08/26/2026
POLIO DOESN’T FOLLOW A TEXTBOOK. NEITHER CAN WE.
Working with people living with the lifelong effects of polio is some of the most complex—and humbling—work we do as orthotists.
There is rarely a simple answer.
Decades of muscle imbalance, weakness, compensation, joint changes and incredibly unique ways of moving mean that sometimes the first design isn’t the final design.
Sometimes neither is the second.
You assess.
You design.
You fabricate.
You fit.
You watch them walk.
Then you listen.
And sometimes—you go back and change it.
Different alignment. Different materials. Different stiffness. Different joints. Different forces. Sometimes an entirely different approach.
That isn’t failure. That’s orthotics.
Because the goal isn’t to build a beautiful brace.
The goal is to build the right brace for the person wearing it.
And getting there can take time.
It can be frustrating. It can be expensive. It can push the limits of funding models that don’t always recognize how much clinical time, fabrication, modification and redesign complex patients actually require.
But in my experience, orthotists tend to go the distance.
Why?
Because when someone has spent a lifetime figuring out how to keep moving, they deserve a clinician willing to keep figuring it out with them.
We may not get everything perfect on the first attempt.
But we assess. We adapt. We rebuild. We learn.
And we keep going.
Because sometimes a few degrees of alignment, a change in stiffness, or one design iteration can mean the difference between struggling through the day and moving through it with confidence.
That’s the challenge.
That’s the craft.
That’s orthotics.
