Four-year-old Peter Belin of Silver Spring is like most boys his age.
He loves outdoor sports, learning to swim, dressing up as a superhero for Halloween, and playfully kicking his three brothers while engaging in rough-and-tumble childhood games.
In fact, Peter has achieved such a level of normalcy that his siblings and schoolmates hardly think of the one thing that has made him different since infancy: a first-of-its kind prosthetic leg with a rolling device on the bottom, which, unlike a “non-articulating” or immobile leg, allowed Peter to crawl.
The “crawling prosthesis,” created by David Beachler, a certified prosthetist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, is a “perfect example of how military medicine is translating in improvements in the quality of life for civilians,” says Cynthia Gilman, special assistant to the president for advancement of cancer research and collaborative relationships at the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine.
The foundation is partnering with musician Tim McGraw’s Tug McGraw Foundation for Country United, a symposium bringing together physicians and health care professionals Friday in the District to discuss how they can bring military medicine from the “front lines to the home front,” as Ms. Gilman puts it.
While pregnant with Peter and his twin brother, Danny, Jennifer Belin discovered she had a problem pregnancy. The twins were getting disproportionate blood supplies, a complication known as twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome, which usually results in a miscarriage.
Mrs. Belin delivered successfully, but Peter was born with a deformity. His right leg “was like necrotic tissue,” Mrs. Belin recalls.
When Peter was a day old, Mrs. Belin and her husband, Dr. Eric Belin, an active duty naval dermatologist at the National Naval Medical Center, made the painful but inescapable decision to amputate Peter’s leg from the upper femur down.
Dr. Belin consulted with top military physicians like Dr. Paul F. Pasquina, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Medical Corps and chief of the integrated department of orthopedics and rehabilitation at Walter Reed.
Through Dr. Pasquina, the Belins were introduced to Mr. Beachler, who has worked for years at Walter Reed with combat amputees, fitting them with new limbs so they can try to move on with their lives.
When Peter was approaching his first birthday, Mr. Beachler created his special crawling prosthesis, which enabled Peter not only to crawl, but to progress in his gait development on par with his twin brother.
“The crawling prosthesis was used to help [Peter] reach developmental milestones, which are important in a child’s development,” says Mr. Beachler.
As Peter advances in age, he visits Mr. Beachler at Walter Reed for regular “fittings,” where new legs are crafted to keep pace with his growing body.
On a recent visit to the Military Advanced Training Center, an outpatient facility at Walter Reed, Mr. Beachler and Mrs. Belin allowed The Washington Times to see firsthand Peter being fitted for a new leg. It doesn’t take long to recognize that Peter has become an inspiration to the other amputees in the lab, who may be older than he is and have lost a limb under different circumstances, but still share a profound bond with the young boy.
“He grabs their heart strings. They all want their photo with him,” says Dr. Belin, who explains that Peter’s interaction with soldiers “is a two-way street - Peter sees some people with bilateral amputations, and then they see him.”
According to Gail Cureton, a media relations officer with Walter Reed, there have been more than 900 amputee patients treated in military hospitals since operations in Iraq and Afghanistan began in 2003, with Walter Reed seeing more than 600 of them.
“Peter has never known what it’s like to not have a leg, but a 20-year-old without their limbs is a different story,” Dr. Belin says. “I think they look at Peter and see that he can run and chase a dog, and think that if a child can do it, so can they.”
Dr. and Mrs. Belin stress that Peter’s progress would not have been possible without the specialized care he received at Walter Reed, which came under harsh public scrutiny after complaints of outpatient neglect were reported in 2007.
Mr. Beachler, who published a case study of Peter’s “crawling prosthesis” in medical journals, told The Times that this advance is one of many being developed at Walter Reed that can have widespread impact in both military and civilian life.
Eventually, Peter might have access to the “power knee,” a 2006 invention being used by, among other military amputees, Lt. Col. Greg Gadson, an Army soldier who lost both his legs in an Iraq roadside bomb explosion in 2007, according to Joseph Miller, Walter Reed’s chief of prosthetics.
Considered a leap forward in prosthetic technology, the “power knee” allows the user to bend and manage walking by providing support in any given angle of flexion as soon as contact with the ground is made.
“The Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs have partnered with scientists, engineers, and prosthetic manufacturers across the globe to help stimulate research and development in the next generation of prosthetic components,” Dr. Pasquina says.
Still, he cautions, “Technology will never replace the courage and determination that every individual with limb loss faces to overcome physical challenges in pursuing his or her goals.”
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