Duncan’s Dream Team hosts Bilateral Life Camp

April 13, 2019

By Linda Provost The Duncan Banner

At the Lt. Governor Turkey Hunt dinner, camp attendees visited with Lt. Gov. Matt Pinnell, left, Hayden Bailey, Trevor Bunch, U.S. Army SPC Brandon Wells, Pierre Lucien and Brandon Menezes.

Many people don’t remember when or how they learned to walk, but for people with a bilateral amputation, both legs usually above the knee, it is a task they must re-learn, sometimes several times with each new prosthetic.

In effort to help their clients who have become family in many ways, Dream Team Prosthetics (DTP) hosts a Bilateral Life Camp for the prosthetics users and their families to create a community.

Around six foreign countries were represented by attendees — Norway, Guatemala, United Kingdom, Poland, South Africa and a smattering of states made up the 23 visitors to Stephens County according to Chad Simpson, clinical director for DTP. DTP other members are Randy Richardson assistant prosthetist and Brandy Simpson office manager.

“The Bilateral Life Camp gives an opportunity to people who have above the knee limb loss or bilateral above the knee limb loss to come

together — we spend three days together teaching, sharing,” Simpson said. “There’s mentors here teaching how to acclimate back into the community again, accomplishing tasks of daily living.”

The campers took trips around town, learning the skills with each new environment.

“We came over here to the Simmons Center earlier today, we were working on coming in on the ramps to the building,” Simpson said. “You can imagine how difficult it is, you have two legs missing above the knee and you are relying one mechanical knee to carry you down a ramp, you’re going down stairs — like before you lost your limbs.”

The final fun activity before everyone returns home is a hike Simpson said.

“(Friday) is kind of the pinnacle of every thing — we go to the Wichita Mountains,” he said. “A lot of them will (change) into what’s call the Foreshortened prosthetics also called ‘stubbies’” “Stubbies lowers your sense of gravity and it makes it easier to climb around on the rocks and go down the trails.”

Stubbies are prosthetics which attach to the stump and only extend a few inches to a rectangular “foot” leaving the user at about knee hight.

Before moving to Duncan, DTP hosted something like the camp but it has grown.

“Randy and myself have been in the field now for 23/24 years, when we were in the city (Oklahoma City) we would host a similar kind of camp” Simpson said. “Since we moved here, it really works out a lot better in Duncan, the community is really good to us.”

Simpson said Duncan Area Economic Development Foundation (DAEDF)’s president Lyle Roggow invited the Dream Team and their guests to the Lt. Governor Turkey Hunt dinner, and also sponsored one prosthetic user, U.S. Army SPC Brandon Wells as the hunts “Wounded Warrior,” for the this year’s hunt.

For Simpson, the camp wasn’t about what he or DPT could do for attendees but how they created a community.

“Probably the most important part of the camp is everybody getting to come together — some of these guys have been coming to our camps for like 10 years,” he said. “You get to see a huge exchange of knowledge about how do you tackle the world. The wives get to exchange ‘how do you deal with X,Y and Z?’ So there’s really awesome peer support that goes along with it.”