Tuesday Tuesday

I had the pleasure of travelling to Wollongong to spend some time with Lukas Cubirka. Lukas was born with a hand difference and has since built a career as a prosthetist, using his own experience to empower others with limb loss and limb difference. The audio from his story will be a featured episode on The Limb Shift podcast, launching this October. While you wait for the full audio to drop, here is a glimpse into his story.

Lukas Cubirka’s journey is a story of adaptation, self-discovery, and professional purpose. 

Born with limb difference due to foetal band syndrome, Lukas grew up with a “stump and claw” that defined his physical reality from day one. Yet, for much of his life, his internal narrative resisted the label of disability, creating a complex tension between his reality and his self-perception that would take decades to resolve.  

The Early Years: Adaptation and Avoidance

Lukas’s physical development was shaped by two significant surgeries: a bone transplant from his fourth toe when he was one year old to create a thumb-like structure, and a subsequent “ray resection” to enhance his pincer grip. 

Despite these medical interventions, Lukas spent his youth consciously aware of his difference but psychologically dismissive of it. He navigated life with a simple approach: a task was either possible or impossible. As he reflected on his experience with an occupational therapist later in life:  

“I just determined if I can do it or I can’t do it, but it’s not ‘this is harder for me’ or ‘this is easier for me.’ It’s just I can or I can’t. There’s no grey area in between. It’s just like, yes or no”.  

This mindset allowed him to compensate in various ways, often leading others to describe him as ambidextrous. He learned to write with his right stump and developed significant balance and strength on both sides of his body to function in a world designed for those with two hands.  

Career Paths and Personal Reckoning

Lukas’s search for professional purpose was far from linear. Initially drawn to design and technology, he pursued a degree in industrial design. However, the transition from university to employment proved difficult. Facing a lack of paid opportunities and feeling disillusioned by societal expectations, Lukas retreated into a period of heavy partying and self-doubt.  

After working full-time at Bunnings to save money, he embarked on travels through Europe, seeking a sense of self and life experience. During this time, he spent a year in Ericeira, Portugal, surfing and working odd jobs—delivering surfboards, working as a handyman, and even manufacturing oven-cleaning products.  

The Intersection of Design and Prosthetics

Lukas’s eventual career in prosthetics was not a sudden epiphany but a gradual calling born from his own needs. During his industrial design studies, his major project focused on creating a low-cost, customisable prosthetic limb for children in Laos. Though conceptual, this project sparked an interest in the utility of specialised devices.  

Seeking to improve his own capabilities in bodyboarding, he constructed his first prosthetic in a garage. He described the gritty, DIY nature of this process, which eventually led him to formalise his career path:

“I remember the hook part of the prosthetic. I needed to bend some metal, and I went out to the light pole out the front of the street, and I was just banging the metal against this light pole with a hammer… I had to glue lots of material together and stitch it together. I learned how to sew. I taught myself how to sew just to make my, make repairs on my prosthetic. Now I don’t have to do that”.  

Finding Identity in Disability

Perhaps the most significant shift in Lukas’s life was his transition into accepting his disability in his mid-twenties. Early experiences with discrimination had left him struggling with depression and self-image. He recounted the painful reality of being dismissed by support systems when he was younger:  

“The lady was like, ‘oh, okay, I’m just going to go speak to someone,’ left for about five, ten minutes, came back to the table, sat down just like, ‘I’m sorry, but you’re not disabled enough so you can’t get any help.’ And I was just like, ‘oh, okay, okay.’ And then throughout life, like I’ve had those experiences of stigma, discrimination, like, well, fuck, I am disabled, but I can’t get help. Like, this is fucking bullshit”.  

It was only through his career and exposure to others with disabilities that Lukas began to embrace his identity. He realised that wearing a prosthetic was a tool that celebrated his differences rather than hiding them.  

A Message for the Future

Today, Lukas thrives in Wollongong, surfing regularly and working to improve his functional capacity through physiotherapy and new, customisable prosthetics. He works at SPAO Ottobock. His advice to others with limb difference is rooted in empowerment and trial-and-error:  

“Fail. Hurt yourself. Like cut yourself open with a prosthetic, then you know. Okay, that doesn’t work. Just try something else. Let’s do something else. Maybe different design, a different approach. Um, but yeah, just because there’s nothing or no product specifically out there to do what you want. Be creative”.  

His journey from a young boy hiding his difference to a professional clinician shaping the future of prosthetics serves as an inspiring example of how accepting one’s limitations can lead to the freedom to overcome them.