My therapist mentioned this. Apparently there's some attention being given now to the idea that trauma (in our case, losing bits) can lead to an improved life. I was wondering whether any of you guys felt that your life had "improved" (interpret that how you will) since your amputation?

I would have done this as a poll, but I'm not sure if that's possible. Djami

Perhaps I'm just self-obsessed. For 3 years since ‘my accident' (the day I left pretty much all of my leg on the roadside) I've spent roughly 16 hours a day thinking about my appearance, how I sling my jeans leg, whether white crutches are cool. Fair enough, I suppose, when being different makes anyone selfconscious. Part of my worry has of course been how I appear to others. But it's only recently I've started to think how my particular disability, how me becoming disabled, affected, still affects, those around me, something they won't in all probability ever talk to me about.
And a lost limb works on some deep level. When I go swimming I know there are people who look away, who are revolted by the sight of a cut off leg. At the other end of the scale there are people who get a kick out of seeming someone with a leg or an arm missing - just Google ‘amputee' and you'll see what I mean.

If like me you ‘acquired limb loss' (what a stupid expression) think back to your own first experience of your new body. I was taught to massage the scar to prevent it sticking. In fact I later learnt it had as much to do with making me get used to touching something which I found disgusting, the remains of my own leg.

We probably all had friends who just evaporated. I felt hurt, abandoned: they didn't want anything to do with a crippled guy. In fact they probably just didn't know how to react. I was too bound up in my own physical and emotional turmoil to realise that for those on the outside too the response was both physical and emotional.

My mother reacted as mothers do to a son who's ready to leave home is suddenly dependent again, by treating me as if I were 7 not 17. How she felt bandaging my stump I don't want to know. My father was manly - and pretended nothing had happened. My older brother who I hero worshipped and with whom I had a close relationship couldn't bear to see my stump, bandaged or not. He told me he cried for nights on end while I was in hospital, and when I came home coped by making jokes. I got counselling. He didn't.

I didn't have a partner. But how is it for the person who shares your bed when instead of suggestively slipping between the sheets you first have to find a place for your crutches or take off your leg? Even now I avoid touching a lover with my stump.

Becoming disabled is a two way mirror.

 

 

I suppose I'm still relatively new to this world, it's just 2 1/2 years since my leg was amputated just below the hip. I was 17. The head of the trochanter is still there and a very short section of the femoral shaft: in other words in prosthetic terms my stump isn't "viable", effectively I'm a hip dis.

In hospital after the initial shock the thought that kept me going was getting a "new" leg, hi tech, one that would make me look "normal" and which would enable me to live a normal life.

After initial rehab I was duly fitted with a prosthetic. It was uncomfortable, it was tiring and I walked badly and slowly. I persisted, I had modifications, two new legs, but still it wasn't satisfactory. I gradually wore a leg less and less and relied more on crutches, which were easy to use, more comfortable and enabled me to "walk" much more quickly. Friends no longer had to hang back for me.

I mentioned to my family that I was thinking of abandoning my leg altogether. They were horrified. It made me "look" disabled - I pointed out that I was. It would make it harder for me to get a partner, a job. I suggested it might be better if a potential lover knew straight off that I had a large piece missing; and that I wasn't proposing to be a coal miner. The reaction of friends was similar, only one said "Go for it, be what you are".

Which sets me wondering: how many are there amongst us who wear a prosthetic either as a disguise, or because it's what others expect? If I had my knee or even a longer stump of course it would be different, but for me and others like me there's a choice. I've decided to accept my loss and its implications. I wear shorts when it's hot, I've cut off and sewn up the legs of my jeans. I'm told I risk spine problems when I'm older, but I want to live the next 20 or 30 years as I am. And who's to say that wearing a prosthesis doesn't have a cost?

A last thought. A wheelchair is final. Someone in a wheelchair isn't going to walk again. Ironically crutches have a provisional feel to them. You use crutches if you've broken a bone, if you've sprained your ankle. But here's no cure for an amputated leg!