Listen as host Mike Bolland picks three limb loss/amputee headlines for the week and discusses them in these 'Headlines" episodes. 

Headline #1: Michael Palin says he still talks to his late wife: ‘It’s a bit like losing a limb’

Sir Michael Palin has opened up about life without his late wife, Helen Gibbins, saying he still talks aloud to her.

The 81-year-old Monty Python star and travel documentarian announced in May 2023 that his wife of 57 years had died of kidney failure. She also suffered with chronic pain for several years.

Speaking on ITV’s Good Morning Britain on Monday (24 June), Palin said: “It’s like you’re a unit, and suddenly you are not a unit any longer, and it’s a bit like losing a bit of a limb, you’re not quite sure where you are.”

“She was great and we have good memories. So much of your own life is invested in that one person so there is a huge slice of my life which I now can’t really access in the same way. The couple had three children and four grandchildren, and celebrated their 57th wedding anniversary just two-and-a-half weeks before her death.

Headline #2, courtesy of: Blue Arbor goes beneath the surface for better control of limb prosthetics

Blue Arbor Technologies is developing implantable sensors to give patients better control of cutting-edge prosthetic arms and hands — with potential exoskeleton applications in the future.

In April 2024, the FDA gave breakthrough device designation to Blue Arbor’s RESTORE Neuromuscular Interface System and enrolled it in the agency’s Total Product Life Cycle Advisory Program (TAP) pilot to get the technology to patients faster. (RESTORE is an acronym of “Reimagining Engineering Solutions To Optimize Restoration of Extremities.”)

Research efforts started in 2007 and have since totaled $45 million, said Blue Arbor co-founder and President Dr. Paul Cederna.

Headline #3: Prototype Smart Socket Shows Promise for Amputees’ Comfort. This is from our friends at Amplitude Magazine

A few years ago, Amplitude surveyed the latest breakthroughs in “smart sockets,” or sockets that auto-adjust in real time to fluctuations in the size and shape of the residual limb (“Smart Sockets Are on the Horizon,” November/December 2021). Such devices could reduce or eliminate the near-universal aggravations that come with socket misfits, including blisters, sores, rashes, and circulatory problems. 

One of the research initiatives cited in that article, the University of Washington’s motor-driven smart socket, has reached the early testing phase—and the results are encouraging. In a new paper published last month in Nature Scientific Reports, the UW team shared the outcomes of an early trial involving an auto-adjusting socket. The prototype device offered two innovative modes of real-time socket adjustment—manual adjustment via a smartphone

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