Canadian COVVI User Advocates For Others To Never Give Up
“Never give up, always advocate for yourself, and always fight for yourself.” The motivating words of a man who faced unexpected tragedy but didn’t let it slow him down. When most people would’ve given up, Geoffrey Morphew managed to find hope in the bleakest of circumstances.
Geoffrey was working as a Quality Control Supervisor in Ontario, Canada, until a life-changing accident led to the amputation of his entire right arm in 2017. A mechanical failure with a crane, led to his arm being crushed under a 135,000 lbs. piece of concrete. Thankfully, due to the way things landed, his arteries were temporarily sealed; which kept him alive for over 45 minutes while those around him scrambled to remove the concrete.
Following on from this traumatic incident, Geoff knew he wanted to be fitted with a multi-articulated hand; but his initial assessment concluded otherwise and deemed that he’d be able to manage a non-functional prosthesis which came as a disappointment. Despite this initial set back, he was fixed on showing that the right solution was out there and that anything is possible if you put in the work.
His determination only grew , thanks to the support of his family, to make it through this new journey and come out the other side stronger than ever. Throughout every step of this new chapter, Geoff’s clinicians were amazed at the progress he made. His ability to create the signals required to control a myoelectric hand, a feat that most users take a while to come to terms with, was astounding to many. Geoffrey’s willpower shone through, when speaking to him about how swiftly he made the COVVI hand his own, he had this to say, “a lot of users don’t use their prosthetic as they don’t think it works properly, when all you need to do is put in the time and effort, and it’ll work for you.”
Paired with the COAPT Pattern Recognition System, Geoff has been able to retrain his brain and use this advanced technology to incorporate the COVVI hand into his everyday life. He’s able to do this through using COVVI’s customisable Grip Tables in the companion app to program multiple configurations of grip patterns; which can be switched on the fly to help him complete different tasks day-to-day.
When asked about his inspirational journey, Geoff had this advice for other amputees: “I want to advocate for people. With new technologies, it makes it so much easier for the user. It’s not like the old style where the user would have to learn how to use the arm, the arm learns how to use the user. Always look for new technologies, try to get the most advanced technology that they’ll let you get because it’ll help you in the long run.”