Imagine you go to a restaurant, for a dish you have had a dozen times before. The chef greets you kindly, spreading this aura of unquestionable mastery, since, well, he already made the a dish a handful of times! Sounds dubious? Well we have seen situations like this a couple of times now.
Here’s an account of the last time. It ’s about a great man – Herr Abdullah Ousta, the crème de la crème of prosthetic technicians in the once beautiful town of Fürth…
Before we get to the story, some backgrounder: My wife happens to be ehm… a unipedette, and is a long-time user of a hip disarticulation prosthesis. It is very rare – if someone boasts to have made a 100 prostheses, he could have made maybe two of that kind.The most important part of a prosthesis is the socket, a man machine interface so to speak. In this case, since the prosthesis basically replaces the whole leg, it is a huge piece of resin, which encases the pelvis, resting on iliac crests on top and on ischium at the bottom.(picture here)
I don’t know how come they often have problems with it, as the whole exercise is simply about making a cast which fits three areas – the both iliac crests and ischium. To make the socket fit, the iliac crests must be modeled very exactly. This is done by binding the casted person at the waist so strongly that the shape of ilium is modeled in the cast. Squeeze your waist so that you feel EXACTLY the shape of your pelvis, you will get the impression.
But back to the story – as my wife was being casted end of May, this one crucial step somehow got left out. Or we both suffer some strange selective kind of amnesia… Not surprisingly what came out of a faulty process, was a faulty product. I made a photo comparing an old, actually a not too tight socket and the new one. Guess which one is which:
As I shared my skepticism as to why the prosthesis doesn’t fit and I don’t expect it ever will, Mr. Ousta played dumb. “I did the binding correctly”, he said, and called the girl who assisted him: “Did I bind the patient at the iliac crests and then you tied the ropes at the middle?” “Yes you have bound the patient at the iliac crests and then I helped you tie the ropes in the middle”. So, we were proven to have seen what we haven’t. “I have a witness, you see”, said Mr. Ousta. “Well yes” – said I – “and I will simply contact the insurance and we’ll call in an appraiser”. Then there was a pointless 15-minute long exchange in which Mr. Ousta was generally focusing on his professional ego, and I was bluntly repeating in many flavors, that I don’t care about his ambitions, but I want to hear what he’ll do to make the prosthesis fit. As I think of it now, the whole witness game makes me think low of my dear ami. There’s absolutely nothing to gain by lying – the socket was unacceptable, regardless what happens next, it goes down the drain. Financial damage is already done. The lie was evident, if the appraiser were to come in, it will be more damaging to everyone’s reputation. And a new mantra has to be practised: “I had x hundred customers, all happy, BUT one”.
Anyway, after some consideration, he took the prosthesis and did some jiggery-pokery with it, which took good 30 minutes. Then he got back to us with a conclusion that we will indeed be making a new socket. The catch – he will not start the whole process from the beginning, but will base it on the current faulty socket. During the rest of the day, he and his colleague glued more or less arbitrarily a couple of layers of special foam on the socket, thus modeling the pelvis in a professional ad-hoc manner, which took ca 5 hours. By comparison, the whole process of making the original cast took an hour or so. A bit of a waste of everyone’s time… Here you can see the result of that interesting day:
Quite striking that one needs to glue so much on a socket that supposed to have been all ok. The same socket before, for comparison:
Well, to make the long story short – The described happenings, were in beginning of July, after that, the new socket was made, we had to come to the Sanitätshaus for a zillion of fittings. Understandable – it’s like trying to make an oversized shoe fit, instead of simply making one that fits – it’s serious hacking in the name of stupid pride. Now we have September, the whole process took more than 3 months. I could understand that someone who makes a bunch of above knee prostheses, could have a problem making a hip disarticulation prosthesis, which replaces 3 joints, like I could understand that a great painter, working essentially in 2 dimensions, does not automatically make for a great sculptor (especially if he tries to model the perspective 
). But going to such lengths just because of an oversized ego? And such a wilful procrastination – every minutia, however small, never left us waiting for less than an 45 minute or an hour, every bigger thing required at least a week. I lost 30 or so hours of flextime, not to mention that my wife would have been much happier if all that didn’t last over a quarter of a year.
I am a forgiving person, and under normal circumstances, you wouldn’t have a chance to read my account, yet as my dear spiteful friend has told us that he has wasted a lot of precious time on us, which he could have given to other hundreds of happy patients. I suddenly felt an urge to advertise this guy.
Hey! With a soupçon of luck, you could be among these hundreds of happy customers. The chances of being labelled a black sheep patient are so low that it’s really worth it. Just remember not to criticize the maestro and you will be fine. Consider this if you need to have a hip disarticulation prosthesis made.
Ask for Mr. Abdullah Ousta.
