To Be Who I Am:
An Issues Case on Identity and the Body

It wasn’t so much that I wanted to be an amputee as much as I just felt like I was not supposed to have my legs. From the earliest days I can remember, as young as three or four years of age, I enjoyed playing around using croquet sticks as crutches. By the time I was seven, I had begun to think, “This is the way I should be.”

But it wasn’t until my 50s that I actually had my leg amputated. It finally happened when I froze my leg in dry ice until it was so messed up that a surgeon had to finish the job. I remember coming out of the anesthesia, seeing that my left leg was gone, and feeling that all my torment had disappeared.

People ask me, “Why?” Before I had my leg amputated, I looked at other amputees as role models. I saw them coping heroically. I saw myself in that position, too, compensating, even overcompensating, and achieving. As time went on, it was also the attraction of finding new ways to do old tasks, finding new challenges in working things out and perhaps a bit of being able to do things that are not always expected of amputees.