Teen Puts a New Twist on Bubble Wrap

EDITOR'S NOTE: Grayson Rosenberger, a student at Franklin Road Academy in Nashville, Tenn., won the 2007 Bubble Wrap Competition for Young Inventors. He writes from Africa, where he is teaching people how to make artificial limbs appear more lifelike by using Bubble Wrap.

My family started a ministry called Standing With Hope, and we train workers in developing countries to build quality prosthetic limbs for their own people. Standing With Hope is the vision of my mother, Gracie, who lost her own legs from a terrible car accident.

My trip here in Africa is going very well. I arrived safely (but tired) on June 15. Work in the clinic has been extremely busy and time consuming. We work almost every day for nine to 10 hours a day (sometimes longer). We came to Ghana because it is the gateway to West Africa. Ghana is a peaceful but very poor country, with about 20 million people in a country the size of Oregon. The number one cause of amputation here is diabetes (which is the number one cause in the world). Amputation is the surgery of choice, even for things such as insect bites, snakebites and broken legs. The patients either don't have access to quality medical care or they wait too long to get help. People with disabilities are treated poorly here, and having a robotic looking leg doesn't help, so a cosmetically covered leg becomes very important to the patients to help them blend in.

The first part of building an artificial leg is making a cast of the amputated limb. We fill the cast with plaster, and when the plaster dries, we take the cast off and use the plaster mold to make a hard, acrylic resin socket. We then attach the socket to a pylon, and connect a foot to the bottom of the pylon. When it’s all properly fit and aligned to the patient, the leg comes to me, and I make a Bubble Wrap covering to help the leg look more lifelike.

Amidst all of the confusion, chaos, and oh yeah, the work, we do find time to go out to eat and do a little shopping. On Sunday, my brother, my cousin and his girlfriend, and my father and I saw the Ghana Black Stars compete in the World Cup qualifying rounds. It was my first chance to see
a professional soccer game and a pro sport in another country. It was extremely exciting, and Ghana beat Gabon 2-0. The Black Stars team is staying in our hotel, so we get to see them every day.

That’s all for now. I will write more next week. It should be an exciting week as patients return to get their finished legs.

~By Grayson Rosenberger

Photos: Courtesy of Peter Rosenberger