Friday, March 16, 2018

Amputee videos

Josh Lundquist
Josh Sundquist.
As you'd imagine, there are many YouTube channels featuring people who, like I, have lost a limb. They have great advice. 
The best one for me is Josh Sundquist, who, like me, has lost a leg. Most of his videos were done about nine years ago but they're still useful. Another is Megan Absten. She lost an arm in an accident when she was fourteen and now seems to be around twenty. Her methods of physically coping are ingenious, but what I watch her for mostly is her attitude and how she's mentally coped with her disability.
The problem with both of these is that they're young. Josh is a can-do, bright, optimistic man now in his early thirties. He can go up a flight of stairs faster using his forearm crutches than anyone using only legs could. If not for his loss, he'd be a competitive skateboarder or something, and for all I know he's that too already. 
I, who will turn sixty in a few months, watch him and wish I had his ability.
megan absten
Megan Absten.
Then I realized how misplaced my envy was. Misplaced to the point of being stupid, actually. Josh, who lost his leg to a cancer similar to mine, would surely envy me for having had two legs decades longer than he had. Granted, my right leg wasn't much of a leg—it was seven inches shorter than the left—but I walked, climbed and bicycled many miles with it and did lots of things I doubt I'd have done without it, like backpacked in countries where there were few amenities for the handicapped. 
I feel like I owe Josh and Megan an apology but of course, for bad thoughts you can apologize only to yourself.

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