ADVICE FOR MY FORMER SELF

I was recently asked what advice I might give someone new to limb loss, and boy did it take me back in time. It's only been four years, but it feels like a lifetime ago. This experience has changed me in ways that I never imagined it would, and as long as the days of waiting until I was healed enough to walk on a prosthesis were, the change within me happened fast, and I could not be more grateful to have found my inner strength just in time to fight like hell.

I was optimistic, but blindly so, because I knew nothing about what it would be like to live without most of my right leg. Nothing I read online or asked doctors about adequately prepared me for limb loss. Perhaps if I'd known everything I know now, It would have been too overwhelming. It wasn't until I found a community of other amputees online that I had a real resource. Perhaps because they knew exactly what I was going through, they treaded lightly—giving me support and advice without telling me everything I would need to know at once. Instead, they answered my questions as they came and helped me feel less alone by relating to my endless rants about phantom pain and falling on crutches at least twice a week.

To that younger, more naive person I was when this all started, I offer these words of advice.

Dear former self, I know you thought your struggles were behind you after that first surgery. I know that this cancer returning was your greatest fear, and not many options remain because your jerk of a cancer subtype doesn't respond to chemo or radiation. But I want you to know that life doesn't end after amputation. Here, in this mess, you will find yourself and become more powerful than you've ever been. Even so, don't try to do this on your own. Find your people, your limb loss community, and let them be a source of comfort and knowledge through this confusing time. Accept that you have no idea how this is going to go while knowing that whatever may come, you will get through it and emerge with a creative outlet and a beautiful life. Don't believe me? Just know it turns out better than you ever thought it could.