to eliminate phantom pain felt by amputees (Photo Courtesy of Intel )Darci Marchese, wtop.com


WASHINGTON -- Katherine Bomkamp was struck by what she saw the first time she visited Walter Reed Army Medical Center with her father, a member of the U.S. Air Force.

"Sitting in waiting rooms were all these very young amputees returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. That really got to me. They were 18,19 years old, young kids," she says.

The Waldorf teen, 16 at the time, says she talked to the men and women who had lost their limbs at war about phantom pain -- the pain an amputee feels in the limb that's no longer there. The pain, she says, is "caused by the brain that automatically sends signals to a limb to move. The signals get caught in the severed nerve endings, causing pain."

About the same time as her visits to the hospital, Bomkamp's tenth grade science teacher encouraged the North Point High School students to complete a project that could have an impact.

Bomkamp decided to study phantom pain, hoping to find a way to prevent it without the use of drugs. Over time, she invented a holistic prosthetic device she now calls the "pain free socket," a device that uses heat to force the brain to focus on high temperatures produced through thermal-bio feedback, rather than send signals to the nonexistent limb.

The invention won her several awards at local and national science fairs. But she didn't stop there.

Now a 19-year-old sophomore at West Virginia University, Bomkamp is working to have her device commercialized. She's received one patent for the "pain free socket" and says a major prosthetic company has expressed interest in it. She's even created her own company.

She credits the university for helping her develop the device and to raise funding for it.

"Before I came to WVU, this was a project. But now it's become a viable product that could go on the market," she says.

"It's come a long way from when I was 16."

Bomkamp is excited to give back to wounded warriors. She says the device will be tested on amputees and she hopes it will be on the market in just a couple of years.

Because of her accomplishments, she becomes the first West Virginia University student to be inducted into the National Museum of Education's National Gallery for America's Young Inventors. And last week, she was named one of Glamour Magazine's "21 Amazing Young Women." The distinction was given to young women across the country for changing the world through service and innovation.

Finding her stride

Josh Radtke | The State News
Kinesiology senior McKayla Hanson waits for her brother Jacob, 13, to bring up the other handcycle into the driveway after the two finished an afternoon ride. Due to her high amputation, Hanson rides the special type of bike during the running and bicycle portions of the triathlon. She travels to California this week to compete in a half Ironman Triathlon, a stepping stone to the Paralympic games, where she is determined to one day be a competitor.

After her right leg was amputated at age 7, McKayla Hanson gave up on rollerblading, biking and her chances at a normal life.

In elementary school, Hanson, who is now a kinesiology senior at MSU, purposely broke her prosthetic leg to get out of wearing it to class.

Years later, Hanson is walking, biking and rock-climbing.

She’s been training for months to participate in the 2011 San Diego Triathlon Challenge on Sunday and today, she’s leaving for California.

“I hate the fact that most people I see that are physically disabled are either overweight or obese,” Hanson said. “Just because you have a disability doesn’t mean you should eat McDonald’s every day or sit on your butt because your back or leg hurts — you can’t let that get to you.”

“It’s huge for somebody that’s injured,” Long said. “It’s not only getting out; it’s realizing that you can do active activities.”

A step behind
Hanson’s parents put her into foster care along with her sister to give them a chance at a better life.

When Hanson was living with her first foster care family, she began feeling pain in her right leg.

She cried from the pain, but her foster parents told her it was growing pains. A tumor was visible on her leg.

In the Hanson house, where she went next in foster care, that kind of neglect didn’t last.

Her new foster parents, who later adopted her, told her she had a rare form of bone cancer — rhabdomyosarcoma.

From the hip socket and pelvic bone down, Hanson’s right leg had to be amputated.

“I was more happy than scared because of the pain I felt,” Hanson said.

Doctors said she’d never walk again, but her family pushed her to overcome her disability.

“She didn’t have a disability when she was here; she was one of the kids,” McKayla’s mother, Elisa Hanson said. “When it was her time to clean, (she cleaned).”

McKayla Hanson’s mother was by her side the first time she rode a bicycle after cancer claimed her right leg, and now as she’s training for the triathlon this weekend.

“They said, ‘You can either lay in bed and feel sorry for yourself … or you can get up and do something,’” McKayla Hanson said.

“My physical disability has never stopped me since they told me that.”

Leaps and bounds
Although her right leg was gone, McKayla Hanson had the heart of an athlete growing up.

She began swimming in middle school, then began rock climbing and handcycling.

Her athletic career was jump-started when she got a new prosthetic leg from the Challenged Athletes Foundation, an organization that helps raise money for disabled athletes.

“We think it’s something that helps make someone’s life whole and more meaningful,” said Travis Ricks, programs coordinator and athlete relations at the Challenged Athletes Foundation.

“We want them to not feel like there’s something missing in their life.”

With a new leg and ambitions to participate in triathlons, McKayla Hanson began working with a coach on the handcycle — an arm-operated bicycle.

Ray Bailey, a member of the Tri-County Bicycle Association. never taught someone with a disability before and never used a handcycle.

It’s been a learning experience for both of them, but since they started working together, she’s gone from about 9 mph to about 14 mph average on her handcycle — enough to be competition at the triathlon next Sunday, Bailey said.

“I’ve pushed her a little bit, only to the point I can see it on her face,” he said.

McKayla Hanson also rides with the Tri-County Bicycle Association and the Fusion Cycling Team.
To members, it’s more than a way to exercise.

“If we see people are struggling in the cycling community, we kind of like to help,” Bailey said.

Long, who also leads the Fusion Cycling Team, met McKayla Hanson at a race about a year ago.

Getting to know her and other disabled athletes provides support and hope for him.

“You’re learning from someone that’s gone through the same road as you,” Long said.

“You can talk to a lot of people, friends and family, that haven’t gone through a disability, but they can’t really understand unless they’ve gone through it.”

At MSU, McKayla’s studying to become a physical therapist — to give back to the disabled community, as she was helped by others.

“I really would like to work with the disabled community in any way that I can,” she said.

“Whether it be to incorporate more physical fitness for them, start my own organization or anything along those lines, but I really want to work … for those who are physically challenged.”

McKayla Hanson’s training won’t be over when she finishes the triathlon in San Diego.

After that, her training for the 2014 Paralympics begins.

“She’ll take something competitive, not necessarily just a marathon, but get ready for the triathlon and take it to the extreme limit,” Long said.

“She’s a true athlete.”

Biotech start-up builds artful artificial limbs

Bespoke Innovations has gone out on a limb by building a new business around a bold idea – that prosthetic legs can communicate a message of personal style more than disability.

In a packed lecture hall at Stanford last week, Scott Summit, Bespoke’s chief technology officer and a Stanford engineering lecturer, told those of us in the audience about his start-up company’s vision — to bring humanity and self-esteem back to people who have suffered traumatic limb loss.

Using a 3D scanner, technicians create a digital image of an amputee’s surviving limb and create a mirror image of that morphology using parametric computer modeling. They feed this data into a laser-powered 3D printer that fabricates a custom superstructure, which can then be adorned with fashion-oriented materials like wood, metal, cloth, and leather. “We can create a personalized limb in 30 hours for about $4,000,” Summit told us.

Both utilitarian and beautiful, the Bespoke staff works with people to customize the designs and materials to reflect individual personality and tastes. Some are finished with ballistic nylon or polished nickel. One was covered in quilted leather, like a Chanel handbag. For a military veteran with a love of tribal tattoos, the team scanned a favorite tattoo design from one leg and fabricated the fairing using that theme. A competitive soccer player who lost his leg to cancer chose an aircraft-like honeycomb design that allowed him to play soccer again.

Summit, who works alongside co-founder Kenneth Trauner, MD, a Bay Area orthopedic surgeon, hinted that his interdisciplinary team of designers, engineers, physicians, and entrepreneurs has other innovations under wraps that will push the boundaries of human prosthetics and be “the coolest things you’ve ever seen.”

A video of the lecture is available on Stanford University’s Entrepreneurship Corner website.