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John Powers

Middletown, NY

Occupation

Artist/Sculptor

Technology

Naked Prosthetics Thumb Driver & MCP Driver

Handspring Hero Since

2021

The User Prospective

From the point of view of John Powers

Written by Linda Calabria

Lake Oscawana is located at the heart of Putnam Valley, in the state of New York. That is where John took my call from as he sat in front of a background that looked like a fake Google meets view, except that it wasn’t.

John and his wife have a property with three cabins that they call home, which as we joked they kept “in the artist family” having purchased the home from another artist. Boats were heard going by as we chatted on this warm August day.

It was at this location in 2021 that John suffered from a table saw accident that cost him his thumb and ring finger.

As he shares in a throwback picture on his Instagram page, he is thankful for also not losing his sense of humor throughout this ordeal and was quick to joke from his hospital bed that “My shadow puppet career is over.”

All joking aside, John Powers has worked for artists and as a sculptor since he was 19. If googled, it’s easy to see the impact he has made on the art world. It’s then easy to understand why while calling 911, his wife, designer Jennifer Bostic, requested that he be seen by a hand surgeon as he is an artist who works with his hands.

After a grueling wait for an ambulance, John was taken to a local hospital. The surgeons tried to re-attach his thumb but unfortunately, over time, it became necessary to remove it again.

For this portion of his recovery, he was put in touch with a hand surgeon at the Center for Amputation Reconstruction at NYU Langone, Dr. Jacques Hacquebord, who John calls his Virgil and someone he immediately felt comfortable around.

Dr. Hacquebord presented John with an option, one that continues to be offered, of attaching one of his toes to where his thumb was, a common path forward. However, John again jokes to me that “I have unusually beautiful feet and I’m not interested in compromising another limb.” After sharing this jovial sentiment, John adds that while he may work WITH his hands, he works ON his feet constantly, so compromising that ability would not be in his best interests.

These are just some of the considerations the right clinical team needs to acknowledge and understand, and a patient/user needs to be able to communicate.

This is similar to when John was offered a passive functional prosthesis which again did not fit his need, or really jive with his personality. He felt that a positionable prosthesis more akin to what he needed and wanted. It has actually helped him blend in more and he recounts a story where his current Naked Prosthetics prosthesis allowed his hand to go unnoticed at a Thanksgiving dinner party.

“At the end of dinner, we all shifted around and I ended up sitting next to someone new. We were eating pie and having after dinner drinks and she turned to me and said ‘What is that on your hand?’ This was after four or five hours of sitting around a table. Everyone turned to look and I could tell that no one understood. So I said, that’s my hand, and I held it up and we had a conversation about it. My mind now views my prosthesis as my hand. When I see it, I don’t think about the accident or the injury, the same way my table mate at Thanksgiving wasn’t thinking about it either. Perhaps part of it is that it moves like a hand, and the mind queues in to false movement very quickly, so a rubber thumb would look odd to me.”

The story above echoes one of the considerations he was keeping in mind from the beginning, being able to seamlessly sit at a dinner table, eat his meal, and hold his utensils properly, which his current device easily allows him to do.

“Eating at a table with adults and no one noticing that there’s something odd, was one of the first things that I told people that I want to be able to do. I want to be able to go to a dinner party and have no one notice, I want to be able to sit and eat at a bar and not have my elbow in the air because I’m holding a fork like a child.”

What Stands Out

When asked about his experience with insurance denials, John shares that he was denied his current device twice before getting approval.

One of the reasons his prosthesis was denied was because the person reviewing his case did not come from the world of prosthetics and did not understand what his clinical team was trying to fit him with. The misunderstanding came in the form of the reviewer thinking it was a myoelectric prosthesis, which they did not deem medically necessary, even though the medical paperwork stated otherwise.

It wasn’t until the team at Handspring sent in photographs of John’s hand and the positionable prosthesis they were trying to fit on him that he got an approval. One has to almost expect at least one round of denials.

He advises new users to find a clinic that will put in the time to fight for what you need and advocate FOR you.

He is now able to do 80 to 95% of his daily activities with the help of his Naked Prosthetics device, more specifically an MCP and Thumb Driver, and wears it nearly all day. He does also recognize when it’s easier for him to simply use his “paw” without the prosthesis as well, which will be unique to each user. “New users need to remember that this may be someone’s first prosthesis, not their last. There will be others, and you will make a variety of adaptations but the sooner you’re able to use a prosthesis, the better.”

John's Advice

As we begin to wrap up our conversation, I ask about how one should go about finding the “right” prosthetic clinic for them, to which John reflects, “It’s a lot like dating. The way you know you’ve met the right one is because you’ve run through the wrong ones. It’s very hard to know you’ve met the wrong one, especially if you just stop at the first one, but it’s very easy to know you’ve found the right one.”

“A good thing for non prosthetic device users, or new to the realm, to keep in mind is it’s what the mind does. This device doesn’t take any special skill. I’ve personally found that I’m handier with it. Think of it like glasses, when you first wear glasses, the frames sort of interfere but overtime they kind of disappear. It’s what the mind does.”