Exactly nine years ago, I was a newly diagnosed Osteosarcoma patient being wheeled into the OR for a limb salvage surgery meant to save both my leg and my life. I cried so hard in pre-op that I needed extra sedatives. Then my arms were tied down to the OR table while I was still alert enough to feel some serious panic - If you're claustrophobic, you understand. What followed was the longest two weeks of my life. For much of that time, my pain was only controlled with Dilaudid, a medication 2-8 times stronger than morphine. My wound became infected, my margins weren't clean, and I missed my best friend's wedding. Looking back, I hardly recognize the person I was at that moment, a shell of the woman I am today. Not because I was sick but because I felt so hopeless, so afraid…

Despite more than two million Americans living with limb loss, assumptions stemming from misinformation make up most of what the average person knows. Below are a few things the limb loss community would like you to stop assuming. Pretty please with a cherry on top…

What's the scariest thing you've done? I drove a car with my left leg and it felt just as strange as it sounds. I'll never forget how easily my surgeon shrugged his shoulders and said "sure" when I asked him if I would still be able to drive after my amputation. What he failed to mention is that it would require completely rewiring my brain and possibly even my car…

International women's day was just last week, and it made me reflect on how being a woman with a disability makes it impossible to ignore all the ways in which we are treated differently. Aside from the obvious pay gaps and work opportunity disparages that exist both for women and people living with disabilities, there is a clear divide in the way outsiders behave and react toward disabled women. I have, and forever will be, a hot pink-wearing, Shania Twain-singing, girly girl, but at what point do we stop allowing people to treat us like second-class citizens because of our gender, dress, and disability?…

Every week, I sit down and type the words that swirl in my mind after limb loss and cancer. All of my struggles, achievements, fears, and the scanxiety that lies dormant only to emerge every three months like some bad seasonal flu. Then I click publish and hope that it all reaches someone who needs it because otherwise, I’m standing on a stage naked for no reason. Exposing myself to strangers with my insecurities on the outside. Does it feel weird as an inherently private person to have people I’ve never met know so many details about my life? YES. It’s still a strange feeling, but I’ve learned to do all kinds of things that make me uncomfortable over the last three-plus years, and I wouldn’t trade my new strength for anything…

Let's say you meet someone new on a day when you happen to be wearing pants. Your prosthesis isn't visible, and there is no outward sign that would indicate you are an amputee. Do you casually mention it in conversation? Do you say nothing? Are you having a mini meltdown in your brain, hoping this isn't going to be a jump scare moment where your prosthesis falls off in front of them before you have the chance to explain you wear a fake leg? At what point, if at any, do you feel it's necessary to provide an "amputee disclosure"? …

Feeling pain and zaps in a limb you no longer have is so ironic that I have to assume Alanis Morissette must have just not been able to make it rhyme. Three years after limb loss, I still get the occasional pain in the non-existent foot, but more often, what I feel is a mild and constant electrical current, as if the wires got crossed and someone forgot to tell my brain that I had my leg amputated…

If a rainbow appeared in the sky as you walked out of a crappy day of jury duty, would you notice it? What about a swarm of butterflies by your Grandma's mausoleum? Or that gut feeling telling you to walk away from something toxic? It was always there, but did you ever acknowledge its presence? Do you see the little signs from the universe, or are you so preoccupied you look past them with tunnel vision? There never seems to be enough time to stop and smell the roses, but what if their scent carried a message you desperately needed to hear? …

Lately, I find myself saying "I can't" to more things than ever, and it's forced me to start evaluating why. The obvious answer here is that I only have one real leg, and so many activities are done with two, but is "I can't" the real reason I hold myself back from them? …

When I lost my leg, no one ever told me I was disabled. It wasn't a word the doctor ever used, and it hadn't crossed my mind in any significant way during the early part of my recovery. It wasn't until I went out in public that I noticed the world outside my house was not exactly built for people like me…

There is a whole subgroup of people out there who are particularly attracted to amputees and or/ their residual limbs. A fetish, if you will. I know we never talk about this, but I think it's time to tell you what it's like to be on the opposite end of those individuals' unique interests…

New Year's Resolution: a tradition, most common in the Western World but also found in the Eastern World, in which a person resolves to continue good practices, change an undesired trait or behavior, accomplish a personal goal, or otherwise improve their behavior at the beginning of a calendar year (Wikipedia). Sounds nice, right? Then why does everyone quit two weeks later and then hate themselves for the next 11.5 months? …