Featuring Ursula Kunze-Krueger

For three years, Ursula Kunze-Krueger from Bad Homburg and her husband had not gone on vacation. The reason: both thumbs hurt so much throughout the day that even shopping had become nearly impossible.

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The pain began years ago in her right thumb when she was still working as a nurse. To spare her thumb, she started doing more with her left, resulting in her left thumb also beginning to hurt more. “It went from bad to worse and it was really awful,” she says. Initially, she was prescribed painkillers. That worked for a while, until she began experiencing side effects.

Eventually, it was decided to operate. This happened twice and she was fitted with multiple orthoses, but nothing really helped. After more than thirty years, she was even forced to quit her job as a nurse a year ago. At a consultation with her specialist, Dr. Vesper, last year, he mentioned a new orthosis from a Dutch company that he had seen at a conference and was very enthusiastic about. Ursula decided to check out Manometric’s website. “I was immediately enthusiastic,” she says. Yff Verstraeten and Gerben Dokter made scans of both hands at Dr. Vesper’s location as a demonstration of the technology and then printed custom orthoses.

With success: despite the arthritis, she can now use both thumbs without pain again. Shopping and cycling – which she loves to do – are all possible again. And more than that: “We had not been on vacation for three years. Then my husband suggested we go skiing again, something we both love to do. I had always refused, but then I said: let’s just try it.” For that ski vacation in Winterberg, she bought special gloves so she could keep the orthoses on. “And it was a great vacation.”

She has had the orthoses from Manometric for half a year now and wears them all day. “They are really great,” she says, “Manometric hat mir mein Leben Zurück gegeben.”

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