Illinois man becomes prosthetics maker after losing a leg

From the Medill Reports:

Maywood resident Paul Barker (pictured) makes artificial limbs light and strong, “exactly the way patients like them.”

He would know. The 52-year-old lost most of his right leg 37 years ago to a gunshot wound and has been wearing a prosthetic leg ever since.

But he didn’t waste time mourning the loss, even though he was only 14 years old. Though he initially felt devastated, his mom told him to “knock it off and move forward.”

She had him practice walking on his false leg in front of a mirror each day and told him he needed to face the reality of his situation.

“She says to me ‘Be yourself and don’t you feel sorry,’” he said. “’You’ll be fine and you can do what you want to do. This leg is part of you now.’”

So he took her advice and learned how to ride a bike, ride a motorcycle and do all of the things he loved using his new leg. And when the Salvation Army offered to help pay for it, he decided to go to school to become a prosthetic technician and learn how to build the prosthesis he had been relying on all these years.

“I wanted to understand myself and be able to help others get their lives back together,” Barker said. “Getting a prosthesis means they can keep on living.”

Now, 20 years later, he is still doing what he loves most: helping people get back on their feet. And he loves every day of his job building prosthetic limbs at Oak Park’s Scheck & Siress, a prosthetics and orthotics provider.

Living with his own false leg makes him especially able to understand how essential a good, functioning prosthesis is to amputees and other people who need synthetic limbs, he said. He’s been there.

Which is why he is extra careful during each step of the extensive process that goes into creating a prosthesis: casting, laying cellulose on the cast, covering that with a polyvinyl alcohol bag, layering that with fiberglass and materials, and then carefully laminating the limb, sometimes multiple times.

And if it doesn’t turn out perfectly, he starts over.

“If you have a bad leg that makes you feel bad,” Barker said. “I don’t want that for anyone. I don’t want this sitting in a closet gathering dust.”

Though he loves working with his hands and the artistry of creating an individualized limb, Barker said the best part is the satisfaction he gets from knowing he is helping someone get back to living their life.

“Whenever I get through the socket [of the leg] I know I’m helping somebody get back out there and start over,” he said.

He had an especially poignant experience three years ago when he went to Guatemala to make limbs for people who couldn’t afford them. After building a false leg for a weight lifter with a disorder that causes stunted femur growth and a disfigured leg, the man started crying.

“That made me start crying,” Barker said, adding he knows how a great prosthesis can change a person’s life.

Paul always has a joke up his sleeve and is never in a bad mood, co-workers said. And he never acts as though he is any different or less capable than everybody else, said Lyle Rosen, a pedorthist at the clinic.

So much so that John Frederick, an orthotist and resident prosthetist, said he never thinks about Barker missing the majority of one of his legs.

“I forget that he is an amputee during the day, I don’t notice it,” he said. “He works hard and makes us laugh. I don’t even think about the prosthesis.”

Neither does Barker. And he hopes others will put on the limbs he creates and do the same.

“Don’t feel sorry for yourself, pull your bootstraps up and get out there,” he said. “Don’t let nothing discourage you. Life continues and you can do whatever you want, even with a prosthesis.”