've always found the expression "carrying around dead weight" odd. What does it mean? I watch too much true crime, so I can't help but associate it with murder when I hear it. Recently, I heard someone use it to refer to something that no longer served them, and they needed to part with. (likely the more common and less morbid association to make)…

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…

Every amputee has thrown a prosthetic leg, a shoe, or some sort of assistive device across a room in frustration. If they haven't, it's only because it was too heavy to throw or too expensive to risk breaking. And if you were aware enough to consider that last factor, you are smarter than I am. Frustration is a natural feeling and releasing it can be healing…

You had cancer, and now you don't, or it's being managed with the right medications. You wake up to a strange rash or new pain. Do you instantly panic and assume it has to be something serious? Because, I mean, you've had cancer, so it's not like you're in the ninety-ninth percentile of people who get the weird symptom, and it turns out to be nothing. It would be easy and quite understandable for you to turn a bug bite into lymphoma in your mind. So, how do you keep from making a mountain out of a molehill? …

Every year that passes, I get more and more comfortable with my disabled body and what it takes to keep it moving. It's a gift really, getting to spend years with this body that survived cancer twice. Learning to love it for all it's gotten me through. When December thirty first comes around, I see it a little differently than I once did. I could make a million New Year's resolutions influenced by the targeted ads on my social media accounts, but I doubt a single one of them would give me any kind of sustained happiness. They never did in the past. So, I prefer to set intentions…

If you're reading this the day it was released, Merry Christmas Eve. I hope you are full of holiday sparkle and coquito. But if you're not, because you're having one of those Decembers where you feel like the last, lonely gingerbread house on the shelf, cracked all over and hanging on by a stitch of icing, you aren't alone. There is so much pressure to have a perfect Christmas, but the truth is most Christmases aren't perfect at all, and some, well, some suck…

Last Sunday, there was no blog. I couldn't quite find the words to say what was on my mind because you were gone. And no amount of knowing it was coming was enough to soften the blow. My cheerleader, who faithfully read all my blog posts and held me as I cried before surgery, my aunt, was taken away from us by the one thing I wish never tied us together…

If you're in a funk or a biopsy waiting period, you might want to try a little something called dopamine decorating. The latest feel-good at home trend might be just what you need to distract yourself with a project and create a space with healing, happy energy. Now that the Holidays are here, it's the perfect time to top that Christmas tree with a disco ball instead of the same plain star you use every year…

Do you ever find yourself wandering happily through your day just to be slapped with an alarming reminder of your trauma in the form of a hospital hand soap smell or a strange-toned voicemail from your doctor? Like you almost forgot you've been through hell when suddenly it gets a little too hot in the room, and you are triggered…

Feeling a lack of control is like snapping the ball with your eyes closed during the playoffs. Like you're betting it all, your body, your mind, your future, on a Hail Mary…

Recently, I stopped to think about how different life is now that I'm an amputee. I'm pretty acclimated nearly four years in. But sometimes, I catch myself saying and doing things that would have seemed wild to two-legged Alex. Life is funny that way. It sends you in all sorts of twisted directions…

I just returned from an eight-day trip across two states and three cities. Although I used all the tips I shared with you in last week's blog for packing, planning, and airport travel day, I now realize I should have mentioned the single most important thing every amputee needs to remember to do when traveling - take breaks…