A lifetime supply of hope

POST FALLS — Certified prosthetist orthotist.

Try saying that five times fast.

"It’s a mouthful," said a grinning Bob Miller, seated in one of the patient rooms of Kootenai Prosthetics and Orthotics in Post Falls.

This tongue-twisting title is shortened to CPO, a profession Miller dedicated his life to for more than two decades. A CPO evaluates patients' needs for prosthetics when limbs are missing.

“One of the things we offer is hope and the chance and the belief that you’ll be back on your feet," Miller said. "And you will get back on your feet; just work hard. We're going to work, and by and large most patients do."

On Jan. 31, Miller, who had owned Kootenai Prosthetics and Orthotics since 1998, sold the practice to CPO colleagues Stephen Blas and Dan Daley. Now Miller serves as adviser/consultant and is available to fill in when necessary.

Daley said he had the privilege of working for Miller for a number of years before the transition.

"What initially attracted me to KPO was the respect and esteem he drew from his peers," Daley said. "Anyone who knows Bob recognizes his demand for fair and equitable treatment, his immense knowledge, scrupulous professional skill, and tender heart to the patient population we serve. He certainly will be missed. Steve and I are thankful and thrilled to serve this community and carry on the legacy that he built."

Over 23 years, Kootenai Prosthetics and Orthotics has fit and provided more than 2,350 prostheses, averaging 100 per year.

"Every patient is similar, and every patient is yet different," Miller said.

Even in retirement now, Miller still enjoys visiting the office he helped build, where photos of patients-turned-friends are plastered all over the walls. Several of them have been immortalized on canvas. Miller smiles as he tells their stories and recalls his friendships with them, especially one amputee he bikes with.

“What’s been really rewarding for me is that I can build decades-long relationships with patients because, as you well know, we don’t grow limbs back," Miller said. "They want to go about their lives and their jobs just like anybody else."

His work with the amputee community has been rewarding and eye-opening. He's learned that "90% of prosthetic treatment is above the shoulders, 10% is below the shoulders."

"We can fit anybody just about anywhere, but they’ve got to believe that they have confidence in that first step, confidence in that last step, they have control, they have comfort and they have someone who can provide adjustments or changes as quickly as necessary," Miller said.

He has seen mountains of strength inside people, young and old.

“North Idaho has a population of strong, robust, dedicated, persistent people that will do quite well in their 80s and 90s,” he said. “Surprisingly, I’ve worked on kids as young as 6.”

It's those little ones who continued to amaze him throughout his career.

"What happened, and this is what I didn’t expect about prosthetics and orthotics, going into it — I didn’t expect that I would develop relationships with kids and watch kids become parents and watch these parents have children,” Miller said. "I’ve watched people grow. I watched them grow into their careers and into marriages, and I met them when they were young kids. And I’ve watched them do everything.”

Miller, a graduate of the University of Washington, sort of stumbled into the role of CPO after an attempt to enroll in UW's physical therapy program.

"In the early ’90s, P.T. was the place to be. Everybody wanted to be a P.T.," Miller said. "I applied to physical therapy school and I wasn’t accepted at the University of Washington and I was really upset about that. My wife says, 'Go up there and ask them why you didn’t get in.'"

Miller had served in the Navy as a corpsman and worked with the Department of Defense before applying for the physical therapy program. When he took the advice of his wife, Linda, whom he married in 1985, it led him to where he was meant to be (as wifely advice so often does).

“One of the admissions directors of the P.T. program at the University of Washington said, ‘You know, I can’t tell you why you didn’t get into the physical therapy program, but your background screams prosthetics,'" Miller said.

In one visit to the prosthetics program, he was sold.

"I took a look around and I’m just, ‘I’m going to do this,’” Miller said, beginning to chuckle. "It was a blessing in disguise for me, personally, that I was rejected by the physical therapy program but accepted by the prosthetic and orthotic program. It was just luck."

What started as a tiny Coeur d'Alene office on Ironwood Drive that served about 200 patients blossomed into a clinic in Post Falls that employs a staff of nine and cares for 1,500 patients who live in Idaho, Montana, Washington and British Columbia.

Miller said the community should be aware and glad to have the resources it does for amputees and their families. He estimates Kootenai County has well more than 1,000 amputees: "You see people all day long in public and in offices and in gymnasiums, and they may be amputees, they may not be amputees."

"They ski, they ride bicycles, they ride horses, they run, they hike, they do everything they want to do. They ride snowmobiles, they run logging companies, they’re lawyers," Miller said. "When you lose a limb, you close one door, you open another one. We help get that door open."

When it comes to patients, Miller said, KPO won't take "no" for an answer.

"Once that first step takes place, the rest of your life starts," he said.