How about this guy? Pretty good attitude for a triple-amputee.
[quote]This is the gripper. Itās like a robot hand, a stronger tool. Thereās a sensor on the inner and outer parts of my forearm. All I do is pretend my hand is still there and open and close it. . . .
My grandpa says, āWhy arenāt you wearing the hook? Itās so much cooler.ā Well, it scares me. You see a hook and you think, Oh, my God, thereās a hook there. I lost my hand! It scares me and other people, kids and stuff. You wear a hand, you look down, ah, it looks real.
This one is my swimming hand, but itās also my sports-activity arm. I have smiley faces on this one because I thought it would be funny. I can play baseball, golf, whatever I feel like. This is a pool-playing hand. You stick the pool cue through the hole and put that down on the table. Itās called the Hustler. They have a catalog with all these hands in it. They made this one using a mold of my brotherās hand. It has pores and veins and everything. They couldnāt use my right hand because it was all fucked up. I just got a motorcycle hand today, too.
Those are my hands.
I use my right hand and the prosthetic left hand just fine. I get by. This system, with the hand, is like sixty grand. My wheelchair is twenty-five grand. I had the guy who works on the chairs tweak it. I said, āYou need to make it faster.ā He hooked it up to a computer, changed it around, and now it takes off.
When I donāt have help, itāll take me ten minutes to put my legs on. The first time I ever did it, it took me an hour.
Five, ten, fifteen years from now, can you imagine the prosthetics theyāre going to have? Theyāre going to have Terminator shit, stuff thatās not going to come off. Itās just going to be your limb. Thatās what Iām hoping for anyway. Iām doing fine right now. I can wait. Iāve always been taught in the Army: Expect the worst, hope for the best.
Iām not really going to wear pants anymore unless itās a nice function. Itās hard to pull pants over your legs because your feet are straight, and my legs arenāt ever going to get cold. And if people see Iām walking with prosthetic legs, theyāre more likely to get out of my way than accidentally bump into me and knock me down. . .
Iāve been wakeboarding, water-skiing, jet-skiing, tubing, rock climbing, snow skiing, playing catch with my brother. I try to do the same things. Iām not going to let it stop me. We did a 110-mile bike ride from Gettysburg to Washington, D.C. Sixty miles the first day, fifty miles the second day. Hand cycle, three wheels. I ended up ripping the glove, breaking the hand, breaking the whole socket. I might do it a little differently, but Iām still going to do it. I didnāt actually get up water-skiing. I was up for a second, then my arm ripped off and I fell. . .
I want to be a stuntman. I could be on prosthetics, and they could blow my legs off. They have a harness attached to me, they pull me back, thereās blasting caps on my legs, and boom! My legs are gone. . .
You have two options once this happens: Roll over and die or move on. I chose to move on. Iām still me. Iām just 75 percent off . . .
Smoking saved my right hand. Iād be a quadruple amputee if I wasnāt smoking. Iād normally have my hands on the steering wheel, but I was smoking, so I had just my left hand on the steering wheel. My hand still got messed up, but if I had my hand down there, I would have been done.
We were laughing and then boom!
. . . I was lying there. Before I said anything, I wiped my face because I felt blood and the flies were all over, and the first thing I saw was my finger gone. Okay, not so bad. Then I turned my hand over, and the whole thing looked like ground beef. But it still looked all right, kind of. I could see bone. Anyway, while Iām looking at this, I went to wipe my face with my left hand and there was nothing there. Oh, fuck. After that I looked down at my legs, and right as I saw what had happened, my friend grabbed my forehead and pushed it down, hoping that I hadnāt seen. But I did. I knew they were gone. . .
They pulled me out and I was a little disoriented. I made eye contact and I could pretty much see that my guys were freaked out. They all looked like ghosts. Their faces were white. In your squad, youāre all best friends, and they were just freaking out. I said, āOh, shit, I wonder if Iām ever going to get laid againā to kind of make them laugh and get back on track. . .
Iāve heard that some of the people here are intimidated by me because Iām a triple amputee with a great attitude. They shouldnāt feel that way. Everybody has their own problems. You could be a single amputee but have something else wrong with you. Iām missing my legs and a hand, but other than that, Iām perfect. Iām very healthy. Iām still athletic. You donāt have to be intimidated because you think I have more problems than you. Itās not true. I donāt have many problems. Not anymore. Iām fine. . . [/quote]
esquire.com/features/what-iv ā¦ ananderson
Quenching the thirst is very important.
