I spent 6 years building a device to help my mom's chronic…
1 reactions
I spent 6 years building a device to help my mom's chronic pain, and last week I flew across the world to hold the first real ones. She hasn't worn her knee brace in two years.
When I was 19, my mom had been in chronic pain for over a decade. Arthritis, pain medicine every day, and doctors telling her surgery was the only other option. The part that got me was watching her quietly give up the things she loved because moving hurt too much.
I didn't have any engineering experience. I was just a college kid who used kinesiology tape and muscle stimulators for sports recovery, and I kept thinking, why can't these be one thing that could help her. So I started trying to build it. My first attempt was a soda can I cut up in my dorm room. It was a mess.
That was 6 years ago. I kept going the whole time, through a lot of failures, because I couldn't let go of the idea of her moving without pain again.
Last week I flew 7,800 miles across the world to watch the very first real batch of the device get made. I stood there and watched 200 finished units come off the line, and all I could think about was that soda can in my dorm room and the reason I started in the first place. I flew home holding boxes of them and I'm not ashamed to say I teared up.
But the best part of this whole thing isn't the company or the milestones.
My mom hasn't worn her knee brace in over two years.
She's doing things again that she'd stopped doing. That's the whole reason I started, and somehow it actually worked. Just wanted to share something good today.
#inspiration
source
When I was 19, my mom had been in chronic pain for over a decade. Arthritis, pain medicine every day, and doctors telling her surgery was the only other option. The part that got me was watching her quietly give up the things she loved because moving hurt too much.
I didn't have any engineering experience. I was just a college kid who used kinesiology tape and muscle stimulators for sports recovery, and I kept thinking, why can't these be one thing that could help her. So I started trying to build it. My first attempt was a soda can I cut up in my dorm room. It was a mess.
That was 6 years ago. I kept going the whole time, through a lot of failures, because I couldn't let go of the idea of her moving without pain again.
Last week I flew 7,800 miles across the world to watch the very first real batch of the device get made. I stood there and watched 200 finished units come off the line, and all I could think about was that soda can in my dorm room and the reason I started in the first place. I flew home holding boxes of them and I'm not ashamed to say I teared up.
But the best part of this whole thing isn't the company or the milestones.
My mom hasn't worn her knee brace in over two years.
She's doing things again that she'd stopped doing. That's the whole reason I started, and somehow it actually worked. Just wanted to share something good today.
#inspiration
source
1
| 4,000 mlx | |
| 8 | |
| 1 |