New technology boosts Wasilla EMT’s ability to help others
By Rindi White
Frontiersman reporter

Lamb, aside from her job as office manager for the Wasilla Veteran’s Center, is an emergency medical technician with Central Mat-Su, and she’s one of two on the crew with a prosthetic device. But she doesn’t – and never had – let that keep her from living life on her terms.

“I’m determined. I’m going to try to do something,” Lamb said. “I may not succeed, but I’ll try.”

Lake any Alaskan, she’s got more than a few stories to tell, but hers have a different twist, like the time she went to pick up a new leg at a bar in Anchorage, where she asked it be brought after it had been lost in luggage on a flight into Alaska. She arrived to find the staff had placed the box they thought held salmon directly into the cooler. No salmon, but leg of Lamb, she joked. She scrambles over rocks to reach good fishing holes, and spent a week with a dripping foot after taking a spill in the Deshka River. She’s melted shoes in campfires and spent a day learning to rollerblade – in short, she’s always ready for adventure.

These days, Lamb is studying to reach the next level in her EMT training – an EMT II certification – and is in the middle of taking classes. She’s both excited and a little afraid of the upcoming exam, but that has more to do with test anxiety than anything concerning her leg. That subject, she’s fired up about. Lamb returned this month from a week-long trip to Oklahoma City, OK, where she was fitted with a custom-made prosthetic equipped with an advanced computer that allows her to do her job as an on-call EMT at the same level as others on her crew.

The new device is called a C-Leg – the C stands for computer – and it readjusts itself to shifts in weight about 50 times each second. It’s highly responsive and gives Lamb a broader range of motion than previous prosthetics. With it, she said, she can walk up and down stairs and even inclines – often a tricky maneuver with devices she’s had in the past. She can kneel evenly – also a difficult task with prosthetics – and best of all, Lamb said, she can run.

“I hadn’t run in 33 years,” Lamb said, with a bright smile, adding that learning how to stop is still giving her a little difficulty.

All of the new functions, she said, were geared at making her a better EMT. She said when she decided recently to get a new prosthetic made – a nearly annual venture for Lamb, who admits her active life of camping and fishing, and EMT work is hard on prosthetics – she looked up a company she had been pleased with previously. She called the staff at Scott Sabolich Prosthetics and Research, based out of Oklahoma City, and explained what aspects of her previous device weren’t meeting her needs.

“I told him I’ve got to be able to go down inclines,” Lamb said of one of the teleconference with staff at the company and Scott Sabolich, the company owner. “Scott said, ‘I think you’d be a good candidate for a C-Leg.’”

After researching and finding out exactly what a C-Leg was, Lamb found the average cost was between $40,000 and $50,000. Less-advanced prosthetics run about $32,000, she said, and the new device should last about three years. After mulling I t over, she decided to go forward with the plan and, through numerous phone conversations, technicians designed a leg that would help her meet the challenges of being both an active Alaskan and an EMT. Although the special programming added about $25,000 to the cost, and she’s working to pay a chunk of the out-of-pocket expense not covered by her insurance, Lamb said it’s been worth it.

“It’s just too good to be true,” Lamb said. “It’s like Christmas!”

Just a few days after returning to Alaska with her new leg, Lamb resumed her on-duty shifts with the ambulance crew. Nearly every weekend is spent at Station 6-1, along with several days a week, either through classes or shifts. With her children grown and out of the house it keeps her busy, and she said she’s always been interested in the medical field – and in helping people.

When asked if her family worried about the sometimes-risky work she does on the crew, she said they’re proud. Her husband and children have all been supportive, she said, and so have the staff at Station 6-1.

That’s not to say she’s received special treatment – Lamb is held to the same standard as every other EMT with the borough. During the EMT I exams last December, she said, she was given the same amount of time to perform exercises such as patient defibrillation.

“I had to prove myself,” Lamb said. “When it came time to do the testing, I didn’t get any special privileges – and that’s what I expect. I don’t want to be different.”

Steve Lopes, District 1 Mat-Su Emergency Services’ battalion chief, said Lamb is an essential part of the team – and brings a valuable drive and commitment to the group.

“I look at Glenna like a look at every other responder – every responder who comes into this system has strengths and weaknesses,” Lopes said. “And everybody works together to get the job done. Glenna holds her own … she’s a very good team player and she brings a lot of strength in to the department. It’s a positive statement for this department, and it’s a good motivator – she gives it 100 percent.”

Lopes said he could use another 30 responders with her motivation. And that’s what he and others on the crew see, he said, before anything else.

“She’s Glenna, EMT,” Lopes said. “That’s who she is to us. She’s not Glenna, the EMT who happens to have a handicap.”

Lamb admits she has had second guesses about whether she’s be a burden, rather than a boon to the crew. Her doubts relate to problems with her previous prosthetic, like the time it malfunctioned and fell off. Lopes and others at the borough, she said, have always buoyed spirits and encouraged her to get back out there. And having a new leg that better suits the demands of her position has helped cast away her own doubts, she said.

“I’m glad I’m doing it – I really am,” Lamb said.

Judging by her full schedule of shifts in December, she’ll have a good chance to test out her new leg and note any problems before she heads back to Oklahoma City in January.

She’s looking forward to that trip, she said. The skin tone cosmetic covering will be applied at that time. Although the sleek blue and silver metallic look that earned her the nickname “Android” from an enthralled young family member is cool, she said. Sabolich is known for matching skin tone, size and even blemishes such as varicose veins to make their devices look real. She’ll get to wear a dress again, she said. And she’ll get her tattoo, which she’s still designing, incorporated into the design.

“I can’t wait,” Lamb said.