Update:
I spent about three hours working on my prosthesis this afternoon. I had a leak in the vacuum system and got a replacement sleeve (the most obvious problem) in the mail. AND that didn't fix the problem.
I texted my prosthetist, Rob Pinkston. He's outside of Cincinnati and I'm in West-Central Wisconsin. He walked me through some diagnosis steps and then several potential repairs. The bottom line is my vacuum pump needs some work and needs to be sent in. (the thing that looks like a hockey puck--that alone is a $4,000 piece of my prosthesis).
Fortunately, I had the exact pump on my old prosthesis, so I disassembled it (my blue socket) and reinstalled it on my current socket (black socket). It took several tries but I finally got it working!!!!
I'm very grateful for Rob taking part of his Saturday afternoon to help me long distance!
And I'm very happy to get my prosthesis working correctly again. As I've jokingly told people that an elevated vacuum prosthesis sucks when it is working--and it sucks worse when it is not. :-)
