High-tech brace helps Morehouse man regain mobility

For about 10 years, Joe Brashears walked with his left leg locked. Putting his left foot in front of his body meant he would fall.

Since October 2015, Brashears has used a hydraulic brace from the Hanger Clinic in Cape Girardeau that naturally bends with his gait.

Even walking on a flat surface, he was afraid the first time he started to plant his left leg, but soon the motion felt natural.

As he was trying out the brace, he had to stop and cry.

“It was happy tears,” he said.

Hanger certified orthodist Timothy Nieder said the brace looks as if it came out of “RoboCop.”

The technology involved in the orthotic is similar to technology that has been used increasingly in prosthetics over the past 15 years, Hanger certified prosthetist Andrew Stritzel said.

Brashears walks with his C-Brase bionic leg bracing system Thursday inside Hangar Inc. in Cape Girardeau.LAURA SIMON ~ lsimon@semissourian.com

The hydraulic motor that sticks out the side of the brace is connected to a microprocessor and sensors at Brashears’ left foot and ankle.

The processor registers information from the two sensors to adjust to Brashears gait, Stritzel said.

The processor was programmed using an algorithm specific to Brashears, he said.

Stritzel said Brashears is one of three patients in the Midwest using the C-Brace.

More patients have not been prescribed a C-Brace mainly because of the cost — between $60,000 and $90,000 per unit, Stritzel said.

Hanger has tried to convince payers — Medicare, Medicaid and insurance companies — the quality-of-life difference with a hydraulic brace is drastically better than patients can expect with a normal brace, especially for a patient as young as Brashears, Stritzel said.

“Here’s somebody that can be productive in society,” he said.

Brashears, a Morehouse, Missouri, resident, was working for a railroad in Wyoming in 1999 when he fell off a ladder and crushed the lower part of his left leg.

He was driven to Cheyenne, Wyoming, flown to Denver and then flown to Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis.

After several surgeries, Brashears developed reflex-sympathetic dystrophy syndrome in his upper left leg.

Nerve pain made his left leg feel as if it had been lit on fire at even the slightest touch; water in the shower would be agony.

“It was a living hell,” Brashears said.

Brashears was relegated to a wheelchair while doctors recommended different techniques to dull the pain.

He eventually had surgery to burn nerves in his spine.

He also was using opioid painkillers — morphine most often.

He begged a doctor to amputate his leg when the pain was at its most intense.

Nothing stopped the pain, but it got better, Brashears said. With help from a doctor, Brashears gradually stopped taking painkillers.

He was careful not to develop a dependency by taking only the prescribed amount.

“It’d be so easy to eat morphine every day,” Brashears said. “I don’t wish that on anyone.”

Brashears also went from using a wheelchair to a walker to crutches until he started using a cane in 2004.

There were still things he missed — he couldn’t go camping or hunting with a carbon-fiber brace.

Before working for the railroad, Brashears worked on offshore oil rigs.

He viewed his chosen careers as an adventure.

The railroad took him to every state except Florida, Hawaii and Alaska.

Just using a cane allowed him to regain some dignity he felt he lost when he was in a wheelchair.

He was excited to go duck hunting this past year, but there was also the more simple pleasure of being able to walk with his cancer-surviving Weimaraner dog he adopted in 2014.

Since using the Hanger brace, he has built much of his own house —- recently putting up dry wall and putting in floors.

“My family and friends, at first, they couldn’t believe it was me,” Brashears said. “When I first got this, it was like I was zooming around on a skateboard.”

bkleine@semissourian.com

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