The 2025 Easterseals Disability Film Challenge spotlights the Thriller/Suspense genre, which suits us just fine. We’ve always liked movies that make us squirm in our seat, and this year’s crop of entries doesn’t disappoint. There’s a bloodthirsty prosthesis, an axe-wielding serial killer, and assorted fugitives, body snatchers, cops, and con artists.

About a dozen of the 120-plus films feature amputee talent, including four previous EDFC award winners/nominees. We’ve got links to all of those entries, along with our knee-jerk reviews. If you want to browse through the rest of the 2025 catalog (and we’d encourage you to do so), check out this playlist on YouTube.

Caught

What it’s about: You’ve seen this setup before: Two young women hiking in the woods encounter a creepy recluse chopping wood in front of his dirt-floor cabin, and—classic slasher-movie mistake—they innocently ask to fill up their water bottles. The tension ratchets up from there, culminating in a memorable finale. Impressively, Caught is shot in a single, continuous five-minute take. We think it’s one of the best EDFC entries ever.

Who’s involved: Photographer and model Sam Tokita co-stars as the more sensible of the hapless hikers—i.e., the one who’s quickest to recognize the deadly trap they’re walking into. Sydney Mesher, best known as the Radio City Rockettes’ first amputee member, has a role behind the scenes.

Watch Caught.

Everhand

What it’s about: A struggling farmer, facing foreclosure, succumbs to an optimistic sales pitch about a life-changing technological innovation—a superhuman bionic hand. But like many a farmer (and amputee) before him, he discovers that progress often comes at a very high price. The assistive device has its own agenda, and its “life-changing” effects aren’t at all what the buyer had in mind. If you don’t mind a tiny bit of (fake) blood and some foaming at the mouth, you’ll get a kick out of this flick.

Who’s involved: Lee Cleaveland, a former EDFC nominee for best writing, stars in another excellent entry (he also co-produced).

Watch Everhand.

The Deadline

What it’s about: Now here’s an awesome concept: An EDFC thriller about….the making of an EDFC thriller. In this case, a crew member gets carjacked while attempting to deliver his film’s completed footage to the project editor. Every EDFC film is an inherently suspenseful endeavor that’s completed under intense time pressure, where a single false move could have terrible consequences. But usually not this terrible….

Who’s involved: Melanie Waldman, an unofficial EDFC Hall-of-Famer, has a supporting role.

Watch The Deadline.

The Prosthe…tive?

What it’s about: Not to be confused with the classic Harrison Ford / Tommy Lee Jones movie featuring an amputee assassin, this cop drama is light on suspense but heavy on satire. The lead detective abuses just about every disability cliche in the book and, unable to conjure the word “prosthetist,” settles on “computerized biological leg mechanic.” We LOL’d.

Who’s involved: First-time EDFC entrant Victor Clarke wrote, produced, and co-directed. Perennial EDFC stalwart Angel Giuffria co-stars as the precinct office manager who cracks the case and makes her bumbling boss look good.

Watch The Prosthe…tive?

Don’t Take This the Wrong Way

What it’s about: Nonchalant ableism, lazy stereotypes, and even outright bigotry against people with disabilities are rampant enough to drive a person crazy. Crazy enough to kill the clueless able-bodies who commit such trangressions? Yeah, maybe. Here’s what that might look like . . . .

Who’s involved: Multi-time EDFC award-winner and nominee Rachel Handler stars, writes, co-directs, and co-produces.

Watch Don’t Take This the Wrong Way.

Fritarex

What it’s about: Here’s a Big Pharma executive’s biggest nightmare: a double-blind clinical trial in which they’re the subject, instead of the all-powerful drug researcher who’s calling the shots. And the variable being tested for seems to be moral deficiency. Is there a pill in existence that can remedy a broken conscience? And is there any profit to be made off it?

Who’s involved: Previous award-winner Sommer Carbuccia stars and co-produced; he’s also co-credited for story development.

Watch Fritarex.

Broken

What it’s about: A single dad taking care of his infant child is haunted by perceptions—some real, some imagined (?)—that his disability will be held against him in an upcoming custody battle. The denouement can be taken any number of ways; we’re still puzzling over it.

Who’s involved: Nickolas Main, in his third EDFC outing, stars, co-directed, and co-wrote.

Watch Broken.

The Body Reset

What it’s about: When a corporation markets a miracle cure that promises to “re-able the disabled with one small pill,” there’s only one sane thing to do: run as far and as fast as your prosthetic limbs will carry you.

Who’s involved: First-time filmmaker Victoria Eidenvall stars, wrote, and directed.

Watch The Body Reset.

Noises

What it’s about: Childhood is scary enough for nondisabled youngsters. All the more so when you’re missing a limb.

Who’s involved: Colin Ashe, who co-starred in one of our favorite 2024 entries, is back for his second EDFC appearance.

Watch Noises.

I Deserve This?

What it’s about: A congenital, bilateral lower-limb amputee confronts an unknown listener (a parent? God? the universe?) and asks exactly what he’s done to deserve the punishing burdens of his disability.

Who’s involved: We’re not sure! There are no credits for this film.

Watch I Deserve This?

The Mark

What it’s about: A young man is hounded by judgmental voices that constantly tell him his limb difference marks him as inferior. Is there any way out?

Who’s involved: Esteban Noyola stars, wrote, and directed in his first EFDC entry.

Watch The Mark.

The post These Amputee-themed Movies Are Scary Good appeared first on Amplitude.

In our January issue, we featured the lonely experience of amputees with diabetes. Our article pointed out that people with diabetes are up to three times as likely to experience depression as people without diabetes. They’re also susceptible to “diabetes distress,” which erodes people’s energy and motivation to maintain disciplined habits of self-care.

More evidence of these phenomena surfaced last month month in the journal Seminars in Vascular Surgery, where a new study argues that depression stemming from diabetes-related amputation is very real and potentially very dangerous. The paper coins a new acroynm for mental health problems arising from dysvascular limb-loss : DREADD, or “Diabetes-Related Extremity Amputation Depression and Distress.” DREADD, in turn, is bound up in the diabetic foot-pain-depression cycle, which was first described in a 2023 paper as a tangle of observable symptoms (weight gain, poor sleep, inactivity, self-medication) and invisible phenomena (stress, shame, social withdrawal, poor gut health).

“Depression is relevant throughout the progression to amputation in patients with T2DM,” the authors of the DREADD paper observe. “[It] has been identified as both a predictor of nontraumatic major lower limb amputation in diabetic populations and of postamputation depression.” In other words, depression very often precedes, and may increase the likelihood of, diabetes and limb loss. This complicates the task of measuring whether depressive symptoms worsen after limb loss (and, if so, by how much).

Diabetes-related Limb-Loss Depression: The Evidence

Depressive symptoms can be difficult to assess using quantitative methods alone, so the authors gathered both quantitative and qualitative evidence. They also chose to limit their research to people who experienced the least traumatic diabetes-related amputations—a toe or a finger. Such “minor” amputations are the most common type of diabetes-related limb loss, and they often predict subsequent loss of a major limb.

We’ll get to the quantitative outcomes shortly, but we found the qualitative data to be more powerful and more illustrative than the numerical findings. Qualitative evidence was gathered via post-amputation interviews with approximately 20 individuals. The paper catalogues these responses into three major themes: Depression (feelings of failure and hopelessness), Distress (worry, anger, and frustration), and Barriers to Mental Heatlh Care (shame and stigma). The published excerpts from these interviews would have fit very nicely in our January article on diabetes and limb loss:

• “I felt like failure. I didn’t want to get up and go work. I didn’t take my meds. My wife was concerned I knew I let everyone down.”
• “At first, I thought it was more going be more than a toe, I asked myself if I would want to end it. Would I want to continue to live? I wanted to keep positive, but I had these thoughts. I didn’t even know if I could live or walk without my toe.”
• “It’s scary to lose part of your body, you know, because it’s like what is next? My uncle lost a toe and next thing was the foot. I couldn’t sleep for days after my toe.”
• “I was angry. I didn’t want to see my doc. I thought he did this to me. I should have had another opinion, option, or something. I listened to him, and I wished I never did this [amputation]. I can’t take it back.”
• “I am still embarrassed to talk about it. My late father would be ashamed.”
• “I was ashamed. I caused this, so maybe I should be sad all the time. Maybe it’s what I deserve.”

“The qualitative aspect of this study demonstrates that non- traumatic amputations can be a traumatic experience for patients,” the authors write. “Some patients with diabetic foot disease are noted to have a greater fear of major lower extremity amputation than death.”

The quantitative portion of the study was based on the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), which healthcare providers in many disciplines commonly use to screen for clinical depression. The typical PHQ-9 cutoff score is ten; anything higher than that indicates depression that’s serious enough to warrant some form of treatment. For this part of the study, the researchers administered the PHQ only to participants who’d been screened prior to their amputations, making it possible to compare the numbers before and after limb loss. The average PHQ score before limb loss was 3.65, far below the cutoff figure. After limb loss, however, the average score leaped to 12.65, well within the range of moderate to serious depression. “One of the primary concerns in depressed and diabetic populations is that depression is associated with treatment nonadherence and lack of self-care, which may directly contribute to poorer outcomes,” the authors add.

In their conclusion, the researchers recommend that people with type 2 diabetes be screened for depression before they’re at risk of even losing a toe or finger. They also argue that multidisciplinary limb-preservation teams should include psychiatrists and/or other mental health specialists. Finally, they note the potential for the emergence a psychiatric subspecialty focused on diabetes and its complications, including limb loss.

The full paper, “Diabetes-Related Extremity Amputation Depression and Distress (DREADD): A Multimethod Study,” is available through Science Direct.

The post The Trauma of Diabetes-related Limb Loss appeared first on Amplitude.

Every industry and consumer group in the world right now is asking some version of this question: How are the White House’s new tariffs gonna affect me? If we had a solid answer for the limb-loss community, we wouldn’t be publishing it for free on our website, because it would be worth lotsa dollars. All we can do listen to the experts and check with our sources in healthcare and O&P. Like us, they’re all just taking their best guess about how this will all shake out. But their guesses are better informed than ours.

The question seems pertinent for amputees, given the prominence of European prosthetic manufacturers in the US market (and around the globe). So let’s lead with the good news: So far, we haven’t heard a peep of alarm from the O&P sector. We’ve checked in with knowledgeable folks in manufacturing, distribution, care delivery, patient advocacy, and education. Nobody anticipates the new tariffs will significantly alter business as usual, at least in the short term. One longtime O&P veteran surmises that the industry just doesn’t generate enough trade to merit direct attention, and it has been fortunate so far to dodge any indirect effects caused by tariffs on raw materials, hardware, etc. The bottom line: If you’re reasonably fit, don’t spend much on prescription meds, and aren’t managing any major health issues aside from limb care, you’re probably off the hook. Tariffpalooza likely won’t affect you, one way or another.

Now for the not-as-good news: You probably will see some price increases if you depend on non-prosthetic mobility aids, and/or if you’re managing concurrent health challenges such as diabetes, cancer, PAD, obesity, depression, or other conditions that often accompany limb loss—especially if you depend on insulin or prescription drugs.

Tariffs may bloat the cost of meds for amputees

ING, a global financial analysis firm, predicts that US consumers will be hit hardest by pharmaceutical tariffs. “Tariffs will increase prices for medication substantially at the expense of American consumers, and they will hit the most vulnerable US citizens the hardest,” they wrote yesterday. That forecast rests heavily on the anticipated tariffs on India, which is a major supplier of generic pharmaceuticals. ING’s analysts write: “Indian generic pharmaceutical producers or their importers will either incur the tariff and raise prices, which would cause higher prices for US consumers, or avoid the American market altogether, which would [reduce] the availability of generic pharmaceuticals in the US.”

That opinion was echoed by Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, the CEO of Novo Nordisk (the Danish manufacturer of Ozempic). “By far the largest drug category is generic medicines,” he told Fortune. “If you put tariffs on those, I have a hard time seeing that that is not going to lead to other shortages of medicine or increased pricing in general.” And 69 percent of US healthcare executives predict the tariffs will drive up drugs costs, according to a survey published last month by Black Book Research.

ING thinks branded pharmaceuticals from European manufacturers will also be affected, especially those imported from Ireland and Germany. The tariffs could even bloat the price of US-produced drugs, as domestic manufacturers import a lot of pharmaceutical ingredients from overseas.

APRIL 3 UPDATE: Pharmaceuticals got a temporary reprieve: The “reciprocal tariffs” announced on April 2 specifically exempted pharmaceuticals. However, CNBC reports that separate tariffs for pharma products are already in the works: “The pharma industry’s hopes of a sector-wide tariff carve-out faded after Trump confirmed that an announcement [regarding drug tariffs] would come soon.”

Tariffs could disrupt healthcare supply chains, insurance costs

In an analysis published two weeks ago, PwC estimated that overall tariffs in the pharmaceutical, life science, and medical device sector could increase from their current level—a negligible $0.5 billion a year—to a whopping $63 billion annually. Global healthcare conglomerates “have structured their supply chains based on longstanding near-zero tariffs on active pharmaceutical ingredients, medical components, and raw materials,” the report explains. “The imposition of tariffs on previously ‘Non-dutiable’ goods, such as drug ingredients, surgical instruments, and medical device components, could significantly disrupt sourcing strategies, increasing manufacturing costs and potentially leading to higher prices for essential medicines and healthcare products.”

According to a survey conducted by the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (a healthcare trade organization), roughly 90 percent of US biotech companies rely on imported components for their products—and 94 percent predict the new tariffs will drive up manufacturing costs for US biotech manufacturers. “This survey demonstrates the far-reaching and potentially damaging impacts of the proposed tariffs on our biotechnology industry, on biomedical research, and on patients,” wrote the organization’s CEO, John Crowley. In a similar vein, Dave Evans, chief executive of the healthcare manufacturing consultancy Fictiv, told Investor’s Business Daily: “If the tariffs that are being proposed today go fully into effect, I don’t see a world where consumer prices do not increase.”

The Black Book survey cited above found that 90 percent of healthcare supply-chain managers anticipate disruptions because of cost increases and price volatility. The same survey found that 90 percent of healthcare finance executives expect that tariffs will elevate their expenses to the point that they’ll have to shift costs onto insurers and patients. Accordingly, nearly half of insurance executives in the survey believe they’ll need to raise premiums within the next calendar year to cover their rising costs.

Black Rock’s report ominously concludes: “As medical supply costs escalate, hospitals and insurers will be forced to make difficult financial decisions, inevitably passing increased expenses down to patients through higher out-of-pocket costs.”

If you’re directly affected by cost increases, supply-chain disruptions, or other impacts of the new tariffs, Amplitude wants to hear from you. Write us at editor@livingwithamplitude.com.

The post How Will Tariffs Affect the Limb-Loss Community? appeared first on Amplitude.

Most baseball fans have heard of Jim Abbott, the one-handed pitcher who starred for the Angels in the 1990s. And many know the story of Pete Gray, an upper-limb amputee who cracked the St. Louis Browns’ lineup in the 1940s. Faithful Amplitude readers might recall pitcher Monty Stratton, a BKA who never made the majors but did get immortalized in an Oscar-winning movie.

But very few know the name of Forest “Wing” Maddox, the major leagues’ first amputee player. He played in the Negro Southern League, which wasn’t considered “major” during Maddox’s playing career in the 1920s. But when, in 2020, MLB retroactively recognized the Negro Leagues as major leagues, Maddox became one of 3,400 players to enter the sport’s official record book—and thereby, belatedly, gained the honor of being the first ballplayer with a limb difference to appear on a big-league roster.

According to his page at Baseball-Reference, Maddox (who lost his left arm to the shoulder at age 10) only spent one season (1923) in the big leagues and appeared in just a handful of games. But those records are woefully incomplete. The Georgia native actually  started playing pro ball in 1914 as a high schooler, starred at Morehouse College in Atlanta, and was one the best players for the Knoxville Giants, who won the Southern League’s inaugural pennant in 1920.

Baseball researcher Gary Cieradkowski notes that Maddox was a phenomenal two-way player, excelling both as a pitcher and outfielder. Touting his abilities in a 1921 article, the Washington Post wrote: “‘Wing’ Maddox, a [N]egro pitcher and outfielder, has created a sensation throughout the South for the past two years. As a member of the Knoxville Giants, he demonstrated that few, if any, pitchers possess more in the way of natural ability. . . . It is not alone upon the mound that the one-armed [N]egro wonder stars. As an outfielder he amazes spectators by the dexterity with which he catches a ball with his one gloved hand, tosses it into the air, removes the glove and with lightning-like rapidity snatches the ball again and relays it to the infield.”

Cieradkowski thinks Maddox actually won the Southern League batting title in 1920, citing an unspecified newspaper report. That would be a startling achievement for a guy who swung the bat with one arm. Unfortunately, there are no hard stats to back up the claim, however—and that explains why Maddox’s career stats at Baseball-Reference are so thin. Published box scores were spotty and inconsistent in the early days of the Negro Leagues, and MLB’s official record book only includes verifiable statistics. It’s an understandable policy, but it renders Maddox and many of his teammates (including formidable pitcher Steel Arm Dickey) almost invisible.

Maddox’s only official stats, from 1923, credit him with just 16 at-bats and one and a third innings pitched for the Birmingham Black Barons. Although he was just 25 years old, that was his last season as a fulltime ballplayer. That fall he took a job as a professor at Morehouse College. He did continue playing baseball occasionally, appearing in box scores as late as 1927 for the Chattanooga Black Lookouts, whose roster also included a rookie pitcher named Satchel Paige.

Maddox died in 1929 of complications from tuberculosis. He was only 31 years old, just a year older than baseball’s present-day two-way phenom, Shotei Ohtani. It’s a shame so few records survive of this player, but he clearly made a mark in his time. “The sensation of watching a one-arm man pitch real baseball was well worth the visit,” wrote the Birmingham News in 1920. William Plott, author of a book on the Negro Southern League, sums Maddox up this way: “He was an attraction wherever he went.”

The post Forest Maddox: Shotei Ohtani With One Arm appeared first on Amplitude.

by Kim Ousley

ED NOTE: Two reports released this week estimate the heavy costs (in jobs and lives) of the Medicaid budget cuts pending before Congress. One, released by the Kaiser Family Foundation, estimates that the budget cuts would amount to a 29 percent reduction in state Medicaid spending. The other, published by George Washington University’s Milken Institute, estimates the cuts would lead to the elimination of a million jobs (mostly in healthcare) nationwide, while decreasing GDP by more than $100 billion per year.

But those are just numbers. To get a sense of the human-scale impact, Amplitude asked one person living with limb loss to describe how her life would change if she lost even part of her Medicaid check. Kim Ousley’s story isn’t uncommon within the amputee community.

I’m both an amputee and a five-time synovial sarcoma cancer survivor. My journey started in June 2010, when I was a temporary employee and did not have health insurance. It was a job in public relations, and with a young adult child in college, I took the position in hopes of it becoming full time. I had finally achieved my bachelor’s degree, and I just knew this was my time to shine. I never dreamed I’d lose everything I had worked for up to that point, including work, home, and finances.

Being diagnosed with cancer, then hearing that I needed an amputation to save my life, put me in shock. I immediately applied for SSDI and Medicaid, although I had no idea if and when I might qualify. I also needed to find a place to live that was handicapped accessible. I would be in a wheelchair for at least six months while doing chemotherapy and then waiting to heal enough that I could be fitted for my first prosthetic leg.

That life-changing event happened 15 years ago. I haven’t been able to return to fulltime work, but I do freelance as an accessible travel writer. And I want to share all the unpaid things I do to contribute to the community, so you know I don’t just sit at home all day. I am Certified Peer Mentor, supporting new amputees through the Amputee Coalition, as well as a Lead Advocate who works with legislators to improve services and healthcare for amputees. I am also a certified cancer support mentor through another organization. I volunteer at a nonprofit called Gilead Ministries, which supports cancer patients; they supported me throughout my entire journey. Another of my favorite places to volunteer is my local state park. I’ve been doing this for 15 years now. And I help homeless and low-income folks at a local community center, where they come for food, showers, clothes, and a smile and a kind word.

Since I first applied for SSDI and Medicaid benefits 15 years ago, they have lost a lot of their purchasing power. They used to enable me at least to keep my head above water. Now I am genuinely concerned about sliding into the abyss of financial ruin. I have always been frugal, ever since becoming a single parent many years ago. But now when my check hits on the third of every month, after I pay the rent, utilities, and other basics, I only have about $300 to live on for the rest of the month. That amount has to cover food, gas, medicines (including insulin), clothing, laundry, and everything else.

In January 2024, I found out that Medicaid had cut off my dental and optical—just when I broke a front tooth and needed new eyeglasses. I was told I make too much income to qualify for those benefits any longer. I also had to start paying for Medicare Part D. First it was around $10.30 per month. This year it went up to $28.20 per month. My medicines, especially all three types of insulin I am presently on, went up almost three times as much. The cost of food and gas went up and keeps rising. But that 2.7 percent cost-of-living increase on my check barely makes a dent. Presently I consider myself to be in the red each month.

And that was before I found out the transmission on my beautiful 2011 Nissan Rogue is toast. There’s no money to replace the car, and it’s not worth fixing at this point with 294,000 miles on it. I need my own vehicle to be independent, and to continue building my freelance career as an accessible travel writer. I have many other things on my long list of needs; some of them have been there forever. I’m used to doing without and surviving on what I have, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to much longer.

I would love to see reform involving Medicaid, but I envision changes that improve services, not deny them. Everyone who relies on this program has worked hard, paid into it, and deserves to be taken care of properly. I don’t ask to become rich. I just want the benefits to keep pace with the cost of living, so I can survive without worrying if next month’s check will get skimpier—or cease to exist entirely. I already cannot afford even the reduced or low-cost dental and optical. Nor can I afford the plans separate from the Medicaid system. But having the ability to see and chew and breathe are pretty important. What can be done to change this?

I just discovered this little AI thing called Chat GPT. I asked what it would suggest to improve Medicaid. It recommended expanding access in all 50 states, increasing affordability, and enhancing quality of care. Some other suggestions were to increase income eligibility limits, expand telehealth access, cap out-of-pocket costs, and focus on preventive care. One of my favorite ideas that Chat GPT raised is to simplify enrollment and renewals. Every year I get the letter saying I need to requalify for Medicaid. Wouldn’t it be better to automatically re-enroll me yearly, rather than having me send in the same paperwork over and over? We could save a whole forest, not to mention all the time that’s needed to process all that paperwork. I’m all for going paperless. I love trees.

I’m now a diabetic thanks to the chemotherapy that ruined my pancreas. If I were to lose Medicaid, I don’t know how I could pay for the insulin, needles, and other supplies I need to survive. My health would take a turn for the worse, and I would require care that’s way more expensive than insulin. Or I might have to do what I’ve seen other people do, and sacrifice food intake so I can afford my meds. When the government cuts my benefits, I always get asked, “Can’t you get help from your family or your church?” And the church folks always say, “There are government programs to help you.” When I broke my wrist recently and wasn’t able to drive, I was told I don’t qualify for any transportation services under my plan. Friends and relatives are busy with their jobs and families; they suggested I take public transportation, but it’s not always reliable, it’s hard to use as an amputee, and it’s not conducive for getting to and from medical procedures and appointments. Try riding the bus after chemo, and see if you can make it home without losing whatever sustenance is left in your stomach. It’s a very helpless, vulnerable feeling.

I’m not sharing these reflections to make anyone feel sorry for me. But try to visualize your loved ones and neighbors in similar situations or worse. People with limb loss and other disabilities are barely making it month to month. Many don’t have anyone to help them, check on them, or make sure they’re getting the proper support at school, work, and home environments.

Community is important now more than ever. My question to everyone is, what will it take to bring us all together to make this happen? We can begin by educating ourselves, working together for the good of everyone, and committing to leave no one behind.

Kim Ousley is a travel writer and Certified Lead Advocate for the state of Indiana. She blogs about travel at Out on a Limb.

The post Medicaid Cuts: One Amputee’s Story appeared first on Amplitude.

Amplitude’s debut issue appeared in March 2015, 10 years ago this month. To help mark the occasion, our longtime friend and fellow storyteller Bjoern Eser invited us onto his podcast (The Active Amputee) to look back on an eventful decade for the magazine and for the limb loss community as a whole.

The conversation runs a little over half an hour. Below, we’ve posted a few snippets of the transcript to whet your appetite. There’s a lot more information in the full episode, which you can hear at Buzzsprout. Our thanks to Bjoern for the chance to reminisce, and for his many years of collaboration and support. Visit his blog at theactiveamputee.org.

Active Amputee: I can’t remember exactly when we first linked up. I think it’s probably five, six years ago when we first were in touch.
Amplitude: I’m sure it was 2020, because that’s when I began working for Amplitude, and the Active Amputee was one of the first good sources of information that I found online. When I say “good sources,” I mean from the community grassroots. I myself am nondisabled, so I needed to educate myself about limb loss, and the Active Amputee was a big part of my education. . . . .

Tell us a bit about Amplitude and tell us a bit about yourself. How did you get involved, and what was your motivation to get engaged?
Amplitude was founded in 2015 as a spinoff from a trade journal called The O&P Edge. That was a fairly auspicious time, because Limb Loss and Limb Difference Awareness Month had just started a couple of years earlier, there was a rise on social media of amputees who were beginning to draw audiences like Amy Purdy, Josh Sundquist, and Mama Cax. There was a lot of demand for information and a desire among amputees to connect with one another.

I got involved in 2020 because the creative director at Amplitude, Karen Sader, her kids and my kids were classmates in school. I had done a lot of online publishing, I was familiar with search engine optimization, and Amplitude‘s website really hadn’t gotten the attention it needed. There wasn’t anyone that had a lot of experience on digital, so I came in as a part-time person. I started fishing around on the internet, looking for good stuff [about limb loss]. That’s how I found The Active Amputee, I found Footless Jo, I found The Amputee OT, and various other people who were really telling good stories. And I tried to bring some of that flavor into Amplitude right away.

If you had to describe Amplitude in one or two sentences, what’s the main strength? What niche and what need is it addressing?
What we try to do is to normalize limb loss and limb difference. We all go through periods of increasing and decreasing physical ability. We all face challenges from time to time that may impair us, and then we adapt to that and do our best to regain some capacity. There is a lot to learn from people who have adapted to limb loss, because we are all going to have to adapt at some point. And people who’ve lost a limb are really good at adapting. They have a lot to teach.

What speaks to me about Amplitude is that it has a mixture of really good information from the O&P sector, from research, from new developments, but at the same time there is a certain lightness to it. There is some joy.
I’m thrilled to hear that you see this balance between serious, evidence-based, practical information, as well as that light touch. That’s very much related to normalization. I saw amputees like you, Jo Beckwith, Christina Stephenson, Johnny Maynard, and other people on the internet coming across in a spirit of playfulness, which is very relatable and helps you understand that amputees are just normal people. The thing that stands out about them isn’t that they’re missing a limb. What I notice about them is they’re funny, or they have clever perspectives on life, or they share an interest with me in sports or music or film. That playfulness in the limb-loss community is something that attracted me, and I wanted to share those stories and elevate those voices. I felt that to address the core audience of our magazine, these kinds of storytellers and storytelling modes were really beneficial and would make our magazine interesting to read.

Also on the podcast:

Check out the full episode to hear about:

• Some of the amputees and events that highlighted Amplitude‘s first 10 years
• How the COVID pandemic impacted the magazine and the limb loss community
• Challenges that might help to define the next 10 years
• A few information resources Amplitude relies on to keep tabs on what’s happening the community

The post The Active Amputee: Amplitude’s First 10 Years appeared first on Amplitude.

Tony Cappelletti first appeared on our radar about three years ago, when we learned about Two Dudes, Three Legs, the podcast he co-hosts. Not long after that we met him face to face at a Levitate run clinic, where he was checking out running blades along with 30 or 40 other people. That led to a fundraising campaign in which Cappelletti and his Two Dudes co-host raised more than $20,000 and bought 10 Levitate blades for people who couldn’t have afforded running prosthetics otherwise. He later got involved with Less Leg More Heart and other amputee-serving nonprofits.

And then, he says, life took over. Cappelletti’s business grew and his work demands piled up, leaving less time for advocacy. But when he decided, earlier this year, to pursue osseointegration surgery, Cappelletti saw an opportunity to support the limb-loss community in a new way: as an educator. He’s documenting his OI experience at Amputony, a new YouTube channel that aims to help viewers understand OI. It’s particularly aimed at below-knee amputees, who constitute a tiny fraction of OI patients to date. FDA approval only covers above-knee patients, and the surgical techniques are less well established for BK patients than AKs. Once Cappelletti committed to the surgery, he wanted others to benefit from his experience.

The first installment of a planned multi-part series is now live on YouTube, featuring a conversation between Cappelletti and his surgeon, Jason Hoellwarth; you can check it out here. The interview below is lightly edited for length and readability.

Get me up to speed on the circumstances that led you to try OI.
The short version is: About 20 years ago, my uncle lost his right leg in a motorcycle accident. Fast forward to 2020, on August 8—I lost my leg in a motorcycle accident. My uncle went and got the OI surgery, and he said: “It’s great, you got to go do this.”

Is he also a below-knee amputee?
Above knee. As you know, AK is always rougher. He was having massive socket issues, extreme nerve pain. His case was much worse than mine. And so he looked into osseointegration, he ended up getting it, and now he’s walking and lot better, and he has none of those issues. He still rides the same motorcycle. He’s a nut. Love him.

Were you having socket issues similar to your uncle’s? From afar, it looks like you’ve had pretty good success in a socket.
If there’s an amputee who isn’t having socket issues. I’d like to meet them. Some days it’s great and you don’t even notice it, and then some days it sucks. I ran a 5K with my socket and a blade leg, and I couldn’t walk for a week. I literally had to take a week off of work. I had to give up on a lot of stuff because I’m an entrepreneur, and I need to be available to work 24/7. If I go for a run or a hike on Sunday, that might affect me Monday. I haven’t gone on a hike in four years. It kind of sucks, because I’ve always been an extremely active person. I figured OI could be a solution to that.

In addition to that, every morning there’s a routine you have to do to prep your leg [for a socket], and that’s annoying. I wanted to take a regular shower again like I used to, instead of it being a 30-minute process. OI was a solution that covered all those bases for me.

When did you have the surgery?
I had the surgery on January 24, and now I’m in the healing process. I’m not there yet. I’m currently in the loading process, where I’m applying around 50 pounds of pressure to the implant, building up every day at about five pounds. So hopefully at the beginning of next month, I can get fitted for my new prosthesis.

OI is still rare in below-knee amputees, because the implant has to be embedded in a bone [the tibia] that’s much less thick than the femur. Did you have any reservations about that?
Great question. My uncle recommended Dr, Hoellwarth to me, and he wound up doing my surgery too. Definitely the first uncle and nephew combo to get OI from the same surgeon. Anyway, I had extensive conversations with Dr Hoellwarth. I have so little tibia left that I was almost not a good candidate for this. So I’m one of the riskier ones. If you have a patient who’s got even 50 percent of their tibia left, that’s great [for OI]. He made it work in my tibia with six centimeters. He was able to put the implant in, and now it’s healing and and it’s doing very well. If I had more tibia, I would have been a better candidate. But obviously, the healthier you are, the better candidate you’re going to be. So being young and healthy made me a good candidate.

Did anything else about the OI process make you hesitate or think hard about the tradeoffs?
I asked him if I’m going to be limited to what I can do with my leg, because I could potentially break this implant. According to him, after about six months I’ll be able to do everything that I could do before, and at the same levels. I asked him, “Am I gonna be able to get back in the gym and do squats again?” And he said absolutely, I’ll be able to do everything I was doing before and do it safely. Even if I’m not able to go into the gym and put 200 pounds on my back and squat, it’s still a trade up because I don’t have to deal with the socket and liners and all the equipment. It’s quick and easy. You put it on, you’re up, and you go. That’s the closest thing to the way my life was before becoming an amputee.

Did you bring your prosthetist into the conversation before you committed [to OI]? Not many prosthetists have hands-on experience with OI.
I was already talking about it with my prosthetist, because I’ve been doing research on it for years. We’ve spoken about it at length. And my uncle uses the same clinic I do. When he did OI, he kind of piloted the whole thing. When I told the prosthetist I’m looking into it too, he said sure. So I went ahead and got the consultation.

Were you able to talk to any other BK amputees who’ve had OI surgery?
No, there just aren’t many out there. That’s the whole reason I’m documenting this whole thing. I want to be a helpful resource and show people that this exists. Once you really get into it and break it down, it seems like this should have been the solution for a long time. It’s not even that crazy of a surgery. It’s less invasive than a knee replacement.

Did Hoellwarth have any reservations about having this shot on film?
When I approached him, I told him I planned to be documenting the whole thing. He’s trying to have a strong online presence, so he was OK with that. We actually shot a full podcast before the surgery, talking about a lot of the same questions you’re asking. If you want to know how on board he was, he put a GoPro on his head while he did my surgery. I have the full video, and we’re gonna put that online as well. He actually had two cameras going, one on his head, and someone else with an arm camera. So every second of this process is documented. I’ve got two angles of the entire surgery from start to finish.

If someone’s not crazy about graphic surgical footage, is it easy to avoid that part of the series?
Yes, there are going to be multiple layers. We’re going to do a bunch of Reels on Instagram, which are just short videos. Then we’re also going to have a three-part series that probably lives on YouTube, where part one is leading up to surgery, part two is the surgery and recovery, and part three is the victory lap: Here’s my new life with my new implant. There’s probably also going to be a 30-minute documentary with everything in it. So there are gonna be a few different forms of how this comes out, but it’ll be very well documented for however people want to consume it.

Where are you in the recovery process currently, and what’s your trajectory going forward from now?
He prescribed me to do nothing for the first two weeks—don’t touch the implant, leave it alone, make sure it’s clean. Very simple. After two weeks they did an X-ray—this is all documented on video as well—and he said the bone is healing extremely well, the incisions and skin are all healing. At that point he gave me this little attachment that goes to the bottom of the implant. Essentially, it’s just a pad. On day one, I was supposed to apply 30 pounds of pressure to the pad attached to the implant—I have a scale for this—for a total of one hour. He prescribed 10 seconds on, 10 seconds off, for 15 minutes at a go, four times a day. So essentially, on and off for an hour. Next day, I went up to 35 pounds of pressure. The following day, up to 40. And I’m just adding five pounds of pressure a day until I get up to bearing my full body weight.

Once you get to full weight bearing, will there be additional work to refine your gait? Will you need to sort of learn a new way to walk?
I’m sure they’re gonna put me into physical therapy, and I’ll document that as well. But I’m still approaching that bridge. Haven’t crossed it yet.

In the interim, what’s your mobility situation? Are you on crutches? Wheelchair?
That right there is my living nightmare. I am on crutches, and I gotta tell you, I hate crutches. I can’t even walk a glass of water from one side of my kitchen to the other. But that’s my own personal grudge with crutches. Like I said, I run a sales team, so usually I’m working from 7 am to 7 pm, and I’m out and about, running around. I’m usually very mobile. Since the surgery I’ve been home for the most part, and that’s kind of driving me nuts. 

The post He’s Sharing His Osseointegration Surgery on YouTube appeared first on Amplitude.

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by Kim Ousley

Thump! Gently rolling along the floor, my ball of yellow yarn gets away from me.

Ugh! Now I have to chase this fluffy, unraveling creature.  

Grunt! Up I go, with crackling in my knees and other joints. Stretch to the ceiling.

My body lets me know I’ve been sitting for quite awhile, through the soreness and stiffness I feel in my arms, back, and legs. “Get back here,” I whisper loudly. No one is in the room. Just me. I tend to talk to myself after 30-plus years of living single.

Oh, I was married once. An extraordinarily long time ago. Back when I was still naïve and lived a romantic fantasy in my young adult mind; too many fairy tales from television and books back when I was in high school. That marriage lasted three years. I have one child, now grown, from that interesting short chapter of my past life.

Even further into the past: When I was a child, my sweet step-grandmother sat me, a lefty, down on her couch one day to teach me how to crochet. I loved the attention. She had the patience of a saint, trying to help me flip the visual (from righty to lefty) and show me each step to get started. Somewhere along the way, I managed to obtain a ball of soft yellow yarn and a hook from her. I still have that hook.

The softness of the ball of string soothed me. The movements of rhythmic stitches calmed my scattered thoughts and brought focus to my anxious mind. She allowed me to take what I started home with me. I practiced almost nonstop. Unfortunately, my impatient and belligerent twin sister didn’t like that I wasn’t paying my undying attention to her every whim. She exhausted me. I had to hide in obscure nooks and cubbyholes with a book to try and escape her tirade. She loved to be loud, argue, and be right. She was a force of nature. More like a Tasmanian devil some days. I just wanted to find a quiet place to practice my new skill.

Decades later, the practice still soothes me, even when the yarn wanders off on its own. I counted 3, 2, 1, in my head and prepared to swing myself forward to lean down and grasp that rascally ball of yarn back into my snare. Woah! Got up a bit too quick. World spinning. Sit!

Dangit! Now I knocked over my yarn bag and spilled all its contents onto the floor. Clang-a-lang went the crochet hooks. Following behind sloppily and fast were several smaller balls of scrap yarn. It looked like I had put a quarter into the gumball machine and turned the handle only to react too slow to catch anything coming out. Grr! Geez!

Grouchy and grumbling, I braced myself with my hands to push myself up off the spot on the couch. It sits quite low, so I tend to have to gain momentum to get back up. My prosthetic leg, which I inherited after a cancer surgery to remove my lower left leg and foot a few years ago, wobbles a bit as my fake foot hits something on the floor beneath me. Steady there! I already broke my right wrist about four months ago in a fall. I’m not up for another devastating round of surgeries and metal rods in my body.

Whew! Quick save! I looked down to see I had accidently stepped on the wooden handle of one of my favorite hooks. It lay there on the floor, unbroken and waiting on me to pick it up.

Funny thing about prosthetic legs.  They don’t have the muscle and bones to help brace me if I feel myself going into a fall or stumble. Nothing but a weighted metal paperweight. Yet I have a fond admiration for this expensive piece of shiny and scuffed parts that make up my life-saving device. My socket has about 50 different types of stickers decorating the surface. Every summer I change them out and have a new set to show off as I strut my leg in public. It has a mind of its own—or rather, a temperament that rivals my twin sister’s some days. Other days, we get along like best friends enjoying a sunny day in the park.

Titanium makes up most of the metal parts, followed by a flexible piece of metal covered by a rubber foot shell. I’m a robot woman; I just need to wear a cape! Kids usually ask questions like “Did it hurt when they cut off your foot?” or “Can you take it off?” No and yes, depending on the circumstances and day and the mood I’m in.

It’s the adults who can be a bit challenging. I see them staring or darting their heads back and forth to get a few glimpses in. Some just stare. I think this summer I’ll write “My eyes are up there” and put a big arrow pointing upwards on the front of my socket. Most of the time I can ignore it and move along. Unless someone approaches and loudly says, “Diabetes”? Um, no, cancer…idiot.  I don’t say that last word aloud, but it’s screaming loudly inside my brain.

Back to crocheting. You see, this act of repeating motion to create something from beginning to end has kept me alive…literally. Through every traumatic and dramatic life event, including the day I woke up from my amputation surgery in the recovery room. I was feeling no pain. Morphine drip was keeping me loopy and happy. Below the blanket, there was nothing six inches below the left knee. I asked if I could see it. The nurse, with her gentle gaze and soulful eyes, nodded and said yes. She helped me sit up a bit, then lifted the edge of the blanket ever so slightly, pulling it down slowly until I could see all the bandages holding my stitched skin and bones together. I sat there, staring, not really thinking anything, yet questioning what I should be thinking at this moment.

“Wow…huge,” I managed to squeak out of my throat and lips. Just as gently as she’d lifted it, the nurse tucked the edge of the blanket back underneath me.  

“Is my tote bag of yarn anywhere around by chance?” I asked. “I think it’s underneath the bed,” she said, with a look of quizzical interest.

“I need something to do with my hands to focus,” I explained. “It helps me have calm and alertness without the anxious jitters.” She bent down, looked for the bag, and went ahead to lift it up and onto the bed beside me. She smiled, still looking confused a bit.

As I reached into my bag, the line dripping the golden liqueur of pain relief snagged onto the handle a bit, moving the needle in my hand enough to bring an angry twinge. Ouch! Be careful. I don’t want to pull that sucker out.

Ah…here’s the bright yellow skein of yarn and my favorite hook. Pulling out the center piece from the middle of the yarn, I started a chain, bringing an instant sense of relief. My hook started to move like a single chopstick being flipped around, while the yarn started to take the shape of a hat. As each nurse came around to check on me, they all would stop and ask what I was making. Each one admired my handiwork, followed by something like: “I couldn’t do that.”  

As I came to the end of the last round, my nurse said it was time to get me moved upstairs to my own room. Good. I was starting to feel tired and feeling the morphine drip wearing off….

I realized I had been daydreaming again. I heard a faint train whistle just outside my window in my apartment.  Then I realized I had huge, hot, salty tears dripping down my face onto the hat I was making out of the yellow yarn. Out of my mouth came a soft, guttural cry, full of sadness. More like a moaning of my soul deep within my chest.

I lay down the hook and hat beside me. Then I pray and ask God to heal my memories, so I don’t cry every time I remember. He reminds me that I will always carry this burden. This memory will help me have compassion for others as they go through the hardest journey of cancer, amputation, or chronic illness.

I sigh. Yes, I know….I just wish it still didn’t hurt. He whispers, My child, I will hold you through the pain. You only have to let go and give it to me.

Okay, I say. I close my eyes and picture the little girl sitting on his lap. She’s handing him her broken heart. He tells her thank you, and it’s the best gift she’s ever given him. She smiles, hugs him, and snuggles into his chest. He strokes her hair and sings a beautiful song to bring comfort and a feeling of safety and peace to her. She nods off to a deep slumber in his loving embrace.

Warm, soft, and fuzzy. Just like a ball of yarn. He is making her into something beautiful.

Kim Ousley is a travel writer and Certified Lead Advocate for the state of Indiana. She blogs about travel at Out on a Limb.

The post After My Amputation, Crocheting Saved My Life appeared first on Amplitude.

The budget resolution that passed the US House by two votes last night is a long way from becoming law. It still has to be reconciled with the Senate’s bill, then go back through the House, and given how narrow last night’s margin was, there’s a good possibility the bill won’t get through both wings of Congress in current form. But last night’s passage was a major step toward enactment—and that’s causing major concern among amputee-serving organizations such as the Amputee Coalition, as well as doctors, prosthetists, and other medical professsionals who deliver healthcare for amputees.

They fear the budget approved last night will require deep cuts in Medicaid funding, leaving many amputees with diminished access to healthcare—or no access at all.

“Access to Medicaid is a matter of life, death, and independence for millions of Americans with disabilities,” wrote a consortium of 400+ patient organizations (including the AC) in a letter sent last week to Congressional leaders. “We strongly oppose per capita caps, block grants, work requirements, restrictions on eligibility, barriers to enrollment and any other cuts or harmful changes to the Medicaid program. The result is the same: taking away coverage from people with disabilities, older adults, and others who cannot otherwise afford health care and long-term services and supports.”

AARP and the American Association of People With Disabilities joined 100+ organizations in a similar letter of concern, warning that “cuts to Medicaid would cause millions of Americans to lose access to care, destabilize rural hospitals and wreak havoc on state budgets.” The American Orthotic and Prosthetic Association, while declining to take a position either opposing or supporting the budget bill, did advise prosthetists that ”if states have Medicaid programs reduced, programmatic cuts are likely and may reduce benefits for O&P care.”

House speaker Mike Johnson and other Congressional leaders insist that the budget won’t force a reduction in Medicaid services, but will merely eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse. But that math doesn’t add up, even for some members of Johnson’s own caucus, who’ve expressed concerns both to Johnson and to the White House that the current bill will negatively affect their constituents—and cause a voter backlash in 2026.

Despite their misgivings, those representatives voted “aye” last night anyway after intense lobbying. But since the legislation hasn’t crossed the finish line yet, there’s still a chance to alter the text and strengthen the protections for Medicaid funding. If you have concerns, contact your federal representatives. We’d like to hear from you as well, so email us at editor@livingwithamplitude.com if you’re worried that Medicaid cuts will affect you personally.

If Medicaid does experience significant funding cuts, here’s what the impact might look like—and why so many people are sounding the alarm.

1. Medicaid cuts will probably increase amputation rates

According to multiple studies, Medicaid funding increases provided under the Affordable Care Act led to a reduction in diabetes-related limb loss. It’s logical to infer that Medicaid cuts would have the opposite effect, ie an increase in amputations. One paper, published in 2020 by diabetic foot expert David Armstrong, found that patients “in states that expanded Medicaid experienced a significant reduction in the number of uninsured with [diabetic foot ulcers] and a reduction in major amputations.” A 2022 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reached an almost identical concluson: “Medicaid expansion was associated with decreased major amputation and hospitalization rates,” especially among minority patients. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh found that Medicaid expansion enabled more people with peripheral artery disease to receive vascular bypass surgery; a paper published last fall in the journal Diabetology found that “Medicaid coverage of podiatry services might be associated with lower rates of major amputation and reduced risk of hospitalization for foot infection.”

To reiterate: None of these findings conclusively proves that Medicaid funding cuts will lead to increased amputation rates. But they do help explain why healthcare providers, patients, and amputee advocacy organizations are so deeply concerned about last night’s House vote.

2. Medicaid cuts will disproportionately affect amputees

According to the last fall’s General Accounting Office report on amputees’ access to prosthetic devices, rehabilitation services, and other forms of long-term care, amputees’ rates of eligibility for Medicaid were more than twice the national average. Nearly 40 percent of the amputees in that study’s cohort (which was limited to Medicare recipients) qualified for Medicaid.

Those stats are consistent with other findings that examine Medicaid reliance among people with any disability, not just limb loss. In a survey of Medicaid recipients published last year by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, one-third of respondents reported having some kind of disability. Only 11 percent of those people qualified for Medicaid because of their disability; the rest were eligible because of low income or another factor. Medicaid’s own beneficiary profile from 2023 noted that people with disabilities account for one-third of the program’s overall spending.

3. Some amputees may be required to work to qualify for Medicaid

In 2023 the House of Representatives (then led by Kevin McCarthy) passed a bill requiring some Medicaid enrollees to find a job in order to remain eligible for coverage. The bill never became law, but the same Medicaid work requirements are among many cost-cutting proposals that the current Congress is considering. In an analysis of the 2023 law, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that work requirements would force about 1.7 million people off the Medicaid rolls. The Congressional Budget Office came in with a slightly lower estimate of 1.5 million.

In an earlier analysis (2022), the CBO found that work requirements for Medicaid “would substantially increase the amount that people who lost Medicaid coverage would pay out of pocket for medical services.” The CBO cited disability as one of the primary barriers to work for Medicaid recipients. And Kaiser raised an important caveat last week, noting: “While proponents of Medicaid work requirements often describe these policies as applying to ‘able-bodied’ adults, people with disabilities may be subject to the requirements—as many people with disabilities do not meet criteria to receive Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and therefore qualify for Medicaid based on income (vs. disability status).”

4. People might lose Medicaid eligibility due to confusing paperwork

Both the CBO and Kaiser studied state-level work requirements that were implemented in Arkansas (2018) and Georgia (currently). In Arkansas, about 20,000 Medicaid recipients who were already working, and therefore should have remained eligible, lost their coverage anyway because they didn’t properly file the paperwork documenting their work status. A Medicaid investigation found that such compliance requirements were most burdensome for the most vulnerable Medicare recipients, including people with disabilities.

In addition, both Arkansas and Georgia tried to exempt people with disabilities from the work requirement. However, claiming the exemption required paperwork that was so confusing and onerous that fewer than one-fourth of those eligible for the exemption actually claimed it. “Although Arkansas’s program included safeguards intended to protect coverage for people with disabilities,” Kaiser noted, “few people used these safeguard measures.”

The post Medicaid Cuts and Limb Loss: What to Know appeared first on Amplitude.

Space is filling up quickly in amputee-themed summer camps for 2025, so act quickly if you still haven’t lined up a spot for your youngster. We’re only listing sleepaway camps that have a nationwide reach. There are also many day camps for kids with limb difference, and/or programs that only serve local residents. Check our Community Resource Directory to find that type of program. The directory also includes camp opportunities for adult amputees.

Camp Phoenix

Catering to kids with limb difference and a wide range of other disabilities, this camp is sponsored by Blaze Sports and features adaptive sports, outdoor recreation, and other traditional camp activities.
Dates: June 8-13
Location: Rutledge, GA
Cost: $350 (scholarships are available)
Ages: 6-18
Sign up: blazesports.org/youth/camp-phoenix

Camp No Limits

This nationwide program is now in its 22nd year. Designed for limb-different kids and their families, Camp No Limits supports young amputees’ independence and builds their confidence via activities specifically designed for them by prosthetists, PTs, and OTs.
Dates: Ten weekends between April and October
Locations: Nine states
Cost: $500 per person (scholarships are available)
Ages: Varies by session
Sign up: nolimitsfoundation.org/camps

Nubability Camps

This is the 15th year for Nubability sports camps. The series of programs now includes sport-specific camps that specialize in baseball, skiing, fishing, basketball, shooting, and outdoor recreation. Family members welcome.
Dates: Six weekends between May and November
Locations: Arizona, Illinois, Montana, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Texas
Cost: $200 to $300
Ages: 4-17
Sign up: nubability.org/camps

USA Patriots Kids Camp

This unique program is sponsored each year by the USA Patriots amputee softball team. Kids with limb difference can receive first-rate softball coaching from the nation’s best amputee players.
Dates: July 1-6
Location: Bismarck, ND
Cost: None
Ages: 8-12
Sign up: usapatriotsathletics.org/kidscamp/

Adventure Amputee Camp

One of the nation’s oldest amputee camps (31 years!), AAC gives kids with limb difference a safe environment for physical and social growth. Activities range from relaxing pastimes such as swimming, bicycling, and crafts to challenges such as river rafting and rope climbing.
Dates: 2nd week in July
Location: Bryson City, NC
Cost: None
Ages: 8-17
Sign up: adventureamputeecamp.org/winter-camp-2025-registration

Shriner’s Un-Limb-ited Activity Camp

If you’re a Shriner’s patient from anywhere in the country, you’re eligible for this exciting 90-mile whitewater rafting trip on the Green River. The trip passes through desert canyons first explored by renowned pathfinder John Wesley Powell, an upper-limb amputee.
Dates: July
Location: Northeastern Utah
Cost: All expenses paid
Ages: 12-17
Sign up:  Email MLowell@shrinenet.org

Amputee Coalition Youth Camp

Young amputees build social connections, confidence, and leadership skills at this annual get-together. There are activities for everyone, from sports to STEM projects, wilderness recreation, creative arts, and more.
Dates: July 27-August 1
Location: Rockport, TX
Cost: Free
Ages: 10-19
Sign up: support.amputee-coalition.org/acton/media/46456/youth-camp-signup-2025

The post Amputee Summer Camp Schedule for 2025 appeared first on Amplitude.

This year’s Super Bowl halftime show was kind of a love/hate thing. If you’re familiar with Kendrick Lamar and picked up on the symbols and allusions he sprinkled throughout the performance, you saw a masterful artist at the height of his powers. If not, you saw a disjointed jumble that was difficult to make sense of.

No matter which camp you fell into, you likely didn’t see Serena Williams’ appearance coming. Almost two weeks later, people are still talking about that surprise cameo and clueing in the clueless (like us) about Williams’ small but enduring role in hip-hop culture. And that conversation led, improbably, to a long-forgotten Black dancer named Henry “Crip” Heard—a bilateral amputee—and two of his role models, Stanley “Big-Time Crip” Holmes and Peg-Leg Bates.

We learned of the connection the Monday after the game, when someone sent us an article from LAD Bible explaining that the dance Williams performed on the Super Bowl stage—an old rap-music staple called the Crip Walk—originated in the 1940s with Heard, who’d lost his right arm and right leg in an auto accident as a teenager. Already an up-and-coming dancer before getting injured, he worked his way back to the stage and eventually reached the big-time theatre circuit, sharing stages with megastars such as Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Jordan, and Cab Calloway.

Though his performing career ended in the 1960s, he remained a steadfast advocate for the disability community until his death in 1991. He spent years volunteering with the Illinois Board of Rehabilitation, lobbying for greater investment in job training for people with disabilities and decrying the absence of job opportunities. “There just aren’t any substantial programs moving in that direction,” he told the Chicago Defender in 1971, “and the handicapped, as a result, continue to struggle for the few ‘charity’ jobs they can get.”

Heard’s dancing career might have been completely forgotten if not for his appearance in Boarding House Blues, a 1948 film starring Moms Mabley. That clip, readily available online, marks the earliest known performance of the Crip Walk, according to LAD Bible, which adds that the dance “was later adopted by The Crips, an alliance of California street gangs,” and “over the years has seeped into popular culture through rappers who are closely associated with the Crips.”

That lineage is being hotly debated on Xwitter, Reddit, and other online forums. John Leguziamo claims the dance has Chicano origins; others argue the LA gang’s dance bears no resemblance to Crip Heard’s, and that the supposed link between the two is completely bogus. None of the documentation for any viewpoint is airtight, and the trustworthy archival sources are mum on the relationship between Crip Heard and the Crip Walk, so we’re not choosing sides. All we can add to the conversation is a shout-out to Big-Time Crip and Peg-Leg Bates, whom we can reliably cite as two of Crip Heard’s creative inspirations.

Henry Heard, Big-Time Crip, and Peg-Leg Bates

If you’re a regular Amplitude reader you already know about Bates, a below-knee amputee who began tap dancing professionally in the 1920s, appeared on Broadway, and was just the second Black entertainer to perform at Radio City Music Hall. In the 1930s Bates started mentoring a young one-legged dancer named Stanley Holmes, who performed with a crutch (whereas Bates danced with a wooden prosthesis). In his biography Boy Meets Horn, big-band cornetist Rex Stewart sketches a scene in which Bates (by then an established star) tutors an inexperienced Holmes after hours in the basement of the Rhythm Club in Natchez, Mississippi.

Apparently Holmes was a fast learner. By 1939—the same year Crip Heard lost his limbs—he was opening for the likes of Fats Waller, Count Basie, and Louis Armstrong. In 1941 bandleader Andy Kirk released a B-side called “Big-Time Crip,” which seems to be dedicated to Holmes. The first line goes: Big-Time Crip is one of Harlem’s finest dancers / Big-Time Crip is one of Harlem’s true romancers. Late that year, Variety offered this review of Holmes’ three-minute opening act at the Apollo Theater (on a bill with Lionel Hampton and Billie Holliday): “One-legged strutter had time to display only sample of his wares when caught at Apollo, but showed enough to click. Works in evening clothes and hoofs with and without crutch. Does taps, acrobatics, and struts, too.”

By 1948, when 24-year-old Crip Heard made his movie debut in Boarding House Blues, Holmes was no longer getting big bookings. We could find almost no biographical material about him on the Internet, so we’re not sure what became of the man. But he was evidently an important bridge between Peg-Leg Bates and Crip Heard, as the first major amputee dancer to perform with a crutch.

So now our Crip Walk lineage extends back nearly a century, from Serena Williams to the LA Crips to Crip Heard, Big-Time Crip, and finally to Peg-Leg Bates. The weak link in this chain, of course, is the one connecting Heard to the Compton gang of the 1980s. If anybody has solid evidence to confirm or refute that relationship, let us hear from you.

The post Did Amputee Dancer Henry Heard Invent the Crip Walk? appeared first on Amplitude.

In Amplitude at this time last year, in the Jan/Feb 2024 print edition, Bachelorette contestant Cam Ayala described what limb loss has taught him about love and relationships. “Since becoming an amputee, I’ve done a much better job of loving all of me,” he wrote. “My story is proof that we can all learn how to accept, love, and honor ourselves, and to receive love from people who accept and honor all of us.”

Ayala has been incredibly busy since that article appeared. In addition to relocating from Houston to Austin, he’s joined the board of the Save a Leg, Save a Life Foundation; run his first triathlon; pulled his first volunteer stint at Camp No Limits; and attended the Forge Retreat through Bethany Hamilton’s Beautifully Flawed Foundation.

With another Valentine’s Day upon us, we decided to reconnect with Ayala and find out how his journey to self-acceptance is going. You can follow Ayala on Instagram @camronayala. Our conversation is edited for length and clarity.

Catch me up on the last 12 months. What was 2024 like for you?
It was a year of growth and healing for me. Last year was the two-year ampuversary for me. Year one is just surreal, because everything happens so fast, and there are so many different things that happen. In most cases you get your first prosthesis, you’re learning your everyday activities, you’re navigating what it’s like just to be out in public—let alone dating. For a lot of amputees, that first year goes by like the snap of a finger, because you’re processing so much and constantly adapting to the new normal.

Year two, for me, was about finding new rhythms. I gained a lot of knowledge and wisdom last year from other amputees who are much farther along in their journey than I am. And I encourage everybody, even if you’re not an extrovert, to seek out a mentor or two who’s around your age and who’ve literally walked the walk. They can share nuggets with you that you may not get from your prosthetist, from your surgeon, certainly not from your able-bodied friends.

And I gather from your Instagram feed that you’ve also been serving as a mentor for a recent amputee named, I think, named Kaitlyn?
Courtney. Courtney Echerd. She lost her leg about a year ago. I’ve just grown to love her and her family. It was such an act of God how she and I met, because I was walking my dog down a trail that I literally had never gone down before, and her brother saw my prosthetic leg covering and he came over and said, “I hate to be so forward, but you mind if I ask you a couple questions? My sister is about to have her leg amputated tomorrow at MD Anderson.” It turns out she has osteosarcoma. So I said, “Brother, I wish I could introduce you or your sister to this guy I know here in Houston, Mark Barr.” You know about him?

The triathlete? Yep. He won a Paralympic medal last summer.
And he’s an osteosarcoma survivor. So I kid you not, 15 seconds later this guy whizzes by on his bicycle, and he stops and turns around and goes, “Cam?” It was Mark Barr.

No way.
I’m like, “Mark, let me introduce you to—”

You manifested him!
It was just a really cool moment where the community just organically came together like that. So then I got to know Courtney, and we developed a friendship, and I told her, “I’m going to run a triathlon in your honor.” It was my first and potentially my last triathlon, because it turned to be relatively traumatic.

The traumatic part was, two days before the race, I got a new running socket. That night I was doing a shakeout run at the track with another amputee who was going to be with me for the triathlon, and about a mile into the run, the twine that allows the socket to adjust snapped. I immediately hit the ground. This was a Friday night, and the race was on Sunday, and no prosthetic clinics were open on the weekend. So I FaceTimed Dave Rotter, who was down in Guatemala for Dave Krupa’s wedding, and I’m asking him, “How can I fix this?” And he says, “Cam, you’re not going to like this, but you can go down to Home Depot or Lowe’s and get some Gorilla Tape.”

Oh my god. Excuse me for laughing, I’m sorry.
You have to laugh. I literally duct-taped my running socket for this triathlon. So the day of the race, I went through the swim first, and that was no problem because I wasn’t wearing any prosthesis. For the biking portion, I used a different socket that goes with my microprocessor knee, because I can put that knee into bike mode. So biking was by far the easiest event for me, because of the technology of my microprocessor knee. Other than my dad having to literally zip-tie my prosthetic foot to the pedal to keep it in place.

So when I pulled into the last transition stop to go from biking to the run, something in my spirit said: “You’re not going to do this in the running blade.” It would have been incredibly painful if I had tried to do it with a duct-taped and zip-tied socket, you know? So I ended up doing the 5K on my forearm crutches.

Which you hadn’t trained on at all.
Hadn’t trained at all. But the whole reason I was doing the triathlon in the first place was for Courtney. She hadn’t gotten her first prosthetic yet. She was using forearm crutches to get around. So it was really fitting that I completed the race I was doing in her honor in the same style she had for mobility. That was really a healing experience for me, doing something outside of myself. And I think really the key takeaway there is that sometimes in your journey with limb loss or limb difference, you’re going to be called to be bold. You’re going to have to do things that are outside your comfort zone. Because in being bold for other people, you will actually empower them. And I feel that when you empower another person, you get that power, too.

I know not everyone’s going to run a triathlon, and not everyone’s an extreme extrovert like I am. For somebody else, their boldness might just be wearing shorts to the grocery store and letting people see their prosthetic and dealing with that attention. There’s healing in taking a bold step, and when we are more healed, it makes us more attractive. And I’m not just saying physically attractive. I think there’s a spiritual attractiveness that exudes from us when we go through growing pains and come out on the other side.

This article is for Valentine’s Day, so I have to ask you for an update in your romantic life.
So in the article last year, I talked about how self-love is important, and it totally is. I think I reached that point last year. But once you’ve matured and grown into that self-love phase, then it’s time to be selfless, and to serve other people. Not only is it the right thing to do, but in that serving of other people, you get so much back in return, and you start putting yourself in communities with like minded-people who have a similar mission and vision as I do. I think that in doing that, I’m putting myself in an environment where I can attract someone who could be a great long-term partner. I haven’t found that individual yet, or she hasn’t found me. But I was single all last year and I didn’t feel lonely. And that is so empowering.

When I was doing the Bachelorette, I feel like I was just trying too hard. I wasn’t truly myself. it’s hard in that environment, because it’s literally competition. But the reality is that you just have to make yourself available. It goes back to the boldness. It’s not always comfortable and it’s not always easy, but if you go there with boldness, and you go there with self-love, and you’re being selfless to serve other people, I think that’s when you’ll be put in the right places with the right faces. I think that’s when true love can can happen.

The post Cam Ayala’s Journey to Love Continues appeared first on Amplitude.

Not to be too alarmist, but last Friday left us seriously concerned about the future of the limb loss community.

First the Amputee Coalition announced that it had reluctantly laid off four staff members, furloughed two others, and reduced hours and salaries for most other employees. Those moves became necessary after the AC temporarily lost access to a major federal grant in late January, after the Trump administration froze the disbursement of trillions of dollars in government funds.

Although the freeze was quickly reversed under court order, AC leaders concluded they could no longer be certain of receiving every dollar of the five-year grant that underwrites the National Limb Loss Resource Center, one of the AC’s largest programs.

“We literally had a [funds] transfer in progress that was halted,” AC president Cass Isidro told Amplitude. “Two days later we were able to access those funds, but that was a wakeup call. It gave us reason to sit back and say: If this can happen, we need to be good stewards of the core services we’re providing so we can weather this environment. We believe and hope the monies that Congress has appropriated [to support the limb-loss community] will move forward on time, but it’s our job to make sure that the phones don’t stop getting answered.”

Shortly after the AC’s announcement, some other unsettling news surfaced: The National Institutes of Health implemented sweeping cuts to its biomedical grant programs, effective immediately. The NIH spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually to support research for new prosthetic technologies, limb-care treatments, and other innovations that directly serve amputees. Even greater NIH sums—tens of billions per year—support research in amputee-related fields such as pain management, physical rehabiliation, diabetes, cancer, and cardiovascular disease. All of that research was abruptly thrown into doubt, as scientists scrambled to examine their budgets.

The NIH cuts were also halted by a judge shortly after they were announced. But the news has left limb-care researchers in a position similar to that of the AC: unsure about whether, and to what extent, their work can proceed.

“This will obviously have an impact on O&P,” says Fanny Schultea, the executive director of the Orthotics and Prosthetics Foundation for Education and Research. “It’s probably going to halt some projects or slow down projects. Maybe new projects won’t be initiated at the same pace. There’s just going to be an upheaval. We don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but we do know that it’s going to impact O&P research.”

To recap: the federal funding freeze (announced January 27) destabilized the AC’s funding situation. The NIH cuts (announced February 7) threaten university and industry research projects. Rather than speculate about where this is all headed, we decided to stick to the handful of facts we know for sure, and do our best to clarify those.

How much of the Amputee Coalition’s funding is in doubt?

The funding freeze primarily affects the five-year $3.3 million grant the AC receives from the Administration for Community Living (ACL) to operate the National Limb Loss Resource Center. Funds the AC raises through foundation grants, sponsorships, industry support, and other channels are not affected.

What services is the AC cutting?

For now, nothing’s being cut. “We’re not totally sunsetting or pausing anything yet,” Isidro says. “Most people aren’t even going to notice that anything has changed. It’s not going to affect most people directly.”

Not as long as the funding freeze remains tied up in the courts, anyway. But if the freeze eventually goes back into effect—and/or if the government introduces a different cost-cutting policy that affects the AC—the organization may be forced to reduce or discontinue some of its services. “We are preparing ourselves to operate in a volatile, uncertain environment,” Isidro says. “These are things that have not happened before, and there are no clear answers.”

That’s where the concept of “core services” comes into play: Those would be the last things to go in a funding crisis. “What we mean by ‘core services’ are the things we do that nobody else is doing across the entire nation,” says Isidro. “First and foremost are our information and referral services, where people can call us, fill out an online form, send us an email and get relevant information or referral related to limb loss and limb difference.” The next highest priorities are community-based programs such as peer visits, peer mentors, amputee support groups, and education programs.

To reiterate: So far the AC hasn’t reduced its services for amputees at all, according to Isidro. The organization is maintaining operations despite the reductions in staff. In the past, the AC has weathered funding interruptions by drawing on other resources, Isidro adds. “But we’re currently not in a financial situation to do that for a month or a number of months without significantly harming the organization.”

What types of limb-loss research might be in jeopardy?

Many of the most exciting biotech innovations you read about in Amplitude are reliant on NIH funding, and could be affected by the new budget rules. They include AMI surgery, the Utah Bionic Leg, Emily Graczyk’s neuroprosthetic arms (in the current issue), Hugh Herr’s Bionic Skins project, and investigations related to phantom limb pain, osseointegration, and targeted muscle reinnervation. The DARPA hand was developed in significant part with NIH dollars. The Limb Loss and Preservation Registry was built almost entirely on a series of NIH grants, although the LLPR is now independently funded.

Dozens of projects of this caliber are in the NIH’s current portfolio, and all will probably be impacted if the new NIH budgeting policy moves forward. “We don’t know exactly how it’s going to look,” says the O&P Foundation’s Schultea. “It’s going to impact research volume. It’s going to impact projects that are underway may not be able to be completed. There are going to be major changes. We just don’t know exactly what they are yet.”

How many dollars would researchers lose if the NIH cuts take effect?

NIH researchers aren’t facing the loss of all their funds, but they’re facing the loss of a critical chunk. These are funds to cover so-called indirect costs, which typically comprise anywhere from 30 to 60 percent of a given award. The NIH wants to cap funding for indirect costs at 15 percent, meaning many researchers would lose between a fourth and (almost) a half of their overall award.

We’re not delving into the details of direct vs indirect costs; here’s an explainer from Science. But we did conduct a bit of cocktail-napkin math to guesstimate how many dollars might be funneled out of limb-loss research—which is, we should remind you, not lavishly funded to begin with. In table form:

Those are very rough estimates, but they provide a realistic sense of scale. You can plug different numbers into this table and generate a larger or smaller bottom line, but it’s difficult to produce a scenario in which the new policy represents a win for anyone who relies on biomedical research for their health and well-being.

If you want to check our math, our estimates of NIH funding for limb loss come from the NIH Reporter.

One last point of clarification: the figures above only represent NIH research that’s focused squarely on limb loss. The amount of NIH funding at risk in limb-loss-adjacent fields such as diabetes, pain management, physical rehabilitation, cancer, and cardiovascular disease is vastly higher. Allocations for research in those fields are measured in the billions, not millions, so the reductions in funding levels—and corresponding reduction in progress—could be staggering if the NIH implements the new funding restriction in its current form.

What can anybody do to protect federal funding for the limb-loss community?

Ummmm . . . . . we’ll get back to you on that.

What you can do is try to reinforce non-federal sources of support. To start, Isidro suggests volunteering your time to the AC or an organization in your community, such as an amputee support group. “If you’ve ever thought about being a peer visitor, now’s the time to go through that training,” she says. “If you can get engaged, get engaged.” If you’re in a position to donate funds to the AC, she adds, don’t wait until December: “If you donate on the front end of the year, it gives us more leverage to extend our services than if you donate later on, when we’ve already maybe had to react to certain challenges.” And if you’re just not in a position to give time or money, at least give your attention and stay prepared. “There may be a time when we need folks to speak out on behalf of our services and programs,” Isidro says. “We’re not calling folks to action yet, but we are encouraging them to stay tuned. Follow our feeds and follow our newsletter, because additional support may be needed.”

Schultea suggests working with organizations such as the O&P Foundation, which doesn’t rely at all on federal funding. “Even the VA, which usually feels more stable, is cutting,” she says. “It highlights the need to be extremely savvy and to diversify support. We cannot rely anymore on the government funding we have relied on for the last 50 years. We have got to diversify, because this is something we can no longer take for granted. And we have to be grateful for the structures already in place that don’t rely on that source.”

The post Federal Funds and Limb Loss: FAQ appeared first on Amplitude.

Only a few members of the Kansas City Chiefs have been present for all three of the team’s Super Bowl wins since the 2019 season. You already know most of them if you follow football—head coach Andy Reid, quarterback Patrick Mahomes, and tight end Travis Kelce are the most prominent names. And it’s possible you’ve heard of assistant coach Porter Ellett, who joined Reid’s staff in 2017. An above-elbow amputee since the age of 16, Ellett has drawn more attention than the average assistant coach. Most impressively, he’s stayed with the same organization for nearly a decade, resisting the eternal churn of firings and hirings in the NFL (aka “Not For Long”).

While media coverage typically focuses on the novelty of Ellett’s limb difference, the Chiefs appreciate him for his unique traits as a teacher and leader. Mahomes has touted Ellett as a future NFL head coach, and the idea’s not far-fetched—about half a dozen current NFL head coaches started out as Reid assistants.

Ellett himself isn’t focused on that right now. He just wants to help the Chiefs extend their dynasty this weekend in Super Bowl LIX against the Philadelphia Eagles. If it happens, he’ll be up to four Super Bowl rings—with no fingers remaining for any future championship bling, and (at only 35 years old) many chances ahead to win more titles. Where will Ellett wear rings #5 and beyond? That’s a problem almost any unsung NFL coach would love to have.

We talked to Ellett last week, before the team flew down to New Orleans for the title match. Our conversation is lightly edited for clarity and length.

Most football fans would say the Chiefs have evolved as a team and an organization since this championship era began in 2019. Has it felt that way to you from the inside?
I think so. I think the old saying, “Rising tides raise all ships,” you get that same vibe here. Along with the winning comes a standard, and then everybody builds to that standard. I’ve seen it every step of the way, and it’s not just the people who have been here the whole time. You have new people come in and they meet the standard. They see right away, “Oh, this is the expectation, and this is what we’re doing.” That’s fun to be a part of.

Is there a way you can characterize or describe that standard? What are you doing that’s elevating you and keeping you above the rest of the league?
We never rest on our success. You try to leave last year behind and use this year to improve upon what we have. That’s only fair for the players, because how many players have been here the whole time? Not many. So really, when you look it at season to season, we have a whole different group of players every year, and we try to make them the best they can be. We try to achieve that sort of excellence with every player that comes in. And that’s how we look at it. You can’t look at it as we’re building on last year, when 60 percent of the team was not here last year. You can’t really do that. So you chase excellence, you chase perfection, and hopefully you catch greatness as you go.

This year in particular, it has looked like like every time there’s a close game, the Chiefs always make the right play or the opponent makes the wrong play. A lot of your games literally came down to the last play of the game. Does your accumulated success over the six-year arc psyche your opponents out? Do they get pulled out of those pivotal moments just enough to give you guys an edge?
I can’t speak to other teams, but I do know when we play great teams, we feel a certain amount of expectation that they’re going to do the right thing. When you play a team like the Bills, who we just played, they’re not going to beat themselves. And they proved that. I mean, they won the turnover battle. They gained more yardage. They didn’t beat themselves.

I think other teams see us that way. They think, “This team knows how to win, so when it comes down to the margins, they’re going to do everything they can to make the right play.” Now, we’ve been fortunate. We’ve caught some breaks here and there. But we have players that create luck for us. We have Travis and we have Pat we have Chris [Jones], we have Nick [Bolton]…the list goes on and on.

When you were a high school athlete, did you have coaches who influenced you, and whose influence you still fall back on as you’re working in the NFL?
Oh yeah, no doubt. My dad was my first coach, and I think I took from him his demeanor. My dad’s very calm, but he’s also very explosive at the same time. He kind of did a slow simmer, and he’s very intense. But he’s also very calm; he’s the guy you could go to to think through things. I hope I kind of carry that with me a little bit.

I had great coaches all the way while I was growing up. [Ellett spent his childhood in Loa, Utah.] Obviously, with one arm, I had things that I had to overcome. I had a coach named skip Jackson and one called Gordon Ellett who helped me learn how to do everything. They were very patient with me and thought outside the box a lot of ways, as far as playing baseball with one hand—that’s not a natural thing. So they helped me develop those skills. They were incredible coaches that way.

My high school team had a ton of success in baseball. Our head coach was named Scott Ellett, and to this day he might still be the greatest coach I’ve ever interacted with, as far as his ability to teach the game and his selflessness. When he taught baseball, he never claimed to know everything, but he was fascinated with the game. In his free time, he was always watching training clips on YouTube to help people hit better and throw better. He was also a wrestling coach, and he coached me on the high school track team. He is one of the the greatest coaches in Utah sports history.

Is he related to you?
There’s a lot of Elletts back there. The town’s small enough that almost everybody’s related one way or another. But Scott Ellett is my distant cousin, and Gordon Elliott as well. Gordon and Scott were brothers.

What do you think are your own strengths as a coach? Are you an Xs and Os guy? Are you a teacher, a technique guy? A motivator? Some amalgam of all that stuff?
Oh, that’s a good question. You don’t really think about yourself much in that vein. I think I’m solid with the Xs and Os, because I’ve learned from Coach Reid, who is maybe one of the greatest Xs and Os guys ever offensively. And then Coach allows me to be creative. He allows me to come up with ideas, and he’s willing to try them. You see it every week, little things that are fun and creative.

And then I do think that there is a motivational aspect. I don’t think I’m trying to be motivational. I’m not a rah-rah guy or a cheerleader. But I think players just see the way things are [with my disability], and they can say, “okay, all right, “Well, I’m not going to complain about my problem today,” or “We can solve this problem if we work through it together.” So I do think that what might be perceived as a weakness, is actually a strength in a way.

Whose idea was that Ring around the Rosey thing you guys did a couple years ago? That was brilliant. 
That was pretty good, huh? Actually, it’s kind of a funny story. No one really ever takes credit for ideas; it’s kind of the team’s idea at the end of the day. But the very first time we ever did that Ring around the Rosey thing was when Chad Henne and I played this three-on-three football game on Friday afternoons. Chad and I put our arms together and we came up with that circle. We called it the Circle of Death originally, so it became a joke over there. And then it morphed into the thought that maybe it would confuse the defense. It just started out as something fun. But that’s how every idea comes about here.

In one of the NFL’s videos about you, Patrick Mahomes says he sees you as a head coach someday. Is that an aspiration? Would you like to get to that level?
I mean, yeah. As a competitor who wouldn’t? I’d love to see if I could have the kind of success Coach Reid has had. And Coach Reid trains people to be that. He allows people to grow and become leaders and become head coaches. In the long run, I think you owe it to him to one day be a successful head coach. He would expect nothing less.

Are there aspects of your skill set that you feel you need to level up to become a competitive candidate for a head coaching job?
You really need to prepare yourself for the moment. I think Coach Reid has done a phenomenal job of preparing me for that. For three years I was his assistant, so I got to see everything he did schedule-wise, personnel meetings, installs, game prep. I got to see all of that. Then I moved over to quality control, where I did all the grunt work as far as drawings, breaking down film, that sort of thing. Now I’m coaching positionally. I’ve been in meeting rooms with every position group but the offensive line.

If you became a head coach, or even a coordinator, you would be the first NFL coach with a disability at that level. Is it important to you to be that boundary breaker?
I think it would matter to people, but I don’t see myself as that. I’m just trying to do the best job I can. But I do think it matters to other people, and I do think it’s important. Listen, I grew up with one arm, and I saw no one like me doing the things I was doing. That’s hard. So if it does bring people hope, then that’s important it to me.

But at the same time, I don’t think you can go into it with the perspective ofk, I’m going to break through this barrier. I’m just trying to win ball games.

You just want then to offer you another contract.
Exactly. I’m just trying to stay in the league and keep my job.

When you mentioned you didn’t see anyone like yourself growing up, things are a little bit different now, right? More people are getting opportunities to show what they can do, and there’s more visibility. That’s partly because of social media, but also because the mainstream media recognize that these are worthwhile stories.
I would agree. Because of social media, there’s a lot more availability to it. There’s that kid who plays Division 1 [college] basketball with one hand, Hansel Emmanuel. That’s a good example. I didn’t have anybody like that when I was growing up. I was the only one-handed person playing basketball that I knew.

There was also a baseball player who played recently in Division 2 with one hand, Parker Hanson. Have guys like that ever reached out to you?
There’s also a running back for Northwestern who has one arm. It’s funny, I think we all know about each other, but we don’t really interact. I think part of that is because of the way that we’ve each had to deal with our own challenges. There’s a very private aspect of dealing with a disability. So when people suggest, “You should get together with this guy,” I always feel like his struggle is different than mine, and I don’t want to interfere with whatever he’s doing.

My sisters sometimes will have people ask them, “I know this young amputee, it’d mean a lot to him if your brother met with them.” And I think back to when I was that age. The last thing I would have wanted was some dude walking in and saying, “Hey, I’ve won three Super Bowls, nice to meet you.” I would have looked at him like, “Great, your life’s awesome. That doesn’t do anything for me.” Everyone has their own perspective, and I think it is helpful sometimes. But you need to be very aware that just because you faced your challenge the way you did, that’s not always helpful for another person.

What sort of game are you anticipating against the Eagles?
Like the Bills, they’re not going to beat themselves. They have had a ton of success. When two great teams play each other, it comes down to winning individual battles. So I think that’s what it will come down to, is our big-time players making big-time plays. We have great role players, too, and they’re big-time players in big moments. We’ll just stick to our process and try to continue to have success.

You think it’s going to come down to a kick at the end of the game?
It always comes down to a kick here or there, right?

The post Porter Ellett Is Running Out of Fingers appeared first on Amplitude.

“I might not be the most dexterous piano player, but I only sound like me,” says Victoria Canal. “There’s no other piano player that’s going to sound like that.”

A seasoned performer at just 26 years old, the Spanish-American songwriter has already learned to embrace her limb difference as a value-add, not a limitation. That might help explain why Canal seems to be creeping up on breakout stardom. Over the past couple of years she’s performed with Coldplay at Glastonbury 2024 (in front of 250,000 fans), opened for Hozier on a segment of his world tour, and won her second Ivor Novello Rising Star Award for songwriting. It reached the point last summer that she was forced to shoot down rumors that she was dating Tom Cruise.

Canal’s debut album, Slowly, It Dawns, came out last month and merited reviews in Rolling Stone UK, Spin, NME, and other major music journals. She told Rolling Stone UK how the album reflects her sense of being willingly “ignorant to the ways of the world” and then dealing with the sting of the comedown. The album’s opening tracks feature indie-pop flair, but it’s in the second half of the album that we hear Canal’s self-awareness dawning. The minimalist guitar ballad “How Can I Be a Person?” addresses the ongoing struggle of comparing ourselves to others, while the album’s closing tune, “swan song” (which Coldplay’s Chris Martin calls one of the best ever written), offers a refrain that’s both question and affirmation: “Who knows how long we got? / As long as I’m breathing, I know it’s not too late to love.”

On a recent call with Amplitude, Canal opened up about reaching her core truth, strength in vulnerability, facing that inner critic, and wondering if she’s shared too much. Visit her website to buy the album or get tickets to a show on her upcoming US tour (starting February 15 at The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC). She’s on Instagram @victoriacanal. You can stream Slowly, It Dawns at this link.

What have been some of the biggest musical influences in your life?
I’ve had different musical influences at different points in my life. One would be my grandma, who played piano and led the choir at her church. She was the first person to notice that I had an interest in music. When we would visit her in the summers, I would sit on her lap and watch her play, and I would want to play along and sing. She was the first one to encourage my parents to put me into lessons.

And then there were things that would play around the house. My dad was a big Dire Straits fan, and my brother loved Queen. I loved Aerosmith because we would play their songs on Guitar Hero, and then there was Coldplay, Brandy Carlisle, John Mayer, and Jason Mraz. When I became a songwriter and sort of started finding my own voice, there were many artists who continued to influence me. Radiohead and Feist and Saint Vincent were a few.

As a singer-songwriter, what does it mean for you to find your own voice? How do you know when you’ve found it?
My main concern through writing music is to reach the core of my truth. I want to know that when people listen to me sing something I’ve written, they believe me. I have a tattoo of something my Cuban grandma used to say to me when I was playing playing piano. She would say “Con alma,” which means “With soul.” That’s my main criteria as a songwriter. Am I putting my soul into it? Am I reaching a deeper level of myself?

I don’t think you ever arrive. I think it’s a constant, ongoing pursuit of the truth. That’s one of the things that I was interested in exploring with this album: How is my own reality changing through my 20s? And then as you get older, you become a little more self-aware, and maybe you regret certain choices, but they inform who you become next.

In your bio, you mentioned how you’re trying to be unapologetically honest about what you put out there. What hurdles have you had to overcome to be able to do that?
It’s a great question. The main hurdle I find is that it is hard. It’s very taxing. It’s very vulnerable, and sometimes you don’t know if you’re the only one feeling that way, because relatively few people admit to feeling the weight of comparison, self-doubt, perfectionism, depression, anxiety…like saying them out loud is like an admittance of weakness. But ultimately, to be vulnerable is strong, and it is a way to remain connected to people and to reach people. I think the main hurdle I’ve faced is that I’m very hard on myself.  I come away even from conversations like these and wonder if I shared too much. But I signed up to share myself for a job; it’s what I do.

It taps into that vulnerability you’re talking about. You really put your heart and soul into the music, so your life, thoughts, and feelings are out there in a very intimate way.
It’s like I am literally surgically opening up my heart. It is an open wound. I’m doing it on stage and on the internet, and I’m saying, please don’t hurt me.

Another hurdle I find is [dealing with] anonymous hatred online. Yesterday I did a TikTok live, and people were just ripping me apart about my appearance and my limb difference and saying really cruel things. When I work constantly on myself and take pride in being open despite the pain, to be treated so violently can be really wounding. If [the judgment] wasn’t about my disability, it would be about something else. Every single person I know who puts themselves out there in any way is subject to anonymous criticism. That’s just what you’re signing up for. So that’s the main hurdle I find is not letting that shit get to you, and knowing that the people who really deserve what you’re sharing respect it.

In your songs, we can hear you overcoming these hurdles, but I also think you give listeners a way of overcoming their own. Can you tell me about your process as a songwriter? Where do your ideas come from?
A lot of my ideas and lyrics come from everyday conversation. There will be a line or something that hits me that speaks to a deeper feeling, and I’ll write it down. I’m always jotting down notes, and then I’ll pick up an instrument and just start messing around and have some melodic idea or chord progression in my head, and just let it flow from there.

How does your disability fit into the process of discovery for you? How have you seen that part of your identity evolve?
Within my musical practice, I think limitations are really interesting because they serve as parameters and guidance for what makes you uniquely you. I might not be the most dexterous piano player, but I only sound like me. There’s no other piano player that’s going to sound like that, and part of the reason is because I make very specific choices based on my limb difference. Also, the way I play guitar sounds a bit softer and unique to me. I’m sure it would be fun to be able to just riff all over the block. And then you know, in life, something that never ceases to amaze me is humanity’s capacity for resilience. Resilience is the best thing we have to offer, and I think having a body that’s different makes you confront your own ability to persevere. I think it sometimes instills even a stubbornness to overcome and prove people wrong.

It motivated me to achieve in ways that no one would have expected, and then I was surrounded by a really amazing family who encouraged me to build up my own confidence and belief in my own capabilities. People really rush to help you and save you when you’re disabled, and I think that can be really damaging in some ways, because it does limit the muscle you build to believe in yourself. If everyone’s coming to your rescue, you don’t build up that muscle. I think it’s really necessary to self-impose certain challenges when you’re someone with a disability, because people aren’t ever going to impose those challenges on you. They would much rather save you out of pity, and I am allergic to pity. I don’t want anyone to waste any time pitying me.

When you talk about building up your own resilience, and when you look back on things that you’ve done and how you’ve grown, not only as a person but as an artist, what do you feel most proud of?
Great question. Honestly—I think this is just because of where I’m at hormonally right now—I have a very hard time feeling proud of myself.

Where do you think that comes from?
You’re my therapist now! I think it’s just a desperate desire to be better. You know, I have a song called “Black Swan,” and it addresses very openly this sense of perfectionism and [how you’re supposed to be] further along, or be someone else. I struggle with that feeling a lot, but you know what? Then I go and play a live show, and when I am singing “Black Swan” live, and there’s a crowd of people singing it back to me in tears with their arms wrapped around each other, that’s when I’m proudest. That’s the proudest I feel of myself…when I realize that I’ve done that for people, and that by being honest in my pain and my expression, I’ve somehow saved or helped heal someone, or at least taken part in their healing, the way that music has always done for me.

I think that’s often why people come to music. There’s something very healing about the way you can relate to a song, or feel seen or validated in your own feelings.
As you probably recognized about this album, there’s this poppy side, and then there’s this emo singer-songwriter side. Last year I was really trying to put on a pop show to try out. I would put that outfit on and see what it felt like. Turns out, it’s not so much for me. I’m more of a folky singer-songwriter type, so I’m building a new show, and it’s more acoustic and closer to my heart. It’s got a grounded living room vibe to it, so more back to my roots.

Canal kicks off her US tour next week in Washington, DC. Get information about the album, concert tickets, merch, and more at victoriacanal.com.

The post The Future Dawns for Victoria Canal appeared first on Amplitude.

There won’t be any Grammy Awards handed out Sunday night to honor musicians with disabilities. But amputee drum wizard Jason Barnes hopes to see an adaptive category at the Grammys before long.

More than a decade after he went viral as the world’s fastest drummer, using a custom-built bionic arm, Barnes is leveraging technology to help people with all sort of disabilities record their own melodies and grooves. His year-old nonprofit, Cybernetic Sound, provides access to adaptive instruments, innovative prosthetics, pro-caliber tools for audio engineering and production, and other studio gear.

Just as important, Cybernetic offers disabled creators education, mentorship, and a sense of community. “The whole goal is to provide a space, create a movement, and get people back to doing what they love, which is music,” says Barnes. He didn’t have that sense of belonging after losing his right hand in an electrical accident back in 2012. That’s a big part of his motivation to bring disabled musicians together.

In addition to launching Cybernetic Sound, Barnes is exploring the idea of a live show featuring disabled supergroups, which might take place as soon as this spring. And he’s hoping the music industry will follow the lead of the film/TV industries and recognize that new voices and new perspectives can raise the caliber of the product—and are good for business, too.

We caught up with Barnes this week fresh off his trip to the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) conference in Anaheim, where he worked on partnerships between Cybernetic Sound is and music industry leaders. He’s also actively recruiting musicians to make use of his studio facilities (which are based in Atlanta) and start showcasing the disability community’s talent.

To learn more about Cybernetic, visit their website at cyberneticsound.org. Our conversation is edited for length and clarity.

Tell me about the origin of this project. Is this an idea you’ve been kicking around for a long time?
So I’ve been in music my whole life. After I became an amputee, at that time I started working with Georgia Tech to develop prototype prosthetics for drumming. And then a few years ago, I opened up my own music studio with the help of my friend Matt Bankston, who was part of a nonprofit, and another one of my other friends, George Hamelin. When we opened the studio, kind of simultaneously, I had wrapped up a short documentary with Google that they put out on their YouTube channel. So that got quite a few hits, and a lot of people saw the video.

Throughout this whole journey, I’ve had people reach out to me from all over the world telling me they want to learn how to play drums but they don’t think they ever can, or they were once were a musician but now they can’t play because of a disability. I didn’t really have the ability to help them the way I wanted to, because all the work I had done with Georgia Tech, you know, they owned all that technology. When I started working with Google, my stipulation was that I wanted to make all the technology open source, so I could use it to help other people. And so I kind of decided, why stop there? Why not start a nonprofit for musicians with challenges to teach them how to produce records and play instruments? So that’s where we started Cybernetic Sound.

What sort of support do you provide people with?
We provide a workspace and an area for them to learn and experiment. We provide adaptive equipment, such as custom prosthetics—we’ve helped out two people so far with drumming prosthetics—and adaptive software like eye-tracking software or voice-control software. So if people are blind or they don’t have any use of their hands, they can actually use the voice-control parts of a digital audio workstation to control all the parameters in there.

We also utilize different MIDI instruments, such as the Arcana Strum. The strum is a custom MIDI controller for VST (virtual studio technology). It was developed as guitar VST, but you can use it for anything. It has buttons on one side and a joystick on the other, and the joystick essentially acts as your guitar pick. You can actually use the joystick to get clean guitar strum noises and tremolo noises and things like that out of a MIDI instrument. Because you can custom-make a MIDI controller any way you want. You can use video-game controllers to control VSTs. So there are a lot of things you can do there.

We also have some proprietary things. One example, I am making a secondary prosthetic right now that is for playing guitar. It essentially works the same way as the robotic drumming prosthesis. I would hold a guitar pick, and the more I flex my muscle, the tighter the prosthetic’s grip on the pick would be. So that’s what you would do if you’re trying to do really fast tremolo picking. And then the more I extend my muscle, the looser the grip would be, so you could get more of a strumming sound. That’s a generalized concept with it. It’s not quite there yet.

I also have the very first drumming process I made, which just uses basic mechanics. It has a couple leverage points, a ball bearing and a spring, and that’s what I’ve made for quite a few of our clients. The main goal with what we’re doing is to create momentum so one day, Gibson will have adaptive guitars, and other big music companies will jump on this bandwagon. They are already starting to, and we’re building a community around it.

Talk to me about the talent pool you’ve encountered since you opened your doors.
We’ve encountered a lot of people who have been sitting there for years, who were born a certain way, and they always wanted to do something musically but just gave up on it and felt like they couldn’t. It’s very nice to be able to help those people out and give them some hope that they can actually do this.

Then we’ve had people who are involved in traumatic injury—they played an instrument before and then ended up losing some ability. One of our clients is a drummer who was in a car accident and had his hand completely paralyzed from the wrist down. He played drums before this injury, and he decided to have the hand amputated because it was of no use to him, and he could get back to playing with a prosthetic hand. I built him a slightly different version of my very first drumming prosthetic. He was a very talented drummer before, but watching him get back on the kit for the first time, that was phenomenal.

We ran an article last year by a piano player who lost a finger. He felt that it led him into what was a really creative direction, where he developed a style he could never have had as a ten-fingered musician. Are you seeing that type of thing with your clients?
Speaking from personal experience, I have definitely seen that with my own playing. The drumming prosthetic I developed at Georgia Tech can play 19 beats per second, and you can create interesting timbres with that that you wouldn’t even think to do before. You can almost go new genres and a new style for certain things. And that is the goal. Why stop at giving somebody their life back? Why not kind of add this extra sense of drive and creativity?

But the biggest goal is that I don’t want people to feel helpless like I did. I had to figure it out myself, and I was lucky enough to link up with the professor from Georgia Tech. Right place, right time. But I was once in that boat of hopelessness. I want to be there for people who are in that same boat, and then completely change their mindset after they hear about us.

You mentioned the idea that one day companies like Gibson might actually start to produce adaptive instruments. Is anyone already creating instruments in that space?
No big company is making a line of products for adaptive people yet. A lot of the companies we work with are smaller companies and startups. But what I’m seeing in this industry is that accessibility has become kind of cool. I see it coming slowly but surely, and I’m hoping the pace picks up.

The post Cybernetic Sound Unlocks Disabled Musicians’ Talent appeared first on Amplitude.

So EveryBODY Can Move laws took effect in five states on January 1, and not surprisingly there have been some hiccups in the early going. We heard from one reader who was told he couldn’t get coverage for a running prosthesis under the new law because his employer (and ergo his insurance plan) were based in a different state. Other cases have gotten snagged on the distinction between state-regulated versus federally regulated health plans, or over arcane terms such as “whole-body health” and “essential health benefit” (EHB).

SEBCM advocates knew all along there would be a learning curve, as O&P clinics and insurers figure out how to integrate the reformed prosthetic insurance regulations into their day-to-day workflow. But nobody was expecting a state government to declare much of the law unenforceable.

Unfortunately, that’s what happened in Colorado, which passed its SEBCM law more than 18 months ago. Last month, the state’s Division of Insurance (DOI) drafted a bulletin stating: “Carriers offering plans on the small and individual group markets are not required to include coverage for prosthetic devices for recreational activities for plans commencing in 2025” (emphasis added). That directly contradicted the DOI’s longstanding position on Colorado’s SEBCM law, to the great confusion and consternation of the law’s backers.

Although the DOI withdrew the bulletin on Friday, it’s still not clear whether the agency considers the underlying issue to be resolved—or whether (and when) it will implement the law as written. As a result, lawmakers and amputee advocates are still unsure whether a bill that passed with overwhelming support (it cleared the house and senate by an aggregate vote of 96-1) will be allowed to deliver the fiscal and health benefits it’s designed to.

They’ll be meeting with DOI officials on Wednesday, January 29, to hammer out next steps. Under a plain reading of the law, it’s hard to see any grounds for further delay; we’ll explain why below. But if wonky details aren’t your jam, just take away this lesson from Colorado’s experience: The hard work of reform doesn’t end with the governor’s signature. Advocates in the eight states with active SEBCM laws have months or years of work ahead of them to educate patients and practitioners, keep healthcare administrators honest, and reiterate the key principles of fairness and financial sanity.

For the much larger group of advocates in states that are still working to pass SEBCM legislation, the lesson is this: Even the most popular laws can run aground on bureaucratic shoals. Sweat the details, never let down your guard, and pace yourselves accordingly.

What Colorado’s Prosthetic Insurance Reform Law Says

Colorado’s SEBCM law (numbered HB 1136) included a clause that, as far as we can tell, doesn’t appear in any of the seven other SEBCM laws. It required DOI to get confirmation from the federal government that 1136’s requirements fall within the Affordable Care Act’s definition of “essential health benefits,” or EHBs. The clause was inserted out of concern that 1136 might be interpreted as creating an extra, non-ACA benefit—a luxury the state would have to pay for.

In a letter to the feds dated December 18, 2023, DOI stated its interpretation that 1136 did not create an additional benefit and therefore didn’t trigger any cost to the state. Rather, DOI argued, “1136 simply clarifies that those prosthetic devices used for that [physical and recreational] purpose have always been covered.” DOI requested confirmation of that interpretation within 60 days.

Nearly 12 months went by with no response. Then, in early December—almost a year after the date of the letter, and just a few weeks before the law was scheduled to take effect—DOI officials informed 1136’s supporters that its interpretation had not been accepted. The federal Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had apprised DOI that 1136 does create an additional benefit, triggering onerus state costs. Accordingly, under the provisions of 1136, the agency had no other choice than to suspend full enforcement.

The decision stunned the Colorado legislators who’d supported 1136, carefully negotiated its language, and worked alongside DOI to obtain the feds’ blessing. As they sought clarification, they made multiple requests in late December and early January to see the correspondence between HHS and DOI so they could understand the feds’ reasoning and formulate an appeal. When that correspondence still hadn’t surfaced by early last week, reporters from Amplitude and a Denver TV news station reached out to the DOI seeking comment.

At which point, DOI backed off.

“Based on communications that we’ve gotten from the feds, we’re actually going to withdraw that bulletin, not finalize it, and go back and reevaluate how we approach this,” DOI spokesperson Vincent Plymell told Amplitude last Friday. A memo announcing the bulletin’s withdrawal was posted on DOI’s website yesterday.

We asked: Did HHS’s guidance to DOI change between December and now?

“That’s it,” Plymell told us. “We had one understanding of how they approach it, and we’ve since gotten communication from them that was different than that [previous] understanding. So now we’ve got to go back and reevaluate what this means.”

Did HHS change their mind, or was their first ruling simply in error?

“I don’t know whether it was in error,” Plymell said. “Our understanding was that they weren’t going to consider it as an essential health benefit. And they have since come back and said it’s on the state to make that determination. And that’s different than what we thought earlier. So now we’ve got to figure out what it all means, and where everything stands.”

What it seems to mean—and we’re not lawyers—is that 1136 takes full effect, under the plain text of the law. Subsection (14)(d)(IV) requires the DOI to implement 1136 in full under either of the following scenarios: A) the feds affirm DOI’s interpretation of 1136 re additional benefits, or B) the feds fail to respond at all. Scenario A seems to be in force: The feds left the interpretation up to the state, and the state (in its December 2023 letter) deemed 1136 to be an ACA-covered benefit that doesn’t trigger any additional state costs.

Lawmakers and advocates are meeting tomorrow with insurance commissioner Michael Conway to hit the reset button on this process. But unless DOI is considering a retreat from its 14-month-old interpretation, there doesn’t seem to be much to discuss. The bill must go into full effect under (14)(d)(IV).

We’ll update this article after we know what DOI’s intentions are.

The post Why Is Colorado Unsure About Insurance Reform? appeared first on Amplitude.

Nicole Ver Kuilen’s official title at the Amputee Coalition is “Director of Impact Campaigns.” However, a more descriptive title might be “insurance reform wrangler”—because that’s how she’ll be spending most of her time in her third straight year as national head of the So EveryBODY Can Move campaign.

SEBCM, as it’s known for short, is trying to broaden prosthetic insurance coverage for amputees all over the country, one state at a time. Years Zero through Two (2022-24) brought legislative wins in eight states overall, making hundreds of thousands of amputees newly eligible for recreational prosthetic devices through their insurer.

Bills have already been introduced in at least four states (Georgia, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maryland) in the opening days of this year’s legislative cycle, and Ver Kuilen expects as many as 20 states to file SEBCM bills in 2025. That would double last year’s total, which ran to nine states by our count.

As usual, Amplitude will be tracking the action as it unfolds in the various statehouses throughout the spring and summer. We’ll unveil our 2025 legislative tracker in the next week or so. In the meantime, here’s a preview of what Ver Kuilen is anticipating over the next 150 or so days. To find out how you can support SEBCM advocacy in your own state, visit soeverybodycanmove.org.

Coming Back for Seconds

At least five states that are expected to introduce SEBCM bills in 2025 will be doing so for the second (or third) time. Indiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Tennessee, and Florida all filed bills in 2024 and made varying degrees of progress, passing the legislation through committees or (in some cases) full chambers of the legislature but falling short of full enactment. That type of momentum often carries over in subsequent years, Ver Kuilen says. “A lot of positive things can happen from a bill simply getting introduced,” she notes. “It becomes public record and people get familiar with it, so that makes it easier to come back the next year and keep working on it.” Of the states in this category, Massachusetts and New Jersey seem likeliest to move an SEBCM law to the governor’s desk in 2025.

Right Turn

“We really want to see some success this year in red-leaning states,” Ver Kuilen says. Of the eight states that have passed SEBCM so far, seven voted Democratic in every presidential election since 2008. Arkansas is the lone red-voting state to enact SEBCM legislation to this point, but Ver Kuilen sees big opportunities to add to that total year in 2025. “I’m incredibly impressed with the team that has been created in Georgia,” she says. “If we were to get something enacted in Georgia, that would be a huge win for the movement. Same thing for Tennessee, Florida and Ohio. That’s where we really want to see success this year.”

Money Talks

One of the most persuasive arguments in favor of SEBCM has nothing to do with health equity, disability rights, or basic fairness. It boils down to this: Investing in amputees’ mobility decreases overall healthcare spending by hundreds of millions of dollars. It’s the same principal that led Medicare to expand coverage for microprocessor knees: Active amputees stay healthier for longer, and therefore require fewer costly treatments. For the third straight year, SEBCM advocates have commissioned a fiscal analysis to quantify exactly how much various states can save. Those figures helped turn skeptical legislators into enthusiastic supporters of prosthetic insurance reform in multiple states. When the most recent analysis gets published, we’ll share the findings and let you check the math.

Enlarging the Tent

“Expanding beyond O&P is one of our strategies for 2025,” Ver Kuilen says. The SEBCM alliance (which currently includes the Amputee Coalition and three O&P professional associations) plans to solicit more active support from major employers, public health experts, and other allies who share the goal of empowering patients and reducing costs. “We’re also adding a community seat to our steering committee,” adds Ver Kuilen, “and that seat will be for a person who’s living with limb loss or limb difference. We’re also creating a vision council, which ties into that.” If you’re interested in joining SEBCM’s leadership team, keep an eye on our newsletter and socials—Amplitude will share information on how to apply as soon as it’s available.

Get In on the Action

“We always need amputees to show up and share their narrative with lawmakers,” Ver Kuilen says. “We’re changing our messaging a little bit in red-leaning states to focus more on the fiscal impact, but we are still trying to lead with a message of independence, fairness, and basic human dignity. When advocates tell their stories in such a powerful way, it really showcases how this legislation impacts individuals’ lives.” That sort of storytelling might make the difference between success and failure in states such as Georgia, Ohio, and Tennessee. “Those would be big wins,” says ver Kuilen. “That’s where we want to double down in our resources and really support those states.”

To find out how you can help SEBCM pass in your state, visit soeverybodycanmove.org.

The post A Pivotal Year for Prosthetic Insurance Reform appeared first on Amplitude.

If you’ve ever missed a doctor’s appointment because you couldn’t find a ride to the clinic, you understand the relationship between public transit and health outcomes. A large body of research has established that communities which lack easy access to public transit are less healthy, in the aggregate, than communities with extensive, affordable transit networks.

Various studies have shown that transit access can reduce rates of heart disease, diabetes, obesity, vascular diseases, and other conditions associated with limb loss. Based on that evidence, it’s logical to infer that transit access affects the rate of limb loss as well. But there was never any direct data to support that inference until last month—and, in a mild surprise, the findings are less definitive than we might expect.

The study appeared in BMJ Open Diabetes Research and was conducted by researchers affiliated with Emory University. They examined the correlation between public transit and a specific type of limb loss, ie amputations caused by diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs), and they limited their study to a single state (Georgia) over a four-year period (2016-19). Ergo the conclusions are highly contingent and not readily generalizable. But they’re still important, insofar as this is apparently the first rigorous look at the associations between transportation access and DFU outcomes in the United States.

The authors focused on Georgia for reasons beyond simple proximity (Emory is located in Atlanta). Georgia offers a good study context because it has a high prevalence of diabetes, above-average rates of socioeconomic distress (low income, low education), and large racial and ethnic minority populations. All these demographic markers correlate with high DFU incidence, high amputation rates, and heavy reliance on public transit. The authors hypothesized that “increased access to healthcare through public transportation measures at the ZIP code level is associated with a decrease in DFU-related amputation rates.”

Makes sense so far, right? During the four-year study period, Georgia logged 1.1 million DFU cases, 14,782 minor amputations (ie toes and partial feet), and 6,606 major amputations (limb loss at the ankle or higher). The researchers plotted all those incidents by zip code, then wove in data regarding the proximity of transit stops, proximity of primary healthcare facilities, prevalence of automobile ownership, per-capita public transit expenditures, and a handful of other markers.

After crunching all those numbers, the authors determined that:

• Higher rates of public transit commuting—ie, higher reliance on public transit—were associated with higher amputation rates, particularly in zip codes with high rates of poverty. However, the inverse effect was observed in affluent zip codes with high proportions of household car ownership, which suggests that when riders choose public transit as an option rather than a necessity, they may derive limb-preserving health benefits from the higher activity levels (eg, walking to/from transit stops) involved in bus/train ridership.
• Heavier investment in public transportation was associated with lower amputation rates. Here, too, the correlation was affected by socioeconomic factors: In the lowest-income zip codes, amputation rates were not affected by gross public transit expenditures.
• Finally, distance to transit stop was associated with increased amputation risk in low-income zip codes.

“Transportation is clearly a significant barrier to care for chronic diseases, including DFU, particularly for low-income populations,” the authors conclude. “Potential solutions to this problem include NEMT [non-emergency medical transportation], telemedicine, and mobile care….Future studies could investigate the impact of transportation assistance in conjunction with telemedicine and/or mobile clinics for DFU care.”

The full study, titled “Spatial associations between measures of public transportation and diabetic foot ulcer outcomes in the state of Georgia,” is available online at BMJ Open Diabetes Research & Care.

The post Can Public Transit Reduce Amputation Rates? appeared first on Amplitude.

There wasn’t a large volume of new technology for amputees on display at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, which wrapped up over the weekend in Las Vegas. But whatever CES 2025 lacked in quantity, it made up for in quality: A groundbreaking prosthetic leg walked away with one of the show’s biggest awards.

That would be the Bio Leg, manufactured by a tiny Japanese startup called BionicM. Competing against the biggest corporate players in global tech, BionicM received a prestigious “Best of Innovation” Award for its device, the first commercially available prosthesis that combines motor-powered joints with AI-assisted gait management.

“Ninety-nine percent of current prostheses are passive, which means there’s no power,” said Bio Leg’s inventor, Sun Xiaojun, during a presentation at CES. “It’s like they have bone and joint without muscle.” Bio Leg corrects that deficit via an onboard motor which reduces effort in walking, sit-to-stand maneuvers, and other routine aspects of mobility. AI sensors constantly monitor the leg’s momentum, acceleration, direction, and orientation in space, enabling wearers to walk with a very natural gait and navigate stairs, inclines, and other irregular surfaces with ease.

“[The Bio Leg] can bring high mobility, help patients improve their quality of life, and reduce medical cost over the lifetime,” said Xiaojun, who is himself an above-knee amputee.

The Bio Leg received L-code approval and began shipping to US consumers last summer, winning a race with its closest competitor—the Ottobock-backed Utah Bionic Leg—to reach the American marketplace. BionicM has been making the O&P trade-show rounds ever since, working to grab market share while Ottobock’s entry wends it way through the final stages of insurance approval. During CES 2025, the company announced the establishment of a Virginia-based subsidiary, BioncM USA, to streamline distribution and goose sales efforts.

The Bio Leg costs $51,000 to the patient/insurer, $30,000 to the O&P clinic. You can get more info about BionicM’s reception at CES via Charbax and DRM News.

Here are three other products that were on display at CES 2025 and hold of interest for the limb-loss community:

Syla bionic knee

Syla is based in war-torn Ukraine — which, like most of the world, lacks the infrastructure to support a high quality of life for amputees. The war has further taxed Ukraine’s limited resources by adding tens of thousands of new amputees to the population. But the growing urgency of the problem has also unlocked new sources of investment in companies like Syla, which has been around since 2015, and created a burst of progress. Syla’s MPK knee is lightweight (1.5 pounds), durable, AI-equipped, aesthetically pleasing, and relatively affordable. It’s still a couple of years away from reaching European consumers, and even further from entering the US market. Info at syla.pro.

Luaz Care wheelchair-accessible EV

Another Ukrainian company, Luaz, showcased an electric vehicle that can be operated directly from a wheelchair. Instead of transferring from their assistive device to a regular car seat, drivers (and riders) roll their chair right into the automobile. The accessible EV has a range of up to 300 km (180 miles) and costs less then $15,000. Luaz has started mass producing the vehicle, but we couldn’t find any information about the company’s plans for selling the product in the United States. Info at luazcare.com.

OYMotion OHand

This bionic device first appeared at CES back in 2018, when it was still in the prototype stage. It has now achieved commercial completion, although it doesn’t seem to be available in the United States yet. The OHand features independent finger control, 18 preprogrammed grips, and a gesture training platform to help users master the device. The associated smart app allows users to configure original grips. Details at oymotion.com/en/product31.

The post Best Technology for Amputees at CES 2025 appeared first on Amplitude.

Some would argue that artificial intelligence has been improving amputees’ lives since the 1960s, with the introduction of pattern recognition in myoelectric arms. At the very latest, AI-driven prosthetic technology has been around since the 1990s, when the C-Leg debuted. And almost all would agree that there’s enormous potential for future growth in this realm (viz. “The Midas Touch” in our new print edition).

But the emergence of ChatGPT and other large-language models (LLMs) has vastly broadened the potential for amputee-serving AI applications. In addition to making prosthetic limbs more lifelike than ever, AI is now driving innovation in socket design, prosthesis alignment, adaptive fitness, caregiving, and beyond.

We surveyed the literature to get a sense of where and how researchers are employing AI to enhance (and potentially transform) limb care. Not all of these applications are in clinical use yet, and some may never get there. But one way or the other, the algorithms are on the march and there’s no stopping them. Here’s how AI might impact your life before long.

Supporting caregivers: Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh developed a responsive knowledge base called CaLM (Caregiver Language Model). The prototype, aimed at caregivers of patients with Alzheimers and related forms of dementia, allows users to get accurate, real-time information to answer their questions and ease their anxieties. “The intricate care requirements associated with [cognitive and behavioral diseases] present a complex challenge that caregivers must navigate, often without formal training,” the authors write. “Given the progressive nature of these conditions, caregivers are in need of long-term support and strategies, underlining the importance of a dedicated resource like the CaLM….The model can provide substantial support to a vast community of caregivers who are frequently underserved when it comes to specialized care resources.” The researchers hope to expand on this pilot project to develop parallel tools for other conditions requiring ongoing care, including limb loss. Read the full paper at JMIR Formative Research.

Streamlining socket fabrication: Members of an international collective called the Residual Limb Shape Capture Group introduced a novel approach using AI to develop digital socket templates based on a prosthetist’s previous work in traditional (plaster-based) fabrication. Using 3D scans, the AI essentially learns a given prosthetist’s methods for manual fabrication, then translates that knowledge into templates for new limb models. “The AI-generated sockets closely matched those made by hand, with only small differences,” the authors conclude. “This new process has the potential to save time and make socket fitting more consistent, helping individuals with amputations receive faster and more accurate prosthetic care.” Here’s the full paper at Prosthesis.

Managing exercise: A pair of experts in diabetes management and rehabilitation found the subscription-only version of ChatGPT to be a reliable source of information about exercise for Type 2 diabetes patients. They asked ChatGPT for the best clinical recommendations about exercise types, frequency, intensity, duration, etc., along with questions related to nutrition, weight maintenance, comorbidities (such as kidney disease), and other aspects of fitness. “ChatGPT provided relatively valid, safe and useful information about exercise for type 2 diabetes,” the authors concluded, but they added a couple of caveats: Patients should only use ChatGPT in conjunction with medical guidance from a human clinician, not as a primary source of information; and the finding doesn’t apply to the free version of ChatGPT (currently v4o). Read the full paper at BMJ Health & Care Informatics.

Standardizing prosthesis alignment: After a systematic literature review, a team of biomechanics experts concluded that AI algorithms and alignment tools hold tremendous potential to enhance accuracy and reduce human error in transtibial prosthesis alignment. “Current practices for transtibial prosthesis alignment lack standardization, leading to various health complications,” the authors assert. “The absence of automated approaches for prosthesis alignment hinders the accuracy and efficiency of the alignment process.” The need is particularly acute in developing nations where the availability of clinical expertise falls far short of the demand. The full paper is paywalled, but you can read the abstract and introduction at Artificial Intelligence in Medicine.

Determining amputation level: This one scares us a little….okay, a lot. Orthopedists at the Ege University School of Medicine in Izmir, Turkey, submitted clinical photographs of diabetic foot ulcers to ChatGPT and asked it to recommend the optimal amputation level. In 50 out of 60 cases, the bot’s recommendation was identical to the amputation the human clinicians actually performed. In the remaining 10 cases, ChatGPT prescribed a more proximal (ie, higher) amputation than the flesh-n-blood docs. “Relying solely on clinical photographs,” the paper concluded, “ChatGPT-4.0 demonstrates decisions that are largely consistent with those of an experienced team in determining the optimal level of amputation for DFUs.” Personally, we’re a long way from trusting ChatGPT to dictate a surgical procedure; we don’t even trust it to write email for us. But read the abstract at the International Wound Journal and judge for yourself (full paper is paywalled).

Optimizing MPK leg controllers: Here’s where things start to get meta. Levi Hargrove and colleagues at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab are working on a process in which AI-generated gait patterns are used to improve the performance of a bionic leg’s mid-level controller—which is itself an AI-equipped unit. In other words, it’s an AI trainer for an AI device. Crazy, right? The core benefit of such a system would be to eliminate the need to gather training data from individual volunteers, which would a) make the training of prosthetic leg controllers more efficient and more effective, and b) lower R&D costs and (in theory, anyway) accelerate the pace of innovation. The system’s still in development and hasn’t been tested with actual prosthesis users yet, but it doesn’t pay to bet against Hargrove. Full study at the Journal of Neuroengineering and Rehabilitation.

Assessing limb-loss risk in PAD patients: A Mayo Clinic team trained AI to analyze Doppler waveforms in patients with peripheral artery disease and accurately assess the risk of limb loss. In a study encompassing more than 2,000 patients over a five-year period, the AI tool accurately predicted adverse outcomes including death, major cardiac events, and limb loss. “The AI tool described in this article has several unique advantages whereby both the 1‐ and 5‐year risk for [limb loss] can be estimated well before chronic limb‐threatening ischemia occurs, solely on the basis of deep neural assessment of a posterior tibial arterial waveform Doppler signal,” the authors explain. By combining AI analysis with an easy‐to‐perform, noninvasive Doppler test, clinicians can better identify at-risk patients before their symptoms become acute and intervene early enough to prevent some amputations. Read it all at the Journal of the American Heart Association.

Promoting participation in parasports: A Brazilian bioscientist is exploring AI’s potential to help people with disabilities overcome barriers to participation in physical fitness activity. “Personal and environmental obstacles linked to disability hinder access to venues and services,” he observes. Many amputees are deterred from exercise by the logistical complexities of acquiring equipment, traveling to fitness facilities, and receiving informed coaching. Once they’ve solved those problems, amputees must still overcome factors such as pain, stamina, and discomfort about exercising in public settings. “AI has now emerged as a promising tool to overcome these barriers, offering innovative and personalized solutions to meet the individual needs of those who use it,” the paper concludes. It’s paywalled at the Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies.

The post Eight New Ways AI Is Shaping the Future of Amputee Care appeared first on Amplitude.

In most years, Amplitude’s most heavily trafficked pages are dominated by two subjects: relationships and entertainment. Both of those themes are well represented among 2024’s ten best-read articles. In fact, one movie-related article ascended to the top 10 despite not being published until November 1, about 55 days ago. Its view count whizzed past dozens of stories that have been accumulating traffic four or five times as long.

However, a couple of new topics rose to the very top of the list in 2024, fueled in part by a major global event. That burst of readership helped spur Amplitude’s online traffic to new heights yet again: For the sixth straight year, we established new records for overall users, pageviews, Google search hits, and newsletter clicks. Thanks to everyone for helping Amplitude stay on a growth path.

We won’t be publishing on New Year’s Day, so the first newsletter of 2025 will hit your inbox on January 8. See you then.

10 Most-Read Amplitude Articles of 2024

10. Prototype Smart Socket Shows Promise
Researchers at the University of Washington published results of an early trial involving a smart socket that can detect pressure changes in real time and automatically adjust the fit in response to changes in leg volume. Published June 18 / digital only

9. Why Do Women Get Less Effective Limb Care?
A pair of studies showed that women a) wait 33 percent longer than men to receive their first prosthesis, and b) are less satisfied with their prosthesis on both function and aesthetics. Published April 24 / digital only

8. Losing a Limb Helped Me Find My Way to Love
After losing his right leg above the knee, former Bachelorette contestant Cam Ayala became much better at accepting and loving himself—and that made him better able to find and receive love from others. Published in the January/February print edition.

7. Unstoppable Gets the Green Light
The biopic of one-legged wrestler Anthony Robles attracted one of the world’s most bankable actors, a supporting cast of award-winning performers, an Oscar-nominated director, and one of the film industry’s buzziest production companies. Published in the November/December print edition.

6. How Many Amputees Are There? More Than You Think.
The Amputee Coalition commissioned the first study in 15 years to gauge the size and composition of the US limb-loss population, and it found that previous estimates were far too low. Published February 21 / digital only.

5. Is Dateability the Best Amputee Dating App Ever?
Tired of weeding through clueless nondisabled matches on standard dating apps, a single woman with a disability launched a dating platform exclusively for people with disabilities—and it was an instant success. Published February 14 / digital only.

4. Do Running Blades Give Amputee Athletes an Unfair Advantage?
People have been arguing about this ever since Oscar Pistorius began racing nondisabled sprinters 20 years ago. Here’s what the science says. Published April 15 / digital only.

3. Why Do Prosthetics Cost So Much?
The average new family sedan retails for about $30,000, but the average microprocessor leg costs about twice that amount. What cost drivers make the prosthesis so expensive? Published in the March / April print edition.

2. Guide to the 2024 Paralympic Games
In advance of the 2024 Summer Paralympics, we previewed which US amputees were most likely to compete for medals. A lot of our predictions turned out to be right on the money. Published in the July / August print edition.

1. Paralympic Parables: Words of Wisdom From US Paralympians
Elite amputee athletes manage the same limb-care issues you do, fight the same healthcare battles, deal with the same cultural stereotypes, and endure the same emotional ups and downs. Here’s how they deal with it. Published in the July / August print edition.

The post Amplitude’s Best-read Articles of 2024 appeared first on Amplitude.

This is the fifth year we’ve published this annual list, and all the usual disclaimers apply. In case you’ve forgotten: We don’t mean to suggest that these are the five biggest difference makers in Limb Loss Land. They’re just a representative sampling of the innumerable amputees who made invaluable impacts this year in your families, communities, and beyond. It’s just not possible to recognize everyone who deserves it.

To see the lists from 2020 through 2023, scroll down to the bottom. Here’s our list for 2024.

Nicole Ver Kuilen

In her second year at the helm of the So Every BODY Can Move Campaign, ver Kuilen wrangled prosthetic insurance reform bills to passage in three more states (Minnesota, Maryland, and New Hampshire), bringing the national total to eight. Behind the scenes, she organized limb-loss advocates in another dozen or two states, equipping them for success with trainings, talking points, and a robust grassroots organizing kit. Most impressive, ver Kuilen helped knit activists from all over the country into a unified movement with a true sense of solidarity. She’ll keep chasing legislative wins in 2025 and beyond from her new perch at the Amputee Coalition. We’ll keep tracking the various bills’ journeys through committees and floor votes when lawmakers reconvene in January.

Jakob Kepka

A Canadian citizen and US Marine Corps veteran of Polish ancestry, Kepka worked his butt off this year on behalf of Ukrainian war amputees. He pedaled several hundred miles on one leg (he’s been an AK amputee since 2016) from Krakow to Kyiv, stopping at cities and towns along the way to lift spirits, inspire hope, and raise funds for wounded veterans. Kepka’s four-week HopeRaising Expedition made international headlines, while bringing him into direct contact with hundreds of amputees, prosthetists, family members, and others in Ukraine’s limb-loss support network. “Recovery from limb loss is 10 percent physical, 90 percent mental,” Kepka told Amplitude. “If you decide you’re going to do something, you do it. Other people might think your goals are illogical or irrational, but they’re your goals.”

Xiaojun Sun

Sun’s pioneering prosthesis, the Bio Leg, gained insurance coding approval in 2024, becoming the first fully integrated, power-driven, AI-assisted prosthetic leg to reach the US market. Manufactured by Tokyo-based BionicM, the Bio Leg leapfrogged the Ottobock-backed Utah Bionic Leg, which at this time last year was widely viewed as the industry leader in this groundbreaking category. An AK amputee since surviving childhood cancer, Sun didn’t own a prosthesis until he reached graduate school, at which point he started working on the Bio Leg. He spent most of 2024 making the rounds at O&P trade shows and educational conferences, capping off the year with a prestigious Innovation Award from CES.

Ezra Frech

Start with two Paralympic gold medals, including an upset victory in the 100 meters (T63). Add a new world record in the high jump. Toss in a track scholarship to the University of Southern California, the first ever awarded to an above-knee amputee by an NCAA Division 1 school. Those achievements alone might be enough to get Frech onto this list. But he made his greatest impact away from competition, as a high-profile ambassador for adaptive sports and disability rights. “I want to use the platform I’ve built through track and field to create lasting change for the disabled community,” he said in a USC news release. Frech’s Angel City Sports creates opportunities for disabled athletes to participate in sports year-round, and he’s making inroads in the fashion, entertainment, and media realms too.

Cairn Atkinson

We always knew Atkinson (better known as Flamingo Florence, her Instagram / pinup incarnation) touched a lot of lives. But we didn’t realize the extent or depth of her impact until this spring, when she died after a recurrence of cancer. Memories and tributes came pouring in from all over the country, as people (both with and without disabilities) described how Atkinson had befriended, encouraged, enlightened, or otherwise lifted them up. Her family still has medical bills to pay off; you can make a donation at GoFundMe.

Difference Makers From Previous Years

Advocacy

Five Amputees Who Made a Difference in 2024

We don’t mean to suggest that these are the five biggest difference makers in Limb Loss Land. They’re just a ...

Read More

Advocacy

5 Amputees Who Made a Difference in 2023

We say the same thing every year, but it bears repeating: Every amputee makes a difference. So please consider the ...

Read More

Amputee News

Five Amputees Who Made a Difference in 2022

It would be impossible to recognize everyone who made a difference in the limb loss community in 2022, so we’re ...

Read More

Amputee News

Five Amputees Who Made a Difference in 2021

Lots of amputees made a big impact in 2021, but these five went above and beyond in making a positive ...

Read More

Advocacy

Five Amputees Who Made a Difference in 2020

Only five? Thousands of amputees went above and beyond in 2020, but we’ve settled on a handful of figures whose ...

Read More

The post Five Amputees Who Made a Difference in 2024 appeared first on Amplitude.

British mountaineer Hari Budha Magar received his MBE medal last week at Windsor Castle, in recognition of his services to disability awareness—he summited Everest in 2023, becoming the first bilateral above-knee amputee to do so. In case you don’t know (I didn’t), MBE stands for “Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire” and confers something akin to a JV knighthood/damehood upon the honoree. If it sounds like we’re belittling the honor, we don’t mean to—on the contrary, it’s a very high tribute reserved for people of exceptional achievement.

MBEs are an elite group; amputee MBEs, even more so. Magar’s honor got us wondering just how rare it is for a person with limb difference to receive such an honor. Google led us to a fair number of recent examples, and the list itself is telling—heavy on Paralympic athletes (especially in the last 10 years, since London hosted the Games and the Invictus Games bega) and wounded warriors who served in this century’s Iraq/Afghanistan wars. We also turned up a few people with limb loss/difference who earned the loftier CBE, or “Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.” And our list includes two nondisabled individuals who were honored for their pioneering work in accessible bioprosthetics.

Herewith, in the order they appeared in our search results, are some of the best-known members of Britain’s amputee royal family.

Mark Ormrod: Per his website, “Mark Ormrod was a ‘gravel belly’, a ‘bootneck’ marine who loved being in the heart of the action.” An IED blast tore off his right arm and both legs during a tour of duty in Afghanistan. Ormrod came back to establish a nonprofit serving veterans with life-altering injuries (including PTSD), write a bestselling book, and win a bunch of Invictus medals. Info at markormrod.com and on Insta at @markormrod.

Cor Hutton: Sepsis nearly cost Hutton her life in 2013. After surviving as a quadruple amputee, she established a charity called Finding Your Feet to help amputees and sepsis survivors adapt and reclaim their quality of life. The organization has raised more than a million pounds to support thousands of individuals. In addition, Hutton has brought tremendous visibility to sepsis and limb loss as a public speaker, author, and advocate. More at findingyourfeet.net/cor-hutton and @fyf_charity.

Richard Whitehead: In 2004, Whitehead (a congenital BBKA) got a wild hair to sign up for the NYC Marathon, despite owning no running prostheses and never having completed any sort of long-distance race. Two weeks before the event, Össur set him up with a pair of Cheetah blades, enabling Whitehead to complete the first of 80some career marathons (and counting). He ran a personal best 2:41 two months ago in the Chicago Marathon; last month, Whitehead was inducted into the England Athletes Hall of Fame. “I believe strongly in the power of sport as a great unifier and leveller,” he notes at his website. He competes “to encourage disabled and able bodied people to have greater belief in themselves, to challenge themselves to live a fulfilling life and reach new goals.” Info at richardwhiteheadmbe.com and @richard_whitehead_mbe.

Samantha Payne and Joel Gibbard: These nondisabled Brits were recognized in 2020 for co-founding Open Bionics, whose 3D-printed prosthetic arms established a new, highly affordable price point in the market for medically approved bionic devices. The company’s signature product, the Hero Arm, was initially designed for kids and adolescents but has since built a loyal following among adult amputees (including at least one professional Santa Claus). More info at openbionics.com and @openbioinics.

Alice Tai: She began her Paralympic swimming career in 2016, competing with congenital limb difference, then moved into the amputee classifications for the 2024 Games after electing to remove her right leg below the knee. The amputation renewed Tai’s determination to destigmatize disability as a model, advocate, public speaker. She’s still a pretty good swimmer, too, with five medals (two gold) in Paris. Follow at @alice_tai.

Ray Edwards: Believed to be the UK’s longest-surviving quadruple amputee, Edwards lost his limbs at age 32 due to sepsis and lived another 37 years, passing away this March. He founded multiple organizations to support people with limb loss and other disabilities over the years, including Limbcare, now one of the world’s largest and most impactful charities for people with limb loss/difference. Visit ray-inspires.org for more info about Edwards, or limbcare.org to learn about his charity.

Andy Reid: After surviving an IED blast as a triple amputee, Reid went on to become one of the nation’s most prominent speakers and mental-health advocates. His Standing Tall Foundation serves all communities (not just people with disabilities) with counseling, education, addiction recovery support, youth development programs, and other initiatives to promote well-being. Reid is also a prolific fundraiser for veterans’ causes. Info at standingtallfoundation.org.uk and at @andyreid2506.

The post How Many Amputees Have Received an MBE? appeared first on Amplitude.

If you haven’t finished your holiday shopping yet, is it too early to panic? We think not. If you’re not panicked at this point, it’s time to start.

Luckily for you, we’re here to help with our annual list of gift ideas for yourself or your favorite amputee. It’s the usual mashup of merch that the recipient can wear, eat, read, work out with, hang on the wall, or immediately ship back to the store (as the case may be). From the practical to the whimsical, here are our suggestions. If you don’t see the perfect item here, scroll on to the bottom for more ideas from previous years’ lists.

Joe and Bella Adaptive Apparel

This four-year-old company has grown rapidly into a specialized brand of stylish, functional clothing for older adults. Its signature product, CareZip pants, is perfect for anyone who relies on a prosthesis or wheelchair for mobility, while its magnetic button-down shirts and blouses are ideal for people with upper-limb differences. Shop at joeandbella.com.

Ancheer Under-desk Elliptical Trainer

Here’s a perfect gift for anyone who’s not in top physical shape and wants to build momentum toward improved fitness. Specifically designed for seniors and/or people who are rehabbing from surgery or injury, it facilities low-impact strength training and promotes circulatory/cardio health. You can use it at home while seated. Shop at ancheersport.com.

NeoTrek Footwear

Created by partial-foot amputee Joe Sherbanee, this brand-new company produces customizable shoes and socks to fit anyone with a nonconforming foot shape. Products are engineered for stability to minimize fall risk, pressure distribution to prevent foot-ulcer formation, and breathability to deter infection. Shop at neotrekfootwear.com.

Amplitude print subscription

You didn’t think we’d put this all the way at the end, did you? A steal at just $15/year for six issues. Here’s the link. Moving on . . . .

Knitsy Bitsy Blankets Residual Limb Warmers and Socks

We listed Knitsy Bitsy last year, and we got so much positive feedback we’re giving them an encore plug. These items are individually hand-sewn; no two are alike, and proprietor Diane Gorsline will cheerfully knit to fit if you send the specs on limb length and circumference. Socks in NFL team colors are also available on request; the Saints, Cowboys, and Bears are all currently in stock, although we don’t imagine the demand for any of those teams is high in 2024. Shop at etsy.com.

Walk Easy Collapsible Travel Crutches

Know any globe-trotting amputees with overstuffed carry-ons? These forearm supports fold into a 20-inch, luggage-friendly package. At full height they’re suitable for anyone between five and six feet tall, with adjustable grips to size them to your specific frame. They’re sold as a pair, but you can request an individual crutch for half-price. Shop at walkeasy.com. (For a higher-end version, try Ossenberg’s folding crutches—h/t Josh Sundquist.)

Courtney Gilmour’s Wonder Woman

The Canadian comedienne’s debut album, Let Me Hold Your Baby, won a Juno Award last year for best comedy album. The new disc was taped in Toronto in August and covers the theme of dealing with other people’s expectations for her as a person with bilateral upper-limb difference. Not for kids/teens, and definitely NSFW. Buy at courtneygilmour.com.

Boho Balance Board

For folks with moderate to advance physical fitness, balance boards offer terrific exercise for core muscles, reflexes, and (duh) balance. We heard about the Boho brand from Bjoern Eser, who blogs and podcasts at the Active Amputee—he published his own great list of gift ideas last week. Find a Boho board at boho-boards.de/en.

Rx Mono Rope

Billed as the first-ever jump rope designed specifically for one-armed individuals, this adjustable, portable device is great for maintaining fitness at home, at the gym, or on the go. We found it at Equip Products, which offers a broad range of adaptive workout gear for people with both upper- and lower-limb disabilities. You can also buy direct from the manufacturer at rxsmartgear.com.

Amputee-branded Frisbee Golf Discs

If you need a random one-off gift for someone, we call your attention to this set of four competition-grade discs from the 2nd Amputee Disc Golf Classic (held earlier this year) and the 2014 Legapalooza. Both events raised funds for the large and active Dallas Amputee Network. The discs are suitable for playing golf or can be used as oversized coasters for a punch-bowl-sized cocktail. Buy at Etsy.

New Books

See our recent list of 2024 books by and for amputees; eight titles to choose from.

More Gift Ideas from Amplitude

Bionic Santa Shares His Secrets

“Santa Claus isn’t known for having a prosthetic arm,” says Mike Tindall. So things can get a little awkward when ...

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How I Became an Amputee Punk

When Hugh Boyle was insulted as "a one-legged punk," he laughed off the taunt and used it as inspiration for ...

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The Best Etsy Shop for Amputees

What holiday gift can you buy for the amputee who’s impossible to shop for? Stephan Boos's emporium of vintage prosthetics ...

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Best Holiday Gifts for Amputees in 2023

Our annual holiday gift-giving checklist for amputees is as random as ever. You’ll find plenty of stuff for your wardrobe, ...

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Best Gifts for Amputees to Celebrate Limb Loss/Limb Difference Awareness Month

Raising awareness is hard work. So treat yourself to one of these cool amputee gifts while you share your story ...

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Best New Technology for Amputees at CES 2023

The best technology for amputees at CES 2023 ranged from exoskeletons to adaptive cosmetics, home health technology, fitness gear, hygiene ...

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Gamut Seal of Approval Brings Trust Factor to Adaptive Fashion

The Gamut Seal of Approval holds manufacturers to rigorous standards for inclusiveness. This year, adidas will introduce the first product ...

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More Holiday Gifts for Amputees in 2022

Still looking for the perfect gift for the amputee on your shopping list? Not to worry. Here’s a dozen and ...

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Best Holiday Gifts for Amputees in 2022

Gift-giving season already? As usual, we’re not prepared. Here are some gift ideas for amputees, offered by trusted friends and colleagues ...

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Gifts for Amputees During Limb Loss/Difference Awareness Month 2022

Sharing your amputee story is a gift to those who've never experienced disability. But don't forget to give something to ...

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The post Top Holiday Gifts for Amputees in 2024 appeared first on Amplitude.

“Santa Claus isn’t known for having a prosthetic arm,” says Mike Tindall. So things can get a little awkward when Tindall’s portraying St. Nick at a mall, hotel, corporate event, or civic celebration, and a darling tyke innocently asks why Santa’s hand is glowing and making mechanical sounds.

“What I tell them is that I’m doing a test on Iron Man’s new suit,” says Tindall, who lost his lower left arm in 1995. “I tell them Iron Man is looking for feedback on how well it works. And the light on the hand—that’s a tracking device, so Mrs. Claus can always tell where I’m at.”

These fictions are excusable in service of the season’s larger fiction, ie that the jolly toymaker at the North Pole really exists. And they allow Tindall to share the gifts that matter most to kids around holiday time—kind attention, personal warmth, and the feeling that they’re just a little bit special.

He’s being doing that in Santa garb for about 15 years, roughly since the time his beard began to turn white. He debuted at a holiday party for his wife’s employer, a neurology clinic called Semmes Murphey. “Her boss asked me if I would entertain as Santa Claus, and I jokingly said: ‘If you pay for half the suit, I’ll be your Santa for free,'” Tindall recalls. The boss ponied up, and Tindall stepped into the role and never looked back. He now plays the part dozens of times a year, mostly (but not exclusively) in and around his home in metropolitan Memphis.

When he started out, Tindall wore a body-powered prosthesis under his Santa robe, with a white glove over the hand, and kids were never the wiser. Then he switched to a Touch Bionics hand. “It had that little blue light on it, and that would shine right through my glove,” he explains. “Kids started to notice it blinking on and off, and they’d ask about it. So off the top of my head one day, I said, ‘Well that’s my Santa Tracker. That’s how Mrs. Claus keeps tabs on where I am and makes sure I don’t get lost.'”

This year he switched to a Hero Arm by Open Bionics.

“I started following them when they got started years ago, because of what they were doing for kids,” Tindall says. “They originally started out working exclusively for children who’d had amputations or were born without a limb. They had a great story; they were really helping people. And the other thing I noticed is that it’s very simple to use. Don’t get me wrong, you still have to learn how to operate it. But it’s at a level where kids can understand it. Some of the other devices I’ve used would be real hard for a kid to learn and adjust to. They were hard for me to adjust to.”

Perhaps the toughest thing about migrating to the Hero Arm was getting the VA to pay for it. When Tindall, a Navy veteran, first approached his local VA clinic to inquire about the device, he was told Open Bionics wasn’t an approved vendor. “I’ve had some issues over the years with the VA approving my prosthetics for payment, so I have learned how to push the buttons,” he laughs. “When I call my VA now, they move a little faster.” It required a trip to a VA regional facility in Austin, Texas, but Tindall got fitted for the device earlier this year, becoming one of the first—maybe even the first—amputees to get a Hero Arm through the VA.

“I got the red one because it matches the suit,” he says. “The only thing I don’t have is the Iron Man logo on it. Disney only allows them to use the logo for kids under 14. I’m a little older than 14.”

Tindall, who lost his limb in a woodworking accident, usually wears a body-powered hook prosthesis for his daily routine. “The hook works best for anything that requires any kind of dexterity,” he says. “I went back to work as an airplane mechanic after this happened. I still work on my own cars. I still do woodworking. I’m a big fisherman. I play golf, using the golf attachments.”

Although he’s retired, Tindall isn’t planning to stop handing out smiles and Ho-Ho-Hos any time soon.

“Kids are easier to deal with than adults when it comes to amputation,” he says. “They’re not scared to ask the questions. When you get to be my age, you have to keep your mind busy. This new technology is totally fascinating. It still has some little quirks to work out, but this one works better for me than my previous hands. Things are moving in the right direction.”

The post Bionic Santa Shares His Secrets appeared first on Amplitude.

The United States isn’t the only country that incurs thousands of avoidable amputations due to inconsistent, inaccessible diabetes care. It’s a worldwide problem. And a new program from the Tuscany region of Italy may offer a solution.

The Diabetic Foot Valley project was launched in 2022 to establish new standards for coordinated, holistic management for people with diabetic foot syndrome. The initiative unites healthcare providers, policymakers, and researchers under a unified framework. The DFV is described as a “bottom-up” model, meaning it begins with clinical evidence from the front lines of diabetes care and flows upward to the administrative, regulatory, and policy levels. By fostering cooperation across geographic and scientific boundaries, the project hopes to cultivate a seamless network of diabetic foot clinics and centers of excellence.

How the Diabetic Foot Valley works

The DFV is founded on a preventive-care approach. The project aims to establish evidence-based protocols for early diagnosis, risk assessment, and multidisciplinary treatment. Patients benefit from team-based care that begins with a healthy day-to-day routine and includes routine monitoring to detect and address complications before they become serious.

The project’s founder, endocrinologist Alberto Piaggesi, devised the Diabetic Foot Valley to counteract the sharp disparity’s in diabetes treatment in Tuscany. The region’s 15 diabetes clinics varied sharply in their approaches to foot care, with divergent technologies, health charts, treatment standards, and approaches to followup care. Over a period of months, regional clinicians hammered out uniform standards to ensure that patients at all 15 clinics had access to equivalent care.

The European Wound Management Association immediately latched onto the Diabetic Foot Valley as a model that could be scaled up to improve diabetes care and reduce amputations at the national and international levels. And the American Limb Preservation Society (ALPS) has also taken notice: At its 24th annual Diabetic Foot Conference last week, it named Piagessi the winner of the Edward James Olmos Award for Advocacy and Education in Limb Preservation.

Next Steps for the Diabetic Foot Valley

The DFV project has begun to establish a regional database that will serve as a centralized repository for outcomes data. All regional clinics will share health records to the database, giving researchers a crystal-clear picture of what’s working and what isn’t. The project will be closely watched not only by medical experts but also by healthcare economists, who are under pressure to reduce the financial burden imposed by an epidemic of avoidable amputations.

Plans are already underway to migrate the DFV model from Tuscany (where it will roll out over the next two to four years) to regions elsewhere in Europe. The EWMA has begun courting partnership from private-sector drug companies and medical device manufacturers. And leaders in other complex areas of medicine (such as cancer care and heart care) are paying close attention. If the Diabetic Foot Valley succeeds, it could serve as a template for improving outcomes in other diseases.

Learn more about the DFV in the Integrated Care Journal and the Journal of Wound Management.

The post What Is the Diabetic Foot Valley? appeared first on Amplitude.

by Melissa Bean Sterzick

In a perfect world, amputees’ unaffected lower limbs would be exempt from all injury and inconvenience. There would be no bruises, sprains, strains, breaks, or blisters to intact legs. Those limbs already work overtime, are often ignored, and are as indispensable as any socket, joint or appendage on a prosthesis.

For all amputees, injuries to an unaffected lower limb come with a list of complications that might be hard for a general practitioner or even an orthopedist to understand. Mobility and transfers will be different. Rehab exercises will need adjustment. Upper-limb amputees who break a leg or sprain a knee might have difficulty using crutches, canes, walkers and wheelchairs. Lower-limb amputees may be completely non-ambulatory until their intact leg heals.

I’m a 51-year-old left-below-elbow congenital amputee, and I’ve dealt with many leg injuries throughout my life. Most recently, I had tendinitis in my ankle—its exact cause is still under investigation by a podiatrist and orthopedic surgeon.

It’s difficult for me to manage two crutches with one hand. Using one crutch on the right is fine for a very short distance, but isn’t going to get me across a parking lot. A walker won’t work without a special attachment—I would have to lean down to my right in order to use my nub on the left handgrip, and that would create imbalance and instability. A self-propelled wheelchair is impossible. I looked up knee crutches online, but don’t think I have the upper body strength to stay upright on what seems like a short stilt. I’m still healing and not ready to try a cane.

The solution I settled on is a knee scooter with a telescoping handle that brings the handgrips up to waist level. It keeps me mobile, but it’s bulky for use around the house and cumbersome for trips away from home. So far, I can’t run errands, or get to work or doctor’s appointments by myself—I need help with driving and moving the knee scooter in and out of the car.

In addition to wearing a heavy boot on my right ankle, I’ve braced my left knee and left ankle trying to protect those joints from strain. They are doing all the heavy lifting. My right wrist, already sensitive from years of overuse, needs a brace for protection, too, as it bears my weight moving from bed to scooter, toilet to crutches, scooter to car, and so on. I feel a little like Darth Vader covered in my black protective gear.

My family has placed barstools near the bathroom sink and kitchen counter, so I can sit while I brush my teeth or butter my toast. And, like a queen in her castle, I move around my home with a bag of essentials such as lotion, phone chargers, heating pads and a bottle of water. (Also, a book and reading glasses, a bottle of ibuprofen, and some snacks.) This saves me trips and makes life easier for my family members, who, try as they might, can’t possibly remember everything I need.

A lesson I learned after having two children by C-section is to keep medication and water in places where you sit down often—keeping them safe from small children and pets, obviously. If you’re taking more than one medication for pain, or forget your doses and schedule; keep a notebook with your medicine and write down when you’ve taken it. It might also be a good idea, if you’re having trouble getting around, to write down how much water you’ve had and how often you’ve eliminated. You can’t afford to restrict drinking and urinating, even though getting to the bathroom is a journey you can’t manage alone.

I am discouraged by how difficult it is to accomplish any task and how small my world will be until I’m mobile again. However, I’m able to bear weight on my injured ankle now, and that is a huge relief.

Educating Your Team

Tim Sullivan, a Los Angeles-based physical therapist, says being prepared for an injury to the unaffected lower limb requires maintaining the health of all unaffected limbs. “It’s important to stabilize your load,” he says. “We like to say ‘motion is lotion,’ so you should move, but not overdo things. You want to avoid overstressing the uninvolved side before it becomes the involved side.”

That includes ensuring the fit of the prosthesis, caring for the skin, and keeping up with occupational therapy or gait training. All amputees need to strengthen their core and back. Your prosthetist and physical therapist can help you address your residual limb’s safety while using boots, crutches, and other mobility devices to support the injured limb. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution; it depends on the location of your amputation, what type of leg injury you have, your overall fitness, and your comfort preferences. Upper-limb amputees need to adapt their activities and gather tools to prevent overuse of wrists, elbows, and shoulders. An injury to the unaffected side can expose and exacerbate weaknesses in overall stamina and strength.

When you’re receiving treatment to an injury on your unaffected lower limb, be ready to advocate for your specific needs. “We would love to think that practitioners are fully aware of what you’re going through, but you’re going to need to talk to your provider about what your amputation entails for you every day,” Sullivan says. “Educate your caregivers, and educate your team.”

Setting Up Your System

For injuries and treatments to the unaffected lower limb, amputees need specific tactics and tools to get through their hardest days. Life is too short to move around in bubble wrap, but if you get hurt, you want to be prepared. If you don’t already have all the following equipment at home, think about setting up your kit, just in case.

• Braces for knee, ankle, hip, wrist and shoulder
• Crutches
• Walker, wheelchair
• Knee scooter
• Toilet riser
• Shower chair
• Bolster pillows
• Reacher tool
• Bathroom rails
• Recliner with lift
• Hospital bed

Most of us have found being an amputee isn’t a free pass for having other health issues. There will still be stomachaches, stuffy noses, and opportunities to trip, twist an ankle, or wear out a knee joint. These injuries have nothing to do with being an amputee. Recovery, however, depends on accommodating our amputation along with the injury.

Melissa Bean Sterzick is a freelance writer and writing tutor with a congenital limb difference. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two daughters.

The post How to Keep Small Hurts From Becoming Big Problems appeared first on Amplitude.

Two weeks ago, the General Accounting Office (GAO) released the findings from its in-depth study of amputees’ access to rehabilitation services and ongoing healthcare. Based on four years’ worth of Medicare data and a population of more than 50,000 amputees, the report provides a detailed snapshot of where and how the US health system fails to uphold amputees’ long-range health.

Some quick backstory: This report fulfills a January 2022 request from a bipartisan quartet of legislators, who asked the GAO to submit “a report regarding the barriers to access to prosthetic devices.” At the time of the request, the state-by-state So Every Body Can Move legislative campaign didn’t yet exist; the Amputee Coalition’s updated prevalence study hadn’t gotten off the ground yet; and the Limb Loss and Preservation Registry was still gestating. The hunger for data to guide policy solutions was acute.

Let’s take a moment to appreciate the huge strides that have occurred since then. Nine states have lowered barriers to prosthetic access via SEBCM laws, Fair Insurance laws, or some combination thereof. The LLPR is open for business and has piled up data on nearly a million patients. The AC’s prevalence study has reset our understanding of the amputee community’s size and scope. And now, completing the circle, we’ve got the GAO’s analysis.

Not a bad output for two and a half years.

The GAO study examines a narrow subset of the amputee community: Medicare patients who experienced limb loss in 2016. We’ll explain how and why that particular cohort was selected down below, after we share the data. For now, just go with it; we want to get straight to the findings.

1. The GAO’s study cohort is older, less healthy, less affluent

The cohort includes 50,202 individuals who are covered by Medicare. Of those, 68 percent were Medicare-eligible because they were 65 or older, and 30 percent qualified because of disability. A sizeable minority (38 percent) were eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid, which is available to low-income households. Almost two-thirds (65 percent) were male, and one-third were Black, Hispanic, or Native American. And almost three-fourths (71 percent) had diabetes at the time of amputation. Here’s how the limb-loss study group compares with the overall Medicare rolls for 2016:

In short, Medicare patients who lost limbs in 2016 skewed toward the less healthy, less affluent ends of the Medicare spectrum, with a sharp tilt toward men and minorities. All of these tendencies are consistent with other analyses of the amputee population.

2. Nearly all amputees in the study received some form of rehabilitative care, but . . . .

The GAO tracked post-amputation care for all 50,202 patients in the study through 2019. The topline finding is that 90 percent of amputees received some form of physical therapy, occupational therapy, or physical medicine and rehab services at some point between 2016 and 2019. That sounds impressive, but there are some big caveats.

The first is that a high percentage of that rehabilitative care occurred in the immediate aftermath of amputation, in either a hospital or rehab facility. That’s important care, but it’s not sufficient for full-fledged recovery and adaptation. Fewer than half of the patients in this study received outpatient rehab services after being discharged. Most did not benefit from ongoing, longer-term rehab to help them settle into their homes, adjust to their prostheses, navigate work and transportation, and resume good fitness habits.

A second caveat is that only 41 percent of Medicare amputee patients received the most comprehensive form of rehabilitation, PMR care. Even if we exclude people with minor amputations (who might be less likely to receive a PMR referral) and look only at patients with major amputations, the percentage is still a disappointingly low 49 percent. In addition, there’s a strong regional imbalance vis-a-vis PMR care. In the Northeast, 50 percent of all Medicare amputees (both major and minor limb loss) got PMR care. In the Midwest, the figure was just 42 percent; in the South, 40 percent; and in the West, only 33 percent. That pattern reflects the uneven presence of PMR doctors across the United States. There’s an big cluster in the Northeast and a relative undersupply everywhere else.

The core takeaway seems to be that access to rehab services is spotty and sporadic for Medicare amputee patients. “Lack of care coordination may limit beneficiaries’ ability to receive rehabilitative services,” the report concludes. “Navigating health care needs after experiencing limb loss can be financially, physically, and emotionally overwhelming for patients.” And this surely contributes to the next item . . . .

3. Medicare amputees were highly prone to adverse long-term health outcomes

These numbers are no fun to contemplate—but for that reason, it’s imperative to contemplate them, because they illustrate a profound public health failure. Given the vast expenditures our nation makes on healthcare, we can and should be doing better.

The figures below cover the period from 2016 through 2019—ie, they reflect how many patients experienced each outcome at some point during the four-year period.

We don’t have comparable figures for the Medicare population as a whole, so we can’t contextualize these figures very well, with one exception: The mortality rate from 2016 to 2019 for all Medicare patients was 20 percent, three times lower than the rate in the GAO cohort. Of the 50,202 people who experienced amputation in 2016, more than 30,000 were gone by 2019.

A few other items of note:

• Reamputation rates were considerably higher among Black/Hispanic/Native American patients (about 25 percent) than among white patients (16 percent).
• Reamputation was also more common among people who also qualified for Medicaid (22 percent) than among non-Medicaid-eligible patients (17 percent).
• Mortality rates were slightly higher among women (63 percent) than men (60 percent)

Postscript: How this cohort was chosen

The legislators’ original request covered the entire amputee population, including not only Medicare patients but also people on private insurance plans, VA patients, uninsured Americans, Medicaid patients, etc. Leslie Gordon, a director in GAO’s healthcare unit, told us it would have taken at least another two years to gather all of that data. It also would have created a lot of apples-to-oranges comparisons, given the US healthcare system’s disjointed record-keeping infrastructure. And it would have made it nearly impossible to track long-range health outcomes accurately. Focusing on Medicare only, Gordon explained, allowed GAO to ensure the integrity of its dataset.

The year 2016 was chosen because of COVID. “Generally, we like to do work that’s more current,” Gordon told us. “But we wanted to look at a good span of time to follow the ongoing care and health outcomes. And when COVID hit, all kinds of preventive and ongoing chronic care was delayed and impeded. That could have really confounded our results.” GAO backed up all the way to 2016 so they’d have a four-year outcomes window that wasn’t distorted by pandemic factors.

When we asked what it would take to scale this type of study up to encompass a broader cross-section of the limb-loss community, Gordon said our healthcare system needs a better IT infrastructure. “The federal government has invested in supporting providers to develop electronic health records and make them interoperable and exchangeable, but we’re still not there,” she says. “In some health systems, it doesn’t matter how old the record is or how long ago you saw the doctor, that record is available to another another physician or another provider. And then there are providers who are not on that type of IT infrastructure. Standardizing electronic health records and making them interoperable is going to advance our understanding of population health, both generally and for specific populations like this.”

You can download the full report from GAO’s website.

The post GAO Report: How Well Does Medicare Serve Amputees? appeared first on Amplitude.

Congresswoman credits War Horse report for exposing VA barriers to prosthetics and treatment that critically disabled vets need “to live life to the fullest.”

by Hope Hodge Seck, The War Horse

It took nearly two years of badgering for the Department of Veterans Affairs to approve amputee veteran Matt Brown’s prosthetic leg socket specialized for jiujitsu. It took only three months of practicing his cherished martial art for Brown to lose 18 pounds and regain a sense of himself.

Now, a key lawmaker on the House Veterans Affairs Committee has introduced a bill to make sure amputee veterans like Brown won’t face so many barriers to getting prosthetics for activities—from running and swimming to yard work—that most people take for granted.

The proposal from Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, an Iowa Republican, came one month after The War Horse published a story focusing on Brown and two other amputee veterans in their 40s who expressed frustration over bureaucracy and gaps in care they received from VA.

“The War Horse’s story underscores how important it is to ensure that critically disabled veterans have the tools they need to live active lifestyles as they please, to live life to the fullest,” Miller-Meeks, who chairs the House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Health, said in a statement.

Miller-Meeks said she and her staff have heard from veterans and advocates about a frustrating loophole in the VA’s current guidelines that “does not recognize adaptive sports and recreation prosthetics limbs as clinically necessary for veterans living with limb loss.”

The Veterans Supporting Prosthetics and Recreational Therapy (SPORT) Act would add “adaptive prostheses and terminal devices for sports and other recreational activities” to the statute governing which equipment and aids the Department of Veterans Affairs is allowed to grant vets.

Advocates for amputees said VA is more focused on serving older, more sedentary veterans than caring for younger ones injured during the post-9/11 wars and still in the prime of their lives.

They also highlighted a 2017 VA rule that links eligibility for spare prosthetics and home exercise equipment to “medical treatment and rehabilitation,” emphasizing that the “comfort or convenience of the veteran” was not on its own a sufficient reason.

The bill was one of 16 pieces of new and draft legislation discussed at a Sept. 11 hearing before the subcommittee on veterans’ health. It moves next to the full House Committee on Veterans Affairs and is sure to face some pushback.

Ajit Pai, VA’s executive director for Rehabilitation and Prosthetic Services, told lawmakers that the department saw Miller-Meeks’ bill as “redundant,” hinting at concerns that it would create space for the purchase of pricey equipment for veterans that never gets used.

While the Congressional Budget Office has yet to generate a cost estimate for the bill, specialized prosthetics are expensive. Running legs can cost north of $20,000, while swimming prosthetics start at several thousand dollars. A 2020 GAO report found Veterans Health Administration spending on prosthetics, under current guidelines, added up to $15.4 billion between 2015 and 2019.

“What we see is that the rehabilitation for this type of journey can take even longer than just that initial phase,” Pai said, “and so we really want to make sure that a veteran has consistent and constant participation in that activity so they can really benefit from that lifelong care.”

But Clark Pennington, chief operating officer of The Independence Fund, a nonprofit serving catastrophically wounded veterans, told lawmakers that “a significant population” of amputee veterans was having trouble getting access to recreational prosthetics, including two veterans trying to obtain prosthetic blade attachments for swimming. The lack of access to this connection to their former life, he said, was “a significant mental health barrier.”

In an interview with The War Horse days before the hearing, Pennington emphasized the VA’s many initiatives focused on helping all veterans become more active for their physical and mental health. An active lifestyle for veterans with limb loss, he said, should be just as much of a priority.

Exercise is “necessary for their health; it’s necessary for longevity of life and controlling those other ailments that come from being sedentary and not being able to exercise,” he said. “Most of our veterans [who] join the military are exercise focused, and not having that opportunity to do that does restrict their wellbeing.”

The War Horse’s story in August also highlighted the struggles of Scott Restivo, an Army veteran who lost his right leg in 2018 to sepsis linked to training and deployment injuries. He said he still lacks a prosthetic leg that allows him to walk without discomfort, let alone run as he’d like to do.

His wife, Lelia Restivo, said in an interview this month that they are now requesting the latest version of the Ottobock Genium leg, a top-of-the-line prosthetic that can retail for more than $100,000, in hopes that it would allow Scott to walk and run in comfort, but they are still waiting for a response from VA.

Her husband “just wants to be able to run again, and have the running leg,” Lelia said. He isn’t saying he wants “to join the Paralympics or run 50 miles a day. He’s saying, ‘I just want to be able to enjoy my life and my health.’”

Lelia Restivo said she hoped the new legislation would “at least give structure to the guidelines” for VA to follow for granting prosthetics and other equipment to veterans.

Brown, an Army vet who lost his leg in 2021 to bone cancer, sees his experiences as a testament to the value that prosthetics for recreation can add to the lives of severely injured veterans. Back on the mat every week practicing jiujitsu, he is aiming to be down another 12 pounds by Christmas.

He has little patience for a system that dictates what equipment amputees need to live full lives, particularly those who put their bodies on the line to serve their country. Brown was furious last year after a contractor confiscated a specialized ankle joint from his prosthetic leg during a routine maintenance appointment over a dispute with VA. He got it back, but not before he expressed his outrage on social media.

Paying the bill for this equipment, he believes, is what the U.S. government agreed to when it sent them to fight the nation’s battles.

“There’s no such thing as recreational prosthetics,” Brown said. “It’s just prosthetics for enabling what everyone else gets to enjoy as normal life.”

This War Horse impact story was reported by Hope Hodge Seck, edited by Mike Frankel, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Coverage of veterans’ health made possible in part by a grant from the A-Mark Foundation.

Editors Note: This article first appeared on The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service. Subscribe to their newsletter.

The post New Bill Raises Hope for Amputee Veterans Craving Active Lifestyle appeared first on Amplitude.

Did we even need Halloween in 2024? Seems like the first 300 days of the year were scary enough. But at least Halloween’s got candy. And adorable kids. And the Great Pumpkin. . . . . so yeah, we needed Halloween alright. Maybe this year more than ever. 

As always, Amputee Nation came through with creative, quirky costumes that had us howling. The gallery below only captures a fraction of what’s out there; we easily could have shared twice as many pics. To get a larger view of any image, just click and the original pic (at the trick-or-treater’s Instagram feed) will open in a new tab. Happy scrolling.

Best Josh Sundquist Costume

Nobody does it better, or ever has . . . . BTW, as long as we’re quoting James Bond theme songs, couldn’t the CIA or some other spy agency make use of Sundquist’s singular talents for camouflage? Not since Virginia Hall has an amputee held this much promise as an espioanage asset. We look forward to Josh’s 2025 Halloween incarnation as a camera pen. @joshsundquist.

Best Beetlejuicers

Michelle C, you floor us as Delores. @michellej.c_.

David Banks turns on the Juice. @gogobanks.

Best Toy Story Toys

Natalia Mayara really hit the Bullseye with her costume. @natalia_mayara.

Thomas Walsh (on the right) wouldn’t. . . . . Woody? @twalnutz.

Best Redheads

Don’t offend April Lockhart, or it’s off wi’ yer head. @aprillockhart.

Kayley Prinzi isn’t bad . . . . she’s just drawn that way. @kayleyprinzess.

Best She-Devils

Beware of locking horns with Kanya Sesser. @kanyasesser.

Beak now, Cheri Louise, or forever hold your peace. @cheri.louise.

Best She-lebrities

There’s Barbie. There’s Weird Barbie. And then there’s Mak Daniel. @mister_nong.

A lot of blood, sweat, and Spears went into Sara Montgomery’s costume. @saramontgomeryyy.

Best Slashers

You’re a work of Art, Sommer Carbuccia. @socarb.

Simon Risberg’s on a Chucky streak this year. @simonrisberg.

Best Punkinheads

Hülya Marquardt is just a shell of her former self. @huelya_dennis.

Good gourd in heaven, is that Roxanne Day? @fleur_de_lis_amputee.

Best Boneheads

Amputee Mae’s all dressed up for a skull session. @amputeemae.

Don’t get in the boxing ring with that glass jaw, Henry Bryant. @fivetoesdown.

Cutest Couples

Kelsey Ryan’s bursting with Bride. @kelseyy.ryan.

Hey Alaqua Cox, that’s an Oz-some Halloween ensemble. @alaquacox.

Cutest Kid Costumes

Addison Rose, may you live happily Evie after. @addison.r.rose.

Hi, I’m Oliver Aisthorpe. . . . . wanna plaaaay? @theoliveraisthorpetrust.

Harmonie-Rose has looked at clowns from both sides now . . . . .  @hope4harmonie.

Hey! Teacher! Leave those Tidds alone! @tiddbit_outta_hand.

Best Marine Life

If Kemit Amon says Baby Shark is still a thing, we’re not arguing with him. @kemit_amon.

Sarah Strobel’s getting her axlotl in gear. @onelegged.wanderlust.

Best Lt. Dans

He might not have the boat, but Nick Kimmel caught the shrimp anyway. @1limbleft.

Ya need a bottle of ripple to go with that stogey, James Rosey. @james7rosey.

Wait, women can be Lt. Dans? You bet your Bella Block. @instabellaity.

We wonder how Chris Koch’s seatmate is feeling about this flight. . . .  @ifican.chriskoch.

Best of the Rest

It’s a-me! Limb Loss a-Boss! @limblossboss.

Pao Montoya, you’re such a Marvel. @paomontoya14.

Nice to see you, Josh; osteo luego. @joshvandervies.

As Lara Wilkin always says: The Muertos, the merrier. @lara._.wilkin

The post Best Amputee Halloween Costumes in 2024 appeared first on Amplitude.

Nearly one-third of American voters either have a disability or live in a household with a disabled person. That’s the top-line finding of a study released last week by Rutgers University’s Program for Disability Research. Authored by longtime disability researchers Lisa Schur and Douglas Kruse, the study notes that 40 million Americans with disabilities are eligible to vote in this fall’s elections. That’s about one in six voters overall. Moreover, a whopping 72 million eligible voters—about 30 percent of the entire US electorate—either have a disability or live in a household with at least one disabled member.

A voting block that large is bound to be widely distributed across the political spectrum. “The limited prior evidence indicates that people with disabilities are similar to those without disabilities in patterns of party identification and placement on a conservative-liberal scale,” Schur and Kruse observe. However, “[they] are more likely to favor a greater government role in health care and creating employment opportunities, which are both key issues in the 2024 political environment.”

The authors also note that voters with disabilities vote at lower rates than nondisabled voters, largely because of physical barriers that make polling locations inaccessible to many disabled voters. Yet despite these obstacles, the turnout gap between disabled and nondisabled voters is gradually shrinking (it was 5.7 percent in the most recent presidential election), thanks in part to the proliferation of early-voting and vote-by-mail options.

While it’s impossible to draw precise conclusions about which way the disability voting bloc leans politically, we can use Schur and Kruse’s data to sketch a general profile of this electoral segment. Before we get to those numbers: If you’re looking for resources related to voting procedures, policy issues, or anything else involving the 2024 elections, use the American Association of People With Disabilities’ directory of state-by-state coalitions to find relevant information.

On to Schur and Kruse’s study. According to their analysis:

A high percentage of voters with disabilities have low incomes. About 53 percent of disabled voters have annual household incomes of $50,000 or lower, versus 30 percent of nondisabled voters. Among low-income voters, one in four has a disability—nearly twice the proportion among mid- and high-income voters.

Voters with disabilities skew decidedly older. Just over half of disabled voters are 65 or older—twice as high as the proportion in the overall electorate. Here’s another way to come at it: Among the 98 million voters aged 55 and up, 28 million—almost 30 percent—have a disability. Among the 143 million voters who are age 54 or younger, only 8 percent have a disability.

Voters with disabilities are concentrated in the Southeast. Voters with disabilities constitute more than 20 percent of the entire electorate in eight states: Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. Only one of those states (New Mexico) is considered even slightly competitive in the presidential election, although most have at least some competitive races downballot.

Disabled voters’ representation in the seven Presidential swing states matches that of the overall electorate. In the most closely contested states in the presidential election—Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina—16.7 percent of eligible voters have a disability (about 7.7 million of roughly 46 million voters, all told).

Disabled voters represent the nation’s largest minority voting block. With 40 million voters, people with disabilities outnumber both Black (31.1 million) and Latino (35.7 million) voters. About 10.4 million voters are both disabled and Black or Latino.

The post Voters With Disabilities Loom Large at the 2024 Ballot Box appeared first on Amplitude.

The long wait is finally over: Daruma will make its theatrical premiere next month, with screenings in seven cities across the country starting on November 15. It will make movie history in the process, becoming the first American feature film to feature two authentically cast disabled protagonists. Bilateral amputee John Lawson and wheelchair user Tobias Forrest co-star as Robert and Patrick, an ornery odd couple who have to ferry a child across the country without killing each other. “They don’t fall into the usual disability tropes,” says Lawson, who’s spent most of his career pushing Hollywood to become more inclusive. “They’re just normal, flawed people trying to live their lives.”

The official trailer drops on November 8, and you’re invited to the watch party. It’s a free event that includes swag bags, special giveaways, and conversation with the stars and production team. Visit the film’s website for event details, signup info, and a list of screening locations and dates. Daruma will debut on streaming next month as well, so you can see it no matter where you live.

It feels like we’ve been following Daruma‘s path to the big screen forever, and we only heard about it two and a half years ago. The production’s roots run much deeper: Its first footage was shot way back in 2017, which may as well be a century ago as far as disability-themed entertainment is concerned. Multiple thresholds have been crossed since then, including CODA‘s Best Picture award, Katy Sullivan’s Tony nomination, and the now-routine appearance of TV shows that feature amputee characters played by amputee actors (viz. Echo, La Brea, Tracker, Best Foot Forward). Disability storytelling is far more common and authentic today than it was when Daruma snapped its first clapperboard.

Even so, the film breaks new ground and may open the door to other authentically cast films about disability. It played to packed houses on the festival circuit last year, and Lawson and Forrest both received Best Actor trophies (from the Slamdance Film Festival and Media Access Awards, respectively). Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and other high-profile industry pubs chimed in with glowing reviews.

All that’s left is for you to see it. Last week we caught up with John Lawson (who first told us about Daruma in 2022) to get his thoughts about the film’s long-awaited release.

Fill me in on everything that’s happened since last year. How did Daruma find a distributor?
We played at Slamdance this January, which happens at the same time as Sundance, and we had two sold-out performances. Literally standing room only. It was crazy. That sort of closed out our festival run, and then we started looking at the distribution part of it. We ended up going with Freestyle. The theatrical run is November 15th through the 21st in seven major cities: Chicago, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, Boston, New York, DC, and LA. It’s been quite the journey, but it’s been a lot of fun, and it’s just great to see the film get a chance and, hopefully, make a difference in the industry.

Daruma seems to dovetail with this broader campaign throughout the industry to create more opportunities for disabled talent and crack the door open a little wider for more people to follow in.
We hope it will, because it is the first film in the history of American filmmaking to authentically cast both lead actors with disabilities. It’s never been done before. And the film’s not even about disability. It’s just two guys who are on this physical and emotional journey, investigating and discovering the human experience. Their disabilities are never really brought up or talked about, except we make one joke about it in the film.

In film and television today, most people with disabilities fall into the three common tropes. There’s the inspirational super crip—the person with disabilities as a heroic figure that “overcomes” their disability in extraordinary ways and becomes just like everybody else. And then, of course, there’s the tragic victim—that’s the character whose life is primarily defined by their suffering. And the longest running trope is the disabled villain who has become twisted and has a violent nature because of their disability or their physical difference.

This film is more about male psychological toxicity, about guys who aren’t able to deal with their problems. The characters are very well rounded. The pendulum swings real wide for my character, Robert, from tenderness of understanding for Patrick to godlike wrath. That’s why it was such a great part, because my character has these tender moments and these happy moments, yet he unleashes this wrath that he can’t control. The characters are so well thought and well rounded, and they don’t fall into the usual tropes. They’re just guys with flaws, like anybody else.

And that enables nondisabled viewers to recognize themselves in these characters, rather than viewing the characters from a distance. 
That’s it, exactly. I want viewers to see themselves represented in a way that reflects the reality of their experiences, whether or not disability is a major theme in their life or not. And I want producers, directors, and casting directors, to go, “Hey, I could just see this actor with no hands playing a grandfather, or an old man in the community.”

Instead of just automatically confining you to disability roles.
That’s what I hope. And, you know, that kind of representation could help people with disabilities achieve more self acceptance or confidence, or just a sense that they belong in the world.

Are there other movies like Daruma that are in the development pipeline that might get a boost from your success?
Not that I know of. I wish I did know some projects so I could get hired. For me, it’s like, where’s the next job? I’ve been at this for 35 years or more, and it took a while to get people to even see me as a trained actor rather than just the guy with hooks. Right before COVID, I was finally starting to get better roles where I might have multiple scenes in an episode of a TV series. Then COVID hit, and everything kind of shut down. After COVID everything started back up, and then the writer’s strike hit, and then the actor strike. Because of all that, everything’s delayed else, and there is just not a lot going on right now. All the stuff that was planned for 2023 is now being done in 2024, so it’s just really slowed down.

It does feel to me that there is momentum happening for as far as there is more opportunity for people with disabilities to get represented in entertainment. Am I imagining that? Or do you feel like there is at least a little progress?
I think there is a little bit of progress. I gave a speech at one of the studios recenetly, and I was looking back through some old notes and found the notes from my first panel discussion, 35 years ago. At that time, 35 years ago, the numbers of people in film and television with disability was nine-tenths of 1 percent. Flash forward to today, and according to the latest USC Annenberg study, we’re only at two percent. Now there’s a couple of ways to look at that. We can say it’s great, we’ve doubled the amount of people with disabilities in film and television. Or we can say that about 25 percent of today’s population has some form of disability, but only 2 percent of the characters they see in entertainment have a disability, so we still have a long way to go.

Where is Daruma going to be streamed?
We don’t have the details yet. Freestyle is a division of Hulu, which is a division of ABC/Disney. But I honestly don’t know. It will be available digitally somewhere, and it will be streaming as of November 15, the same time as the theatrical screening. One reason for that is because a lot of people with disabilities aren’t able to make it to the theater for whatever reason. We want everybody to be able to see it at the same time.

It was 2017 when we did the proof of concept trailer for Daruma. We shot a couple little scenes, and they shopped it around, and people were asking questions like, “Who are thinking about to play the guy in the wheelchair?” And they said, “We’re going to stay with these two guys. We think we’ve got the right cast.” So it’s been seven years that they stayed with us, and we’ve hung with them, and I’m certainly glad we did. It’s a good film. We go to movies to feel something, and Daruma is a movie that will make you feel.

The post Daruma Finally Gets to the Red Carpet appeared first on Amplitude.

Our forthcoming November/December print edition includes an article about the Decision-Making Aid for Lower Limb Prosthetics. The tool, which is still in beta form, gives amputees a framework for selecting the devices that best fit their day-to-day needs. It’s also part of a broader trend throughout US healthcare toward shared decision-making, which encourages tighter communication and collaboration between patients and practitioners.

“There’s a group in Australia that made a shared decision-making tool for deciding what level of amputation to have,” explains Chelsey Anderson, a certified prosthetist and rehabilitation scientist who spearheaded the development of the prosthesis decision aid. Shared decision-making is highly encouraged under the Affordable Care Act, which went into effect in 2014. Ever since, says Anderson, cancer treatment, palliative care, pediatrics, and other medical specialties have pioneered new ways of putting shared decision-making into practice.

We didn’t have room in the print edition to quote Anderson at length, so we’re taking this opportunity to share more details about the hows and whys of the prosthetic decision-aid, along with a general map of the road ahead. If you’re interested in checking out the beta version, it’s available here. The journal article describing the methodology that underlies the decision-making tool is online at Prosthetics and Orthotics International.

Our conversation is edited for length and clarity.

Is this model specifically designed for new amputees who are choosing a prosthesis for the first time? Or is it meant to support decisions about prosthetic devices throughout a person’s lifetime?
For this study, we developed the tool for new prosthesis users. However, a lot of amputees in our working group gave feedback that this was a resource they would pull out again and again. People experience changes in values and changes in preferences throughout their lives, and technology changes as well. The amputees we worked with were all experienced prosthesis users, but a lot of them said they would return to this model to help them with future decisions about their prosthetics.

Did you encounter any resistance to this idea from prosthetists themselves?
That’s an interesting question, because there’s a body of research out there which shows that a lot of clinicians think they’re already doing shared decision-making. They feel like they’re already proficient in it. But when you examine it from the patient perspective and in other ways, that’s not necessarily true.

In my work on this project, I didn’t come across any resistance to the whole idea of shared decision-making, but certain aspects of it were questioned. Some prosthetists talked about how it can be intimidating to a new prosthesis user to be exposed to all the options. There are so many variables that it can be overwhelming. As prosthetists, we’re trying to help make that information digestible to a new amputee, especially when they’re dealing with other health issues and going through the emotional change of losing their their limb. It’s not always well received to be bombarded with a bunch of information about options. So there was a question about how to present options to new prosthesis users while being sensitive to how much information they can actually digest.

I’m going to take a wild guess that amputees were very receptive to the idea of a decision-making aid.
Totally. We presented the idea to a group of patients at Hanger’s education fair [Hanger LIVE], and it was incredibly well received. The feedback was that something like this would be wonderful in the pursuit of care. A lot of people we talked to didn’t realize all the factors that could go into choosing a device. They just said, “I based my decision on whether the prosthesis had toes on it or not.”

How did you decide what factors to include in the decision-making aid, and which ones to leave out?
One of the things we learned in our needs assessment is that there’s huge variation among patients in how much information they want in their interactions with their prosthetist. You know, and some people went through every page of the documentation that was brought to them in the hospital. The Amputee Coalition has a resource that’s 120 pages long, and some people went through all of it. And other people didn’t start thinking about prosthetics until they sat down with their prosthetist for the first time. So we felt we needed to set that as a baseline—to help prosthetists and patients figure out what we need to talk about, how many things we need to go over. That’s a pretty standard starting point for decision aids in healthcare.

I did have some prosthetists tell me they already do this type of assessment. They do it almost subconsciously. They’re going into the room, asking questions, reading body language, and drawing conclusions about what to talk about and how much information to go over. The purpose of the decision aid is to set more of a foundation for that and help patients communicate what they actually want, versus just letting those assumptions happen in those initial visits.

The next section—again, pretty standard for decision aids—is for people to prioritize what matters to them when they’re making these decisions. [The tool lists 13 “values” such as cost, maintenance, sports, comfort, travel, family, aesthetics, etc.] The idea here is for patients to rank these in order of importance, from first to last. Some of them might not be on everybody’s list. A few people in our working group talked about the sound of different parts on their prosthesis—some of the suspension options, the seal-in liners, or the electronic components could have a sound that bothers them.

Did people talk about leg farts?
Exactly. It’s embarrassing, right? But some of the other amputees in our working group, and even some of the prosthetists, were not clued into that at all. And that’s part of what I’m hoping this tool will do, is to spark questions about things that a user might not think to ask about otherwise. Another one was flip-flops. For some of our users, it was really important to have feet they could wear flip-flops with. If you’re a new user, you probably wouldn’t know that’s even an option. So we made a point of including that in the tool. Sometimes even just seeing the question makes it okay for you to ask it, too.

What are the next steps? When will this be available for general use?
There’s a standard, agreed-upon process for how to develop shared decision-making tools. And that’s for a good reason. You can make a tool, and people can use it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean shared decision-making is actually happening. It doesn’t mean that patients know about all their resources or choices. So the next step for this tool would be to do some formal testing to see if it’s actually helping with shared decision making. So I’m looking for some collaborators and some funding to do an actual clinical trial.

In an ideal world, we’d roll it out in an actual clinic, or a few clinics, to get it into the hands of prosthetists and prosthesis users. There are various measures to quantify how much shared decision-making is happening. We’d set up some some checkpoints to compare decisions that are made with the tool against interactions where it’s not being used. In the future, I could imagine this as something that gets sent to a patient before they even come see a prosthetist, or even in their initial consult for the actual amputation.

Another point we considered is that most shared-decision aids are focused on a single decision. But getting a prosthesis involves lots of decisions—there’s a foot, ankle, socket, liner, suspension system. We made a conscious decision not to list all of those options in this version. This is just an overview. But in an ideal world, if these tools were online, we could potentially link to other decision aids that would help people get into the nitty gritty of what’s available and which option fits their needs.

In the end, we want a tool that gives prosthesis users a big-picture idea of how their life with a prosthesis might go and what decisions they might make in the future. Knowing what that roadmap looked like, and what could affect those decisions down the road, was the most important concept.

that’s what the limitation is. You know, that’s why it’s like, you know, if you get one and you find out after six months that it’s not really working for you, the insurance company is not buying you a new one. You know

The post Decision Aid Helps Amputees Choose Right Prosthesis appeared first on Amplitude.

Marci Krown’s new documentary, The Power of Sports for Amputees, premiered in San Diego on August 6, just before the Paralympics. Just after the debut screening, one of the movie’s three main figures, sprinter Beatriz Hatz, won her first Paralympic medal. Another, Carson Fox, began his track and field career at the University of Alabama.

The film is hitting the road this fall for screenings all over the country, and Amplitude is co-sponsoring. Three screenings are already on the calendar; scroll down for date/location info. You can watch the trailer here.

Each screening will include food, Q+A with the filmmakers, social interaction, and a broad range of resources for the amputee community, include free print copies of Amplitude. The film’s main sponsor is befree, an adaptive clothing line that specializes in prosthesis-friendly zip-on pants.

The Power of Sports for Amputees runs 92 minutes and features appearances by Hatz, Fox, James Dixon, and representatives from Angel City Sports, the Challenged Athletes Foundation, Move United, the Amputee Coalition, and other big supporters of the limb-loss community.

The following showings are already on the calendar. We’ll add to the list as more screenings get put onto the schedule.

• October 23, Tulsa OK: Circle Cinema, 10 S Lewis Ave., 5:30 p.m.
• October 29, Anderson IN: Paramount Theater Ballroom, 1124 Meridian St., 6 p.m.
• November 12, Salem MA: Location and time TBD

The post New Movie Documents Amputee Athletes of All Abilities appeared first on Amplitude.

The second annual US Amputee Soccer Cup goes down this weekend in Cambridge MA, just across the river from Boston. The field has expanded to five teams this year, with Miami joining the returning clubs from New England, New York, Chicago, and Denver. New England won last year’s inaugural tournament, beating New York in the championship match, and both of those rosters will be loaded again for the 2024 US Cup.

Although this is a co-ed event, most members of the US Women’s amputee national team are sitting it out to prepare for the Women’s Amputee Soccer World Cup, which commences in just three weeks in Baranquillo, Colombia. But almost every member of the men’s national team will be in action this weekend, including familiar faces like Nico Calabria, Jovan Booker, and Carlos Ayala. Plenty of less recognizable players will be on the pitch, too, reflecting the rapid growth of amputee soccer and the diverse group of athletes who are getting involved in the sport.

Below we’ve highlighted a handful of less heralded players who we think will be competing in Cambridge this weekend. For a complete schedule of US Amputee Soccer Cup matches, visit the American Amputee Soccer Association’s web page.  You can watch every match live on the AASA’s YouTube channel, and of course there are a lot of great interviews at Amputee Soccer Rising, the podcast Amplitude is co-producing with the AASA.

Musabwa Nzirimwo, New England: Two years ago, the then-18-year-old Nzirimwo scored Team USA’s lone goal at the 2022 World Cup. Now 20, the Congolese native has established himself as the US roster’s most dangerous weapon and one of the fastest amputee soccer players in the world. He netted three goals in last year’s US Amputee Soccer Cup and won the Golden Boot award as the tournament’s best player.

Redondo Richard, Miami: Also known as El Principe (The Prince), Richard forms half of an explosive scoring tandem with Saviola Charles. Both players scored nine goals for Team Haiti in the 2022 Amputee World Cup, leading their team to a fourth-place overall finish in that tournament. Playing against Team USA in a World Cup match, Richard scored four goals for Team Haiti and assisted on two others in a 6-2 victory that propelled his team into the quarterfinal round.

Vasu Sojitra, Colorado: This player squeezes soccer into a schedule already jam-packed with ambitious athletic endeavors. An advanced mountaineer, Sojitra is the first amputee to ascend Grand Teton on crutches and to descend Denali on skis. He’s also a fierce advocate for disability inclusion in sports and elsewhere in society, which is one reason National Geographic named him a Traveler of the Year for 2024. Sojitra played for Team USA in the ‘22 World Cup and will be traveling to Honduras next month as the team competes in the Gold Cup tournament.

Ermin Omerovic, Chicago: The Bosnian native made international headlines five years ago as a beta tester for a brain-controlled bionic arm. Now 24, Omerovic has emerged as one of the top amputee goaltenders in the US. Although he didn’t make the national team’s roster this year, he left a strong impression this spring at US Soccer’s “Adapt and Thrive” invitational event for adaptive players. By the time the men’s amputee World Cup takes place in 2026, Omerovic might have a significant role for Team USA.

Jordan Obernesser, Colorado: At just 15 years old, Obernesser is the youngest player on the US national amputee soccer team and one of the youngest national-team players in the world. He also represents the significant growth of amputee soccer among kids and teens, who’ve been flocking to clinics and camps all over the country. Obernesser, an elite player who earned his Team USA roster spot on the merits, is someone to take note of. He’ll likely be a big part of amputee soccer’s continued growth for years to come.

Greg Smith, Chicago: The 40something Smith isn’t vying for a spot on Team USA or making preparations for World Cup glory. We’re highlighting him because he represents the majority of the players who’ll be competing this weekend in Boston. A recent below-knee amputee due to traumatic injury, Smith declined the initial invitations to try out the sport. He was still processing his emotions. But Smith eventually asked himself: “Am I going to sit around the rest of my life and be bummed about it, or am I going to be positive and accept my new life as an amputee?” He showed up for soccer practice one day at Adaptive Sports Connection in Columbus, Ohio, and now the game is a regular part of his adaptation to limb loss. There are thousands of other Greg Smiths out there, who might benefit physically and emotionally if they gave amputee soccer—or some other adaptive activity—a chance.

The post Players to Watch at the US Amputee Soccer Cup appeared first on Amplitude.

“A substantial number of lower-limb prosthesis clients desire more from their prosthesis device and clinical provider service.”

That’s the top-line takeaway from a new, wide-ranging survey of more than 2,000 amputees. And it’s not exactly an earth-shattering finding. If you’re even slightly engaged with the limb-loss community, you’ve encountered the commonplace frustrations related to chronic pain, imperfect socket fit, tone-deaf clinicians, hostile insurance companies, and so forth.

The big reveal in this study, which appears in the current issue of Prosthetics and Orthotics International, is what lies at the root of this dissatisfaction: everyday activities. A majority of lower-limb amputees find it challenging to do routine tasks like climbing stairs, lifting objects off the floor, walking in bad weather, and carrying a plate of food. Taken together, these challenges significantly diminish amputees’ quality of life: 61 percent of the survey respondents reported a low health-related quality of life (HRQOL).

“This is the first study to explore satisfaction, quality of life, and functional performance in a large population of LLP clients using psychometric instruments validated in the LLP population,” claim the authors, who include prosthetists and kinesiologists from Auburn, Louisiana State, and Alabama State universities. They add that their results “provide a clearer image of the aspects of rehabilitation goals that are of importance to this population.”

Even Young, Healthy Amputees Face Challenges

The results seem especially noteworthy because the survey group is vastly younger and healthier than the overall limb-loss population. More than 80 percent of the participants fell between the ages of 19 and 39, whereas the Amputee Coalition’s 2024 prevalence study found that amputees are predominantly age 45 or older. And only 20 percent of the survey respondents lost limbs due to diabetes, cancer, or infection, versus the AC’s estimate that nearly 60 percent of amputees have diabetes and/or other vascular diseases.

If HRQOL scores are low among relatively young, healthy lower-limb prosthesis users, it seems safe to surmise that scores are worse across the general amputee community.

Despite those somewhat alarming QOL scores, most survey respondents aren’t pointing the finger at either their prosthesis or their prosthetist. Majorities report overall satisfaction with their device (56 percent) and their clinical care (63 percent).

With respect to prostheses themselves, the main areas of dissatisfaction were skin irritation, residual limb discomfort, pain, high purchase and maintenance costs, and damage to clothes. The top complaints about clinical interaction were scheduling difficulties, long wait times during visits, and lack of partnership in decision making. However, none of the most common gripes surpassed the 50 percent threshold; the most widely shared beef about devices (skin abrasions) was only expressed by 49 percent of respondents, while the most common fault with clinical care (long wait times) was expressed by only 42 percent.

And yet well over half (58 percent) recorded low levels of functional status, with 20 to 30 percent saying they either cannot perform, or can only perform with great difficulty, tasks such as climbing stairs, walking on unlevel ground, or walking in bad weather. Even maintaining balance while standing posed a major challenge for one in six survey respondents—and, to repeat, these are overwhelmingly young, healthy amputees in their 20s and 30s.

Implications for Amputee Rehabilitation

The authors analyzed the relationships among their various findings via path analysis, a statistical method for teasing cause-effect dynamics among different study variables. Their model suggests that “increasing balance confidence significantly improves both prosthetic device and provider service satisfaction” and that “prosthetic device satisfaction is significantly improved by reduction in fear of falling.” One section of the survey, the Activity-Specific Balance Confidence (ABC) module, had a particularly strong influence on overall satisfaction with clinical care.

To beat a dead horse: If the 20 and 30somethings in this survey are so shaky on their feet that it reduces their quality of life, we can only assume this effect is even more pronounced for the 50-and-older amputees who make up the bulk of the community. Overall, the paper concludes, “interventions targeted at improving balance, fall risk, and functional movement may significantly reduce [prosthesis] rejection. . . . .There is need for ongoing patient-centered feedback before, during, and after prosthesis prescription and rehabilitation.”

The paper appeared in the August edition of Prosthetics and Orthotics International. The full, open-source study is available online.

The post Survey: Amputees Can’t Get No Satisfaction appeared first on Amplitude.

Q: How soon after your injury did you focus on getting back to your old job? 
A: While the truck was still on top of my leg. Before they put tourniquets on me.

That’s how our interview with Denver police sergeant Justin Dodge began. The “old job” we asked about is SWAT team leader, a position Dodge held for nearly two decades before the firetruck ended up on top of his leg. And that happened on June 15, 2023, during a relatively safe assignment: providing crowd security during the downtown victory parade for Denver’s newly crowned NBA champs, the Nuggets.

As Dodge was walking alongside the truck bearing the Nuggets’ two biggest stars, Nikola Jokic and Jamaal Murray, the 20-ton vehicle rolled over his left heel and pulled his leg underneath. Incredibly, first responders managed to get Dodge free with his limb still attached, sort of. He wouldn’t undergo amputation for another three weeks, after several surgical attempts to salvage the leg.

From the get-go, Dodge made it clear to every person on his medical care team that his overriding priority was to return to the profession he loves and excels at. Seven months later, he was back at work in a partial capacity. He was cleared for unrestricted SWAT team service around May 1—less then 11 months after the accident.

We met Dodge in late April, just before he returned to the field, and we had an extended conversation with him last month. Because Disability Employment Awareness Month and National Physical Therapy Month both kick off this week, it seems like the perfect time to share how Dodge preserved his career while adapting to limb loss. It hasn’t been easy, and it has required both a deep personal commitment and a dedicated support team. But Dodge has never backed down from armed fugitives, bomb scares, hostage situations, or other obstacles. He wasn’t about to let limb loss or any other injury keep him from doing his duty.

On the contrary, Dodge is using his experience to help others keep working toward their objectives in the face of monumental challenges. He’s started making speaking appearances for organizations of all kinds. Learn more at Dodge’s website, heavyvictory.com.

Our conversation is edited for length and readability.

What precedent was there for someone returning to an active duty SWAT team after limb loss? Was there a playbook, or did you guys have to invent that?
We made it up as we went. Our tactical unit has a very stringent physical fitness test, very difficult firearms qualifications, those types of things. Obviously I wanted to go back, but I also didn’t want to be a token. I didn’t want them letting me come back to just sit in an armored vehicle. I was either going to be fully operational, or I wasn’t coming back. And to be fully operational, I had to pass the fitness tests and meet the rifle and handgun standards. So that’s what we focused on: Can you pass these tests?

And you are the first amputee nationwide to regain active duty status in this type of tactical unit, is that accurate?
The National Tactical Officers Association, which is the national governing body for tactical units, is not aware of any other full-time Tier One tactical member in the nation that is serving as an amputee. There may be one out there, but the governing body is not aware of any.

What is it about this job that’s so motivating for you?
I’m an incredibly driven individual. I want to be the best at what I do, and the top echelon in the law enforcement world, on a domestic side, is to be part of a Tier One Tactical Unit. There’s no higher assignment you can get to. It puts you in a position to save lives and to solve the most dangerous, intricate situations a community can face. That’s what I want to do.

As long as something fulfills my purpose, I want to be the best. When I had kids, I wanted to be the best dad on the planet. Now that I’ve gotten injured, I spend countless hours speaking, doing interviews, and talking on the phone with random people who I meet through emails or through networking who are going through something like I went through. It’s now my purpose and my drive to help people get back to some status of life that is high quality for them.

When you told your doctors, your prosthetist, your physical therapist, et cetera, that you wanted to get back to active duty, what kind of response did you get? Did anybody push back and say, “Whoa, hold on, let’s get real here”? Or was everybody on board?
Right from while I was in the emergency room, the surgeon told me, “You’re going to be there.” There’s never been a single person in the healthcare profession that has told me it isn’t achievable. They have instructed me to be patient, which is something that’s difficult for me, and to understand the healing process and understand the rehabilitation process.

What did that program look like? You mentioned the need to clear these job-specific hurdles regarding fitness and marksmanship. Was your rehab program tailored to that specific set of tests?
There’s two answers to that. They were ordering weights and bands to the hospital, because I knew I needed to work out after every surgery. In between all eight surgeries, I was back in a gym. I might be in a wheelchair with a wound vac tube sticking out, but I was in a gym. The overall theme was that I would not let a day that go by that I wasn’t doing something to get me closer to achieving expectations. There were days where that was just to pack my leg in ice and try to stay off pain meds. It included making sure I was hydrated enough, making sure I was eating the correct foods, all of those types of things. And then as I progressed, it was: How fast can I bike four miles on an assault bike with one leg? How many pistol squats can I do on one leg?

It took me almost seven months to get fitted for a prosthesis, because of the damage that was done to the soft tissue. But mentally, I was starting my rehab while the truck was still on top of me. And physically, my rehab was going forward from day one. Had I waited to start my rehab until I got my leg, I never would have been in the position that I’m in right now.

After that, I had to be very intelligent. I had a wear schedule, because I’d get pressure sores. I’d get blisters. So we had to work within all of those confines. But that was when we really started dialing into the overall development of performance to get me back to a point where I could pass the fitness test. You have to be in phenomenal shape in a lot of different areas in order to pass this test. But I knew if I could pass, it meant I was truly back in the top 5 percent of the population in terms of fitness. I did not want to be operational until I had taken the test. That was very, very important to me.

Was it important because you needed to know you had earned it 100 percent—that you weren’t just a token? Or was that something that you felt the rest of the force needed to see?
I’d already passed the test in nonofficial capacities multiple times. There was no question in my mind I was completely capable of doing the job. So the actual function of taking the test was to check a box for my teammates, for the agency, for the members of the department, and for the community that, yep, he’s good to go. He passed all the tests.

Were there any parts of the rehab that posed a particular challenge or required you to adjust your program? 
The biggest thing is that I didn’t have a clean injury. To this day I have two significant open wounds on my legs. I’m not allowed to be in a pool or a hot tub or a bathtub or the ocean. Those wounds are still continuing to heal, continuing to get better, but there is this constant mental grind of knowing that my leg is not completely healed yet, and we have to work around that. The custom liners are incredible, but there would still be days when I was just crushing it (in rehab), and all of a sudden we’d find a blister, and I’m back in a wheelchair for a couple of days. Those ups and downs were mentally devastating to me. But I told myself: “You can either get off the leg for the next three to four days, maybe even a week, and let this thing heal, let it callous, and get back in the fight; or you can push through it and potentially make it worse, so we’re talking about surgical revisions or even, worst case, an above the knee revision or something like that.” I’m actually still dealing with those major ups and downs to this day.

And then it’s just painful wearing a prosthetic, especially doing the high-level activity that I’m doing. It hurts all the time. There is never a moment in my life, while my leg is on or off, that I’m not in pain. When I’m working out or when I’m operational, my mind just kind of blocks that pain, so it doesn’t affect me when I’m at work or when I’m in the gym. But sitting at my kid’s football game, especially after doing a couple of ops (at work), I’ll literally lay in the stands with my leg off. I’ll explain to people that wearing a prosthetic is like wearing the tightest, stiffest pair of boots you’ve ever had in your life. And they don’t break in.

Describe a couple of ops for me. What are the types of situations you guys are called in to untangle?
We do all of the high-risk weapon-related, or potentially weapon-related, search warrants in the city. We do all the high-risk fugitive apprehensions in the city. We do all of the barricaded gunmen in the city. And we are a hostage-rescue team, so God forbid you would have a hostage situation, it’s our job to come in and try to keep people from dying. In the short time I’ve been back, we’ve actually executed a hostage rescue where I was part of the entry team on my prosthetic.

Has there ever been a point since you’ve returned to the field that the prosthesis hasn’t performed and you had to go back and work with your practitioner to make adjustments?
I actually have two legs, and they’re phenomenal legs to begin with. As I’ve gotten stronger and faster and gained the ability to move more, we’ve made some little tweaks. But I can honestly tell you that when I’m operational, I have no idea that I’m in a prosthetic, as far as my ability to move and be part of the team. I have yet to come across something where I think, “I can’t do this.” But I’m in my prothetist’s office probably every couple of weeks to make little adjustments, maybe a 16th of an inch turn on one particular component, something like that. So it’s an ongoing process. And as technology continues to improve, I always want to be on the best feet, because my job requires me to be incredibly active.

When you talk with other people now who are battling back from an injury, what are the two or three things that you think are paramount for them to focus on?
You have to put in daily work. Hoping and wishing is not a plan, and it’s certainly not action. Every single day, you have to wake up with a plan. You have to execute that plan, evaluate it at the end of the night, and do it again and again and again. We have a phrase in the tactical world that you can’t eat an elephant in one bite. When you try to do that, a lot of times it will set you back mentally, which can set you back physically. So instead, do obtainable daily tasks, do them consistently, and measure your performance and your recovery every couple of weeks. Just by being steady, eating correctly, drinking plenty of water, and being in the gym, I was able to make a huge amount of progress before I even got my leg.

You start doing small things, and it’s a snowball effect. Sometimes I’ll be kind of harsh with people. I’ll ask them: “What are you doing to move forward?” Sometimes the answer is, “I’m waiting to get started, because I can’t do this yet or I can’t do that.” But there are always things they can be doing.

Why do you think people delay or opt out?
I think it’s a couple of things. One is that it’s difficult to put in work every single day. And when you add in a traumatic event, it’s very easy for people to just get completely overwhelmed. So I think a lot of times it’s the difficulty that you actually have to do this every single day, no matter how bad you might feel.

I would be completely lying if I said I didn’t have nights where I was in tears for two hours. I go from performing hostage rescues into realizing I’m permanently disabled, and of course there are ups and downs. It’s expected that you’re going to have those ups and downs. But you still have to keep moving forward during the downs.

You’re now in a role where you can be a resource for people who are dealing with a life-changing injury. Were there any people who you found incredibly helpful as you were first learning about this process?
I’m very fortunate because I work for a Tier One tacs unit, and we work hand-in-hand with the highest levels of the military. So within days of my injury, I had 20 guys in touch with me who had lost limbs and gone back to full deployment status. I did not do this alone. Because of the job I have, I had access to a massive support system. I know a lot of people don’t have that, so they have to go find it. You might have to put in a little bit of work to find people or talk to your prosthetist to get connected.

I’ve had people tell me, “I could never be like you. I could never perform like you.” And that’s not accurate. I promise you, if you go through a process that keeps you moving forward, eventually you’re going to get better. You’re going to become a better version of yourself mentally, physically, and spiritually. Today is your day to get started.

The post Justin Dodge’s First Response: Getting Back to Work appeared first on Amplitude.

I had just sat down to watch a Paralympic boccia game when a four-year-old girl seated in front of me turned around to wave. She was looking right at me, holding up her Paris Paralympics mascot—a red Phryges stuffed animal with big bulging eyes, and, most notably, a prosthetic running leg. The girl pointed to the Phryges’ running leg, pointed at my prosthetic leg, and then gave her mascot a big hug. Later on, she would try asking me questions. I didn’t know enough French to be able to respond, but it didn’t matter. The point was that we were sitting there, at the Games, and she was embracing—quite literally—a body type different from her own.

That was one invaluable effect of the Games: increasing the visibility of people with disabilities. Children only know what they see. If they don’t see us, how will they know about us? For those next two hours, that four-year-old girl and I watched athletes in wheelchairs use their heads to control the exact line of the boccia ball. Soon enough, the girl’s brother tapped me on the leg to show me his sketches of some of the prosthetic legs, wheelchairs, and eyefolds he had seen that week.

Throughout my time in Paris, I bought tickets to see different events every day. Some were sports I’d never seen live before—wheelchair boccia, para rowing, sitting volleyball, wheelchair basketball. Then there were more familiar competitions like track and field, swimming, and wheelchair rugby. I was excited to see the Games, but I also wanted do my part in having the athletes be seen.

Sometimes that took a sizeable commitment. My mom and I took a long Metro ride to the suburbs for the para rowing event. Volunteers guided us from the Metro station to the water, and while we were walking it began to rain. We had no umbrellas, and the closer we got to the water, the more we noticed small crowds walking back. Were we supposed to turn back? We decided to trust the volunteers who assured us that the rowers would carry on.

When we arrived at the water, I saw that for every person that had left, about three had stayed behind. Hundreds of us huddled under the bleachers in ponchos waiting out the rain. When the sun finally crept in, the seats filled up in a hurry. I watched athletes with cerebral palsy move their oars in perfect synchrony, all the way toward a medal.

Walking into the track arena was its own form of exhilaration. I saw athletes with cerebral palsy sprint. I saw lower-limb amputees long jump. I saw visually impaired athletes run long distances, tethered to their guides. I Googled my way through classifications to understand each category of disability. What was T63? T12? T42? I was eager to appreciate the nuances. While the runners circled the track, javelins and shotputs were being thrown across the field, over and over again. These athletes had strengthened every part of the body needed to excel in their sport, regardless of any physical disability classification. I waved my US flag as spectators around me waved flags for Canada, Japan, Great Britain, Greece. When the action brought me up out of my seat, the change in posture barely even registered. The energy in that stadium elevated us all.

At the natatorium, when one of the French athletes took the lead in her final 50 meter lap, I would guess that every single French citizen at the venue stood up chanting. They’d covered their faces in blue, white, and red paint, donning wigs of the same color. There were shouts, tears, song. “That is how you rally,” I said to my Mom. Then I joined in the tears. I had never seen a crowd this large cheering for anyone with a physical disability.

Nearly a month later, I can still hear the rugby wheelchairs clanging and flipping over in the battle for position; the basketballs swishing through the net as wheelchairs sprinted up and down the court; the grunt behind every sitting volleyball serve; the cheers of 70,000 people practicing a crowd wave in the track and swimming venues; and the volunteers telling me they were sold out of the Phyrges. Sold out.

The Paris 2024 Paralympics set a new standard for viewership and interest in adaptive sports. We support our Paralympic athletes by showing up. And that’s what people did–parents with young children, teachers with their classes, volunteers with their families. We normalize different body types by creating avenues for them to be seen. The world won’t understand every nuance of the lived experience for those of us with disabilities. But the world ought to see what we are capable of, not in spite of disability, but with it.

Alexandra Capellini is a resident physician at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor.

More Amplitude articles by Alexandra Capellini:

Paralympic Postscript: Seeing Is Believing

“We support our Paralympic athletes by showing up,” Alexandra Capellini writes in this week’s guest post. “We normalize different body ...

Read More

When the Doctor Wears a Prosthesis

When Dr. Alexandra Capellini enters an exam room, patients often notice she's an amputee. When it happens, she writes, it ...

Read More

Overcoming the 5 Main Obstacles to Amputee Fitness

Almost everyone, whether disabled or nondisabled, faces hurdles to staying physically fit. But amputees and other people with disabilities face ...

Read More

The Lessons I Learned from African Amputees

Alexandra Capellini volunteered to share her personal experience of limb loss with Ethiopian amputees. She was blown away by the ...

Read More

People With Limb Difference Are Making Visible Progress

When amputees are shown in mass media, it sends a message: We deserve to be seen. And yet there are ...

Read More

Why Are Some Doctors So Clueless About Limb Loss?

When my doctor told me, "You're doing so much with what you have,” it was meant to be encouraging. But ...

Read More

The post Paralympic Postscript: Seeing Is Believing appeared first on Amplitude.

Suppose the skin on your residual limb had the same thickness, toughness, and pressure resistance as the soles of your feet. You’d probably have fewer rashes, blisters, and sores, no? According to a new study in the journal Science, that kind of transformation might be possible within a few years. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have successfully tested a cell therapy to increase regular skin’s weight-bearing capacity—and they’re seeking amputee volunteers to test and refine the method. (If you’re interested, here’s how to get in touch—but be advised that you’ll need to be in Baltimore routinely in order to participate.)

The Science study tested whether residual-limb skin could be endowed with the characteristics of volar skin—ie, the type of skin you have on your soles and the palms of your hands. Volar skin is thicker, denser, and more responsive to pressure than nonvolar skin. At a cellular level, volar skin has larger epidermal cells (aka keratinocytes), longer collagen fibers, higher elastin levels, and higher concentrations of a handful of key proteins.

“Our feet bear our weight every day, and the amount of force is incredible,” says Luis Garza, a professor of dermatology at Johns Hopkins and the study’s primary author. “When you run, for example, your feet are bearing enormous amounts of force. So it’s very likely that the cells in that part of our body have become evolutionarily adapted to react to pressure better.” For amputees, that same pressure falls on the residual limb’s nonvolar skin, which isn’t designed to bear weight and withstand high forces.

To test whether cellular therapy could toughen up nonvolar skin, the John Hopkins team employed multiple methods, including in vitro cultures, genetic analysis, and bioprinting. Finally, they conducted a clinical trial on human volunteers, in which they took volar cells from each subject’s feet or palms, injected them into the thighs (which have nonvolar skin), and observed the resulting changes. To be more precise, they transplanted volar fibroblasts—specialized cells that reside in the dermis, just below the skin’s surface (or epidermis)—to nonvolar sites.

Cutting to the chase: The introduction of volar fibroblasts caused nonvolar skin to acquire volar traits. It did not become fully volar in their trial, the authors are careful to note: “Although fibroblast therapy does adjust tissue identity, it does not induce a large-scale and complete identity conversion” in epidermal cells. However, their study did achieve significant changes in skin firmness, epidermal thickness, gene expression, and protein composition. “These data demonstrate the distinctive properties and therapeutic potential of volar fibroblasts to modify skin identity toward a volar phenotype and greater pressure adaptation,” they conclude.

The next step, says Garza, is to test this process on actual amputees. That’s already underway: His team is recruiting amputees for a Phase 2 study where volar fibroblasts will be transplanted into residual limbs, yielding hard data on whether this therapy can lead to fewer pressure sores, blisters, and other maladies. In a very real sense, it’s where the rubber meets the road. This phase is expected to wrap up next year, and it would have to be followed by a large-scale Phase 3 study before the therapy became widely available. So we’re still several years out from anything you can request from your dermatology clinic.

But if the effort ultimately does yield an effective therapy, it could be a true game-changer for amputees. And the implications could extend far beyond the limb-loss community.

“Nobody has done cellular therapy that’s been successful in solid organs,” says Garza. “Cellular therapy works in blood cancers, for example, and people have tried blood injections into organs, such as platelet-rich plasma. There have been efforts that involved injecting stem cells into the heart. But the great thing about cell therapies involving the skin is that we can test them without a lot of risk to the patient. Cellular therapies involving the heart, the brain, or any internal organ are a lot more difficult to test. With a skin cellular therapy, we can inject the cells easily and we can monitor it very easily. If a problem arises, we can remove it pretty easily. So the skin is a great test case for cellular therapy in general.”

The full paper is available (paywalled) at science.org. Amplitude will be following this research closely as it moves forward.

The post Cell Therapy May Relieve Amputees’ Skin Problems appeared first on Amplitude.

In response to chronically high unemployment rates among people with disabilities, policy makers have typically focused on training programs, hiring incentives, and similar solutions. A new, bipartisan Senate bill takes a different approach, with provisions to help people with limb loss and other disabilities start their own businesses.

With Disability Employment Awareness Month just around the corner, this timely legislation could help reduce the glaring lack of disabled-owned businesses. According to the 2022 Annual Business Survey, only 3 percent of US businesses are owned by a person with a disability—far below the estimated 15 to 25 percent of the population that actually has a disability.

The Entrepreneurs with Disabilities Reporting Act would direct the Small Business Administration (SBA) to file a report on the challenges and needs that confront entrepreneurs with disabilities when they attempt to start or grow a small business. Introduced by US Senators Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill) and Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), the bill would require the SBA to enumerate the resources it currently offers entrepreneurs with disabilities, the challenges it faces in meeting the needs of this community, and recommendations for legislation to help SBA better serve entrepreneurs with disabilities.

“We should be doing everything we can to provide Americans with disabilities with the support they need to start and grow small businesses and pursue careers in entrepreneurship,” says Duckworth, who lost both legs in combat during the Iraq War. “By improving our understanding of what entrepreneurs with disabilities need through better reporting, we can make well-informed decisions and enable more of them to make their dreams of starting a business a reality—all while boosting our economy along the way.”

“Entrepreneurship is a vital part of the American dream, but a lack of resources often prevents many Americans with disabilities from owning their own business,” adds Lummis. “Our bipartisan solution will contribute to empowering Americans with disabilities to pursue their passions and realize their dreams of business ownership.”

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the US disability population has increased, while the number of entrepreneurs with disabilities has decreased. The causes of this decline are poorly understood, due to lack of data. The Entrepreneurs with Disabilities Reporting Act would yield information about the barriers to entrepreneurship that are faced by people with disabilities, as well as policy solutions that could increase opportunities for disabled-owned businesses.

The US House of Representatives has already passed a bill identical to the Entrepreneurs with Disabilities Reporting Act. “We worked hard to get it passed through the House, and I’m grateful that Senator Duckworth and Senator Lummis are partnering with us to get it one step closer to the finish line,” says that bill’s sponsor, US Representative Morgan McGarvey (D-KY).

The legislation has been endorsed by the following organizations: Council of State Administrators of Vocational Rehabilitation (CSAVR), the National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities (NACDD), CCD Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) and Melissa Ortiz, founder of Capability Consulting and former Commissioner of the Administration on Disability at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

The full text of the bill is available here.

The post Amputee Senator Seeks to Boost Disabled Entrepreneurs appeared first on Amplitude.

When the Range of Motion Project stages a hill climb, they don’t mess around. We’d never seen it in person until Sunday before last (ie September 7), when we tagged along with about 100 people (and 12 dogs) for one of ROMP’s community ascents—the largest one ever, as it turned out.

Staged at Winter Park Resort in the Colorado Rockies, about 90 minutes west of Amplitude’s headquarters in Denver, the event was a warmup of sorts for ROMP’s trio of 10th anniversary fundraising climbs in Ecuador (which will take place on October 3 and October 8). Hikers flew in from both coasts, ranging in age from 18 to 70something; several members of next month’s climbing teams were on the scene, along with numerous veterans of previous ROMP expeditions.

Here’s a condensed digest of what we saw, who we talked to, and what we learned as we dragged our own out-of-shape, nondisabled self up the trail. If you want to support the cause, visit the Climbing for ROMP page at rompglobal.org and/or ROMP’s Instagram feed @rompglobal.

One of the first familiar faces we spotted was Jo Beckwith, aka Footless Jo. It was heartening to see her back on her feet and tackling mountains again so soon after her stroke, which hit her a mere seven months ago. When we asked how she’s feeling and what’s next on her agenda, she told us (paraphrasing): Who needs an agenda? I’m alive today, and that’s enough for now. The future will work itself out. Her spirit looks to be as strong as ever. She zipped up the mountain much faster than we did.

We had our first in-person conversation (after many virtual ones) with Sydney Marshburn, ROMP’s events and outreach manager. Sydney was fresh off a trip to Paris for the Paralympics, where she spent most of her time watching swimming events. “I’ve started training for the 2028 Paralympics,” Sydney added nonchalantly—she was a competitive swimmer from age nine through her senior year in high school, before losing her left leg. She faced a series of health challenges in 2024, but those are behind her. Sydney’s a strong person, and we wouldn’t bet against her.

Partway up the trail we met Heather Shorey, who goes by @thefootthatcould on Instagram. Her story is courageous several times over: After losing her right leg below the knee in 2019, she became a stalwart advocate for other amputees, volunteering for ROMP and earning Lead Advocate certification from the Amputee Coalition. Her brother, Rocky, joined ROMP’s 2021 Cotopaxi climb in her honor, but he passed away tragically this spring in a climbing accident on Mount St. Helen’s. So now Heather is honoring him by climbing with ROMP next month. You can back her effort with a donation.

Another new acquaintance we made was Josh Nowlan, who survived a 2012 mass shooting at a movie theater in suburban Denver. Doctors spent six years attempting to save his injured left leg, but he chose amputation in 2018 and hasn’t looked back. After reaching the top of the trail, Nowlan rode the gondola down to the bottom and hiked up again—one of several amputees to hike multiple laps up the hill. (Some of them made so many round trips they set a new world record.)

We spotted teenage amputee soccer star Jordan Obernesser crutching around at the base of the mountain, sans prosthesis. Out on the trail he breezed past us so quickly we honestly did not notice whether he’d donned his device for the hike. He, too, made multiple ascents.

At least half a dozen veterans of prior Cotopaxi climbs were on hand. They included Sandy Dukat, a Paralympic medalist who took part in the first Climbing for ROMP expedition way back in 2015, joined the team again in 2019, and will be making her third climb for ROMP next month; Chris Rains from the 2021 team, and Joel Sampson from the 2022 squad; and Steve Crawford, Jason Malvar, and Steve Cantwell from last year’s climb. Apologies to anybody we missed.

Visit the Climbing for ROMP page at rompglobal.org and/or ROMP’s Instagram feed @rompglobal if you want to support this annual event. Learn more about ROMP’s 10th anniversary climb in Amplitude‘s September/October edition.

The post Seen and Heard at ROMP’s Community Climb appeared first on Amplitude.

The Runway of Dreams Fashion Revolution commemorated its 10th anniversary on Monday night with another star-studded gala during New York Fashion Week. This annual bash lets people with disabilities showcase their flash and dazzle, and amputee models are always among the most beautiful people at the party. And the beauty is much more than skin deep: These people radiate grace from within. They’re gorgeous individuals, not simply pretty faces.

Runway of Dreams regularly features models who’ve graced Amplitude‘s pages in other contexts, and this year was no different: Two of the people onstage this Monday will be very familiar to regular readers and subscribers (and if you’re not a subscriber yet, what are you waiting for?). But the Fashion Revolution also does an outstanding job of introducing new faces within the limb-loss community. That pattern continued as well at the 2024 show.

If you weren’t able to watch the livestream on Monday night, no worries; the recording is already available at Runway of Dreams’ YouTube site. If you decide to tune in, here are some of the amputee models you’ll be able to watch.

Amy Purdy

She was on the cover of Amplitude’s first-ever issue back in 2015, just after becoming a Paralympic champion and a fan favorite on Dancing With the Stars. If you’ve followed Purdy’s journey, you know her outward glamor is surpassed by her inner toughness, authenticity, and refusal to back down from her fears.

Here’s what she posted on Instagram a few hours before Monday’s show: “In a world obsessed with perfection, remember that your body is not a project or a problem. Your body is not a ‘before and after.’ Your body is meant to be lived in, loved in, and challenged. Every wrinkle, scar, stretch mark, or perceived imperfection is a chapter of the book of who you are becoming. Embrace it!”

Follow her on Instagram @amypurdygurl.

Icy Parris

He was still going by “Keith” when he appeared in our March 2021 issue. In a feature about the amputee leaders of the Millennial and Gen Z cohorts (“Being the Change: The ADA Generation Comes of Age“), Parris told us: “When I was little, I always wanted to look up to someone who was just like me.”

Lots of people of all ages look up to Parris these days: His social media feeds have more than 100,000 followers all told. “I’m so excited to finally announce that I’ll be modeling in the 2024 Runway of Dreams: A Fashion Revolution Runway Show during New York Fashion Week!” he wrote on Instagram the other day. “Runway of Dreams empowers people with disabilities to have confidence and self-expression through inclusion in fashion and beauty.”

Follow this dude @icyparris on TikTok and Instagram.

Michelle Colon

It’s been a busy 12 months for Colon. During the span she has appeared in Victoria’s Secret model and in an episode of the “Dating Different” series on YouTube.

Reflecting on the latter experience, she wrote: “Having a ‘disability’ doesn’t define all of who I am, and I try to make that very clear. We grow up learning what ‘“’society’ or our upbringing believes is beautiful & acceptable. Breaking that cycle is important, being open to unlearning and taking an understanding of the world around us can literally save us from what people think ‘the norm’ is.”

She’s on Instagram @michellej.c_.

Alex Schwartz

Bionic Al has a lot going for him, starting with his hometown and his taste in baseball teams (both of which we share). He’s also got a gigantic social media following and a nonprofit (Forging Mettle) that helps amputees afford prosthetics.

“NEVER thought as a dude with no feet from #STL that i’d be walking as a runway model, chrome blades and all,” he wrote last year on Instagram. Elsewhere he has touted “the importance of community and being your own advocate” as a healthcare consumer, particularly one with limb loss/difference.

Check him out online at alex-schwartz.com/forging-mettle.

Sekai Muscutt

Growing up in Zimbabwe, Muscutt was routinely shamed because of her congenital limb difference. She got her revenge on the haters by launching a hugely successful line of beauty products called Keeper Beauty. “In a world that is constantly encouraging you to be someone else, setting your own beauty standard is the ultimate act of self-love,” the company’s website says.

That embody’s Muscutt’s own philosophy. “When we allow people to enter our minds and feed us their narrative of us, we become slaves to their perception of who we are,” she says. “We lose sight of who we are and who we can be. My hope for you is that you can rise and find your true worth.”

That’s Runway of Dreams’ mission in a nutshell.

Raymond Diaz

We couldn’t confirm much info about this model. According to his bio at Zebedee (his talent agency), Diaz “has actively shared his image to inspire and empower both himself and others with disabilities. Ray firmly believes in the value of his inner strength and confidence, which radiates through his daily life.”

We’re reasonably sure (but haven’t been able to verify) that this is the same Ray Diaz who lost his legs in a traffic accident on the Staten Island Expressway in 2014, then went on to play sled hockey with Team USA’s developmental squad a few years later. “You get new scars from guys jousting at you with their hockey sticks, spikes up, but you just want to feel more alive, so you shake off the pain and keep going,” that Ray Diaz told aCurator magazine.

Learn more about Diaz on Instagram @daddynewlegs.

Emily Fogle

Here’s one of those “new faces” we were talking about earlier. Fogle, a childhood cancer survivor, started posting on TikTok two years ago and has amassed roughly 30,000 followers. A prolific poster, she puts up new videos pretty much every day.

A good chunk of Fogle’s content revolves around day-to-day hacks for managing life with limb loss. (This includes her single most-watched video, with 4+ million views, about the crap people give her for using an disabled-parking pass.) But she also indulges her passions for fashion, food, travel, sports, and so on. There’s also the occasional pet reel, and plenty of random other stuff.

Follow Fogle on tiktok @emilyyfogle.

The post Amputee Models Celebrate 10 Years on Runway of Dreams appeared first on Amplitude.

It won’t be in theaters until December, but Unstoppable—based on the real-life experience of wrestling champion Anthony Robles, who was born without his right leg—already looks like a hit. Co-starring Hollywood icon Jennifer Lopez and Emmy-winning actor Jharrel Jerome, the film got a two-minute standing ovation last weekend after premiering at the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival. Critics were equally appreciative, calling the movie “compelling,” “authentic,” and “a crowd-pleaser you can believe in.”

In addition to Lopez and Jerome, the project attracted high-end talents such as actor Bobby Cannavale, a two-time Emmy winner (and two-time Tony nominee); Oscar-winner William Goldenberg, making his directorial debut; and Ben Affleck, whose production company Artists Equity shepherded the film from concept to completion. Amazon MGM Studios signed on as distributor, with a limited theatrical release scheduled for December 2024.

While you’re waiting for your chance to see the movie, we recommend you read the 2012 autobiography on which it’s based. Written by Robles with Austin Murphy, Unstoppable: From Underdog to Undefeated reveals how Robles overcame a difficult upbringing, a physical disability, and haters of various kinds to become an NCAA Division 1 wrestling champion at Arizona State University. The book is on back order due to the spike in demand caused by the movie’s buzz. We went ahead and purchased an e-book copy to avoid the wait.

Even by Hollywood standards, 10 years is a pretty long gestation period for a project like this. What took so long? We reached out to Robles to find out, and the answer might surprise you. Here’s the inside scoop on how the story made it to the big screen, along with some other backstory about the production.

The Q+A below is lightly edited for clarity. Amplitude will be featuring a more extensive conversation with Robles in our November/December print edition, so keep eyes open for that.

The book came out in 2012. We’re now in 2024. Fill in the blanks for me. What’s the saga between the release of your book and the release of this film?
It’s been a long process and an amazing journey. After I won my national championship at Arizona State, my senior year, I decided that I was officially done with competing in wrestling, and I wanted to focus on my career as a motivational speaker. While I was really pursuing that, the opportunity to write the book came up. And there were some opportunities at that time from some production companies who were interested in telling my story on the big screen. I really wanted to take my time with those decisions, because they’re big decisions. I didn’t want to rush into anything. And I had some great representation, and the advice they gave me was, “You can sign off, but you will have little control over the story and how it’s told.” It was very important to me that we hold on to the integrity of the story and the message of the story. It wanted to make sure it would be told in a way that I would be proud of it, and my family would be proud of it.

So the route we went was to raise some funds to come up with the first draft of the script, and then we started sharing that. We were close to getting it into production, but then Covid hit. And then a couple of years after that, in comes Ben Affleck’s company, Artist Equity.

And how did they find you?
It was just basically a word-of-mouth thing. [Affleck] was working on AIR with Billy Goldenberg, and they were talking about their next projects and what they’re passionate about, and Billy mentioned Unstoppable. He read the script and fell in love with it.

Do you know how the script got passed to Billy Goldenberg?
It came from our original team: my manager/agent Gary Lewis, Andy Frazier, and David Crockett. Andy and David were already in the film business, and one of them knew Billy or had worked with him in the past. So they handed him the script. He was on board to be the director from early on. Then there were some delays, and there were times where I wondered if this would ever actually become a reality. It’s still crazy to me that it is a reality. But the message was the most important thing to me, and I’m glad we held on as long as we did, because I’m super proud of what’s about to be shared with the world.

What concerns did you have about ways your story might be told where you wouldn’t feel proud? Were there particular elements that you thought might be distorted?
My story is more than just a wrestling story. It’s more than just me competing on a wrestling mat. I wrestled through my life as well. I was born to a mom who was a single parent, 16 years old when she had me. I was raised in a household where there was a lot of love with my siblings and my mom, but I also had a stepfather who wasn’t the best role model. A lot of challenges and negativity came from that side of things, but that is part of what I wrestled through in my life.

But some of those things are very sensitive. I wanted to make sure that my story was in the right hands. I didn’t want them to twist my mom’s story to where she came across as anything other than what she was for me, which was: My mom was my rock. She was my hero. She believed in me when no one else did, even at a young age. I’m 36 years old now, and I’m a fairly new parent, and I can’t imagine being how young she was and having the mentality she was able to raise me with, and being able to teach the things she taught me. I didn’t want that to get lost in the story. I didn’t want to lose how important she was.

And I didn’t want the spotlight to be on the negativity of my stepfather. I didn’t want to be sitting there watching a story that’s unrecognizable to me, something that’s just a Hollywood story. That’s what made me nervous, and why I chose to take the time and do it the way we did.

Were there any movies about sports, about disability, underdog stories, that you loved growing up?
Growing up and being a wrestler, I loved Vision Quest. But my all-time favorite movie was Cinderella Man, the boxing film with Russell Crowe. And I guess every athlete out there has got to say Rocky. Those films were inspiring to me, they were motivating to me, and I felt like there was something I could relate to out of all those stories. And that was something very important to me about my story—I wanted it to be told in a way that’s very relatable. I want there to be moments of joy, but also moments where the audience can feel the pain I went through and the frustration I endured. Because the overall goal of this film is for people to walk away being motivated. There are a lot of challenges in the world today that can break people. And I want people to walk away feeling like, whatever they’re wrestling with, they can overcome that. It can be a physical thing. It can be mental. It can be something going on in the world. But I want them to walk away knowing they can fight whatever’s in their path.

What was it like working with Jharrel? Were there particular aspects of how he represented your wrestling mentality, your adaptation to disability, your family relationships, or anything else that you really focused on with him?
The pretty cool thing about Jharrel is that we initially met in 2018 or 2019. I’m not positive, but I know it was before Covid. So we’d known each other for a little while before we worked on the movie. That relationship really grew organically. It wasn’t just some actor getting to know me for a project and asking me intimate questions. He got to see me in my day-to-day life. He got to see how people looked at me out in public, or how I interact with people out in public. And being the amazing actor and professional that he is, Jharrel was just a sponge.

Just getting to know each other as friends, he was really excited to be able to tell my story, which to me was a very humbling honor. He wanted to do it justice, and I think he was kind of worried about portraying the story in the right way. That was very touching to me, to know that he cared so much about bringing out my message the right way.

What do you hope people will take away from this movie? 
One of my trainers used to say all the time, “If you are unchallenged, then you are unchanged.” I think life is the same way. When you get challenged, that’s an opportunity to find that puzzle piece you’re missing and plug it in. It’s not always going to happen right away. You might have to take three or four losses first before it starts making sense. But you have to have faith that sooner or later you’re going to figure it out.

That’s very much like a wrestling match. When you’re facing an opponent that’s kicking your butt, and you’re getting your face smashed into the mat, it’s not like your coach can call a timeout and sub in a teammate. The only one who has power over your situation in that moment is you. You’re the one who has to wrestle that match. I want people to realize that when they’re in that dark moment, they just need to find that little sense of hope and keep fighting.

The post How “Unstoppable” Got to the Big Screen appeared first on Amplitude.

The Paralympics only last 10 days, so they come at you fast. It’s not easy to stay on top of everything that’s happening, and easy to miss some of the drama. That’s why we’re here: We tracked all the ups and downs, the thrills and the heartbreaks, that American amputees encountered during the Games. Here are the narratives we found most compelling.

The Armless Archer wins his first Paralympic gold

Despite being the world’s most recognizable para-archer, Matt Stutzman entered the 2024 Games with just one Paralympic medal (a silver from 2012) in three tries. To reach the gold-medal match this year, he had to win harrowing tiebreakers—one-arrow shootoffs to determine the winner in deadlocked matches—in both the semifinals and the round of 16. To top it all off, Stutzman set a new Paralympic record in the finals by racking up 149 points, a single point shy of a perfect score. 

Kelly Elmlinger’s cruel fate

Elmlinger came to Paris as the prohibitive favorite in the women’s PTS4 paratriathlon classification. She hasn’t missed a podium since 2018, and she’s won every race she entered in the last two seasons. But Elmlinger had to withdraw on race day due to an unspecified illness. It was the second consecutive Paralympic disappointment for Elmlinger, who in 2020 was forced to race in the more difficult PTS5 classification (against two-legged racers) because there weren’t enough PTS4 qualifiers to stage a race. Despite dominating the PTS4 field for half a decade, she remains without a Paralympic medal.

Amputee rookies rock the medal stand

Eight amputees who were competing in their first Paralympics won medals for Team USA. That’s double the number who scored medals in Tokyo. Even more impressive, half of the 16 amputee first-timers on the 2024 US Paralympic roster medaled in their first appearance on the globe’s biggest stage. US rookie stars included Noelle Malkamaki, who shattered the world record in shotput (F46); Derek Loccident, who won silver medals in both the high jump and long jump; swimmer Ali Truwit, who scored a pair of silver medals in the S10 classification just 15 months after losing her left leg; and 16-year-old Arelle Middleton, the youngest American medalist at these Games (silver in shotput F64). 

Men’s basketball, women’s volleyball complete gold-medal threepeats

The United States became the first nation ever to win three consecutive Paralympic gold medals in men’s wheelchair basketball. Amputee starters Brian Bell and Trevon Jenifer both played key roles in the tournament; Bell lit up the scoreboard for 31 points in the semis against Canada, then scored seven crucial fourth-quarter points to seal the championship game against Great Britain. The US women’s sitting volleyball team gained the upper-hand in their long-running rivalry with China. For the fifth straight Paralympics, these two nations have faced each other in the gold medal match; China won the first two (in 2008 and 2012), while Team USA has won the last three. Heather Erickson led Team USA with 96 points in the tournament, including a dominant 28-point performance in the championship match.

Mr. Davis-Woodhall follows his wife to the podium

Hunter Woodhall capped a long, eventful summer in Paris with his first career Paralympic gold medal. Rewind the tape to early August, and NBC’s cameras captured Woodhall in the stands during the Olympics celebrating his wife Tara’s gold medal win in the long jump. Then, during the interval between the Olympics and Paralympics, Woodhall came down with Covid, disrupting preparations for his own events. He finished a distant sixth in his first race, the 100m (T64)—but, to be fair, he was the only bilateral amputee in a field of unilateral-amputee runners. In his signature race, the 400m (T62), Woodhall outpaced world record-holder Johannes Floors, then found Tara in the stands to reprise their Olympic celebration. 

Noelle Malkamaki crushes the competition

Although she’s lived her whole life with a congenital limb difference, Malkamaki didn’t know parasports were a thing until after the Tokyo Games. And even then, she considered herself “not disabled enough” and had to be cajoled into participating. The rest of the F46 shotput classification probably wishes Malkamaki had never gotten involved. She beat the field by nearly two meters in Paris; even the worst of her sixth throws flew a full meter further than the second-place distance. Malkamaki’s winning mark of 14.06 meters broke her own world record by nearly half a meter.

Mark Barr wins his first medal at age 38

At his first Paralympics 20 years ago, Barr (then an S9 swimmer) finished fourth in two races, missing the podium by a mere .6 seconds in one instance. Twelve years later, in Rio, Barr (by then a triathlete) again narrowly missed the podium, this time by an agonizing 16 seconds. His classification (PTS2) didn’t race at the Tokyo Games, so Barr had to wait eight long years for another crack at a medal. His bronze-medal performance in Paris ranks as one of our favorite outcomes of 2024.

Ezra Frech’s prime-time performance

Like everyone else (including Frech himself), we expected this guy to win gold in the high jump (T63). He’s the world record-holder in the event, and he took gold at last year’s Worlds. Plus he’s been in the spotlight since elementary school, so he wasn’t likely to flinch when the blurbs burned hot and bright in Paris. But also like everyone else—again, including Frech himself—we were shocked when he won a second gold in the 100m. He’d never reached the podium at all in that event in a worldwide meet, much less the top tier. Frech seemed much better-positioned to medal in the long jump, where he finished a strong fourth at the Worlds back in May. But he ran a career-best time (12.06) when it mattered most. He’ll head back home to start his freshman year at USC, where he’ll be the first above-knee amputee ever to compete on an NCAA Division 1 track scholarship. And he’s already locked into place as the face of the 2028 Paralympics, which will take place in his hometown of Los Angeles.

Ellie Marks: Half-full or half-empty?

You’d have to be a pretty big grouch to label a five-silver-medal performance “disappointing.” Then again, you couldn’t blame swimmer Ellie Marks for feeling a bit frustrated that she didn’t reach the top of the medal stand even once in Paris. Marks is used to winning, after all; she claimed two golds at the most recent World Championships and earned a gold medal at both the 2016 and 2020 Games. In two of her races (the 50m freestyle and 100m backstroke), it took a record-breaking performance to beat her—and in both cases the record breaker was China’s Yuyan Jiang, who won seven gold medals at these Games. Marks’s fellow US competitors found nothing wanting in her performance: They honored her by choosing Marks as one of the two flag-bearers for the Closing Ceremonies,

The post Top US Amputee Storylines From Paris appeared first on Amplitude.

We really wish we didn’t have to write this article. We wish ChatGPT were already consigned to the same junk heap as HAL 9000, Ash, and other AI malefactors. But we haven’t reached that scene in the movie yet. We’re still living in ChatGPT’s world, and we’ll likely remain there until something more dastardly comes along to replace it . . . . .

Whoa, that got dark in a hurry. Let’s start over.

Didja ever get the sense that ChatGPT just isn’t that into you? Does it seem to ignore your reality, underestimate your abilities, and have a distorted view of who you are, how you live, even what you look like? If you’re someone with limb loss or another disability, you might not be imagining it. As Amplitude noted early this year, generative AI produces ridiculously inaccurate visual images of amputees, and stock-image companies sell these bizzarro pix alongside legit photographs and drawings, without differentiating between what’s real and what’s bogus.

Unfortunately, visual imagery isn’t the only medium where generative AI misconstrues and misrepresents disability. Text-based AI tools—in particular, the ubiquitous ChatGPT—apparently commit the same types of mistakes.

That’s the conclusion of two new peer-reviewed studies. One, presented at an international IT conference on accessibility this summer, found that ChatGPT downgrades resumes which list disability-related educational and career achievements. The other, published last month in the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, asserts that ChatGPT and a competing AI model, Gemini, both depict people with disabilities as having significantly fewer favorable qualities and significantly more limitations than nondisabled individuals.

Downgrading Resumes Because of Disability

In the resume-bias study, researchers from the University of Washington asked ChatGPT-4 to review and rank a series of resumes for an actual job opening. This sort of automated screening is common practice in HR departments, so the study’s scenario isn’t merely academic; it reflects how things truly work in the real world. The paper’s lead author used their own resume as a control specimen, then created “enhanced” variations that were listed additional, disability-related accomplishments such as “Tom Wilson Disability Leadership Award.”

Aside from the disability-related items, the enhanced resumes were identical to the control. Yet ChatGPT-4 consistently ranked the enhanced resumes below the control—ie, it treated the disability-related accomplishments as blemishes on the resume, rather than value-adds.

“In a fair world, the enhanced resume should be ranked first every time,” one of the paper’s lead authors, Jennifer Mankoff, told UW News. “I can’t think of a job where somebody who’s been recognized for their leadership skills, for example, shouldn’t be ranked ahead of someone with the same background who hasn’t [been so recognized].”

When the researchers asked ChatGPT-4 to justify its rankings, the model offered the stereotyped (and discredited) view that employees with disabilities face challenges that could diminish their job performance. The researchers then ran a second trial of the experiment, after instructing the model to avoid making ableist assumptions. The results were still discriminatory, although to a somewhat lesser degree.

“People need to be aware of the system’s biases when using AI for these real-world tasks,” the authors told UW News. “It is so important that we study and document these biases, not only regarding disability, but also other minoritized identities, around making sure technology is implemented and deployed in ways that are equitable and fair.”

Ability Bias in Medicine

In the other study, conducted by researchers at the University of Houston’s McGovern Medical School, two chatbots (ChatGPT-4 and Gemini) misrepresented disability both qualitatively and quantitatively. On the latter criterion, the bots were each asked to generate descriptions of people, medical patients, and athletes who either a) had disabilities, or b) had an unspecified disability status. We would expect the descriptions in category “b” to mention disability about 15 percent of the time, since that’s the estimated prevalence of disability broadly speaking. However, in a combined total of 120 category b descriptions, Gemini and ChatGPT only mentioned disability in three people—a rate of just 2.5 percent.

In the qualitative sense, a linguistic analysis showed that both bots depicted people, patients, and athletes with a disability as having significantly fewer favorable qualities and significantly more limitations when compared to nondisabled people. “Disability [involves] a complex collection of factors that should not be minimized into a singular description or caricature,” the authors note. “It is a uniquely individual experience that influences one’s accessibility and interactivity with the world, and any one definition would inevitably be exclusionary.”

And there’s the rub: AI chatbots are designed to create generalizations. They build composite sketches out of zillions of individual data points. They’re pretty good at the broad brushstrokes, but not good at all in capturing the finer details. And that’s where misconceptions and bias can creep in.

“Generative LLMs like ChatGPT and Gemini will continue to become integral parts of daily life, and their implementation into healthcare systems is near certain,” the authors conclude. “Generative artificial intelligence chatbots demonstrate quantifiable ability bias and often exclude people with disabilities in their responses. Ethical use of these generative large language model chatbots in medical systems should recognize this limitation.”

The post Does ChatGPT Discriminate Against Amputees? appeared first on Amplitude.

How did your favorite American amputee athlete fare at the 2024 Paralympics in Paris? Here’s our final tally of Team USA’s amputee medal winners. Including athletes in team sports, 42 American amputees brought home medals from Paris. That’s a healthy increase over the 2020 Tokyo Games, which featured 33 US amputee medalists.

To find event-by-event results for every amputee on Team USA (including non-medal winners), visit the Paris Paralympics’ athlete page and navigate to the page for the individual athlete(s) you’re interested in.

For a full list of all US Paralympic medalists from all disability classifications, visit paralympic.org.

Amputee medal winners for Team USA in the 2024 Paralympics: Final tally

* = first-time medalist
** = first-time medalist and first-time Paralympian

Gold medals (16)

ARCHERY
Matt Stutzman, Men’s Individual Compound Open — First career Paralympic gold

ATHLETICS
Jeremy Campbell, Discus (F64) — 5th consecutive Gold medal in this event
* Ezra Frech, 100m (T63) — career best time of 12.06 seconds
Ezra Frech, High jump (T63) — Paralympic record height of 1.94 meters
** Noelle Malkamaki, Shotput (F46) — world record distance of 14.06 meters
Hunter Woodhall, 400m (T62) — first career gold medal

CYCLING
Oksana Masters, H4-5 Individual time trial
Oksana Masters, H5 Road race

SWIMMING
Jessica Long, 400m freestyle (S8)
Jessica Long, 100m butterfly (S8)
Morgan Stickney, 400m freestyle (S7) — Paralympic record time of 4:53.88

TRIATHLON
Hailey Danz (PTS2) — First career Paralympic gold
* Chris Hammer (PTS5)
Grace Norman (PTS5)

TEAM SPORTS
Men’s wheelchair basketball — third consecutive gold medal
Women’s sitting volleyball — third consecutive gold medal

• AMPUTEE MEDALISTS IN BASKETBALL:
• Brian Bell
• Trevon Jenifer
• ** Fabian Romo
• Jorge Sanchez
  
• AMPUTEE MEDALISTS IN VOLLEYBALL:
• Katie Holloway Bridge
• Tia Edwards
• Heather Erickson
• Kaleo Kanahele
• Monique Matthews
• Nicky Nieves
• ** Sydney Satchell
• Alexis Shifflett-Patterson
• Lora Webster-Bargellini
• Bethany Zummo

Silver medals (17)

ATHLETICS
** Korban Best, 100m (T47) — career best time of 10.75 seconds
** Derek Loccident, Long jump (T64)
Derek Loccident, High jump (T64) — Paralympic record height of 2.06 meters
** Arelle Middleton, Shotput (F64)

SWIMMING
* Abbas Karimi, Mixed 4x50m Freestyle Relay (20 points)
Abbas Karimi, Mixed 4x50m Medley Relay (20 points)
Ellie Marks, 50m freestyle (S6)
Ellie Marks, 100m backstroke (S6)
Ellie Marks, 200m individual medley (SM7)
Ellie Marks, Mixed 4x50m Freestyle Relay (20 points)
Ellie Marks, Mixed 4x50m Medley Relay (20 points)
Morgan Stickney, 100m freestyle (S7)
** Ali Truwit, 400m freestyle (S10)
Ali Truwit, 100m backstroke (S10)

TRIATHLON
** Carson Clough (PTS4)
Mohamed Lahna (PTS2) — first medal as Team USA member

TEAM SPORTS
Women’s wheelchair basketball

• AMPUTEE MEDALISTS IN WHEELCHAIR BASKETBALL:
• Bailey Moody

Bronze medals (9)

ATHLETICS
* Beatriz Hatz, Long jump (T64)
Jarryd Wallace, Long jump (T64)
Hunter Woodhall, 4×100 Universal relay

PARACANOE
Blake Haxton, Va’a Single 200m (VL2)

SWIMMING
Julia Gaffney, 200m individual medley (SM7)
* Natalie Sims, Mixed 4x100m Freestyle Relay (34 points)
Matthew Torres, Mixed 4x100m Freestyle Relay (34 points)

TRIATHLON
* Mark Barr, PTS2
Allysa Seely, PTS2

Amputee medal winners by the numbers

• Total amputee medalists (including team sports): 42
• First-time amputee medalists: 14
• Medals by discipline:
  • 16 swimming
  • 12 athletics
  • 7 triathlon
  • 2 cycling
  • 1 archery
  • 2 wheelchair basketball (5 amputee medalists on teams)
  • 1 sitting volleyball (10 amputee medalists on team)
• Youngest amputee medalist: Arelle Middleton (16)
• Oldest amputee medalist: Matt Stutzman (41)
• Record breakers:
  • Noelle Malkamaki, Shotput (F46), World record (14.06 meters)
  • Morgan Stickney, 400m freestyle (S7), Paralympic record (4:53.88 minutes)
  • Derek Loccident, high jump (T64), Paralympic record (2.06 meters)
  • Ezra Frech, high jump (T63), Paralympic record (1.94 meters)
  • Matt Stutzman, Individual Compound 15 arrow, Paralympic record (149 pts)
  • Ellie Marks, 50m freestyle (S6), American record (32.90 seconds)

The post US Amputee Medalists at the 2024 Paralympics appeared first on Amplitude.

“Recovery from limb loss is 10 percent physical, 90 percent mental,” Jakob Kepka says. “If you decide you’re going to do something, you do it. Other people might think your goals are illogical or irrational, but they’re your goals. So don’t listen to them.”

Kepka didn’t listen when people questioned the sanity of his HopeRaising Expedition, a bicycle ride from Krakow to Kyiv to lift spirits, inspire hope, and raise funds on behalf of Ukrainian amputees. After more than a year of planning, he left Krakow on August 10 and is now about halfway through the 900-kilometer (560-mile) journey, supported by the Freedom Space Foundation. By the time you read this, Kepka will have reached the Ukrainian city of Kremenets. He’ll cover the remaining 410 kilometers, pedaling on one leg, over the next two weeks, and reach Kyiv on September 11. Assuming all goes well.

That can’t be assumed, of course, given the missile barrage that Russia unleashed on targets across Ukraine this week. Just two days ago Kepka had to delay the start of his ride from Złoczów to Tarnopol because of an air-raid alert. “Alarms are a daily occurrence in Ukraine,” a HopeRaising volunteer noted on Facebook. “The further east we go, the more frequently they appear.”

But the 67-year-old Kekpa is not the type to scare easily. A Canadian citizen, former US Marine, and above-knee amputee, he’s bicycling across war-torn Ukraine because of the danger, not in spite of it. Ever since Russia invaded in the late winter of 2022, Kepka has risked time, money, and personal safety on behalf of the besieged nation. During 2022 he spent six months building barracks and renovating health clinics in western Ukraine. Last year he helped amass a few crates’ worth of prosthetic components for Penta Prosthetics, which donated them to Ukrainian limb-care facilities.

Those experiences provided the impetus for the HopeRaising Expedition.

“In the rural areas of Ukraine, I kept hearing the same story,” Kepka says. “You know: Andre’s 32 years old, he’s got a wife and two kids, he lost an arm or a leg at the front, and now he thinks his life is over. He lives in this small town with rudimentary medical care, and no one’s gonna give him a job. That bothered me, because I don’t believe anything like that myself. You do what you want to do, regardless of your physical disability. You just figure out. I thought there’s got to be a way to get such an idea across, to inspire people.”

You can chart the HopeRaising Expedition’s daily progress on Facebook and Instagram, and you can make a donation at the project’s Zrzutka page. Most of the social media content is posted in three languages (Polish, Ukrainian, and English), but you might need to hit the “translate” button for some of it.

Kepka is a pretty fascinating guy. We spoke with him last summer, when he was in the early stages of organizing the trip. A portion of our conversation is presented below, edited for length and readability.

What got you so interested in helping Ukrainian amputees?
I was born in Canada, but my dad was a Polish veteran. He was a Polish patriot, and I was raised Polish, not necessarily North American. The thing he drilled into me is that Poland’s your real home, and there’ll be a time in your life when you’ll have to go. It’ll be threatened again, and it’s your duty to go.

When the war in Ukraine started, I was watching CNN, the BBC, all the news feeds, and I was getting upset. More than upset—I was getting pretty angry. And I’m an angry person as it is. I couldn’t just sit around, so I started Googling humanitarian aid agencies that were recruiting volunteers to help the Ukrainians. I found this American group called Volunteers for Ukraine that recruited vets—former police, firefighters, and soldiers. [Kepka is a former US Marine.] I filled out the application, but I didn’t think I’d get a response, because who’s going to want a 60-something, one-legged guy?

But one of the questions was, “Do you speak any of the following languages?” And Polish was one of them. So I clicked yes, they got in touch with me, and they said they were working with a Polish foundation called Folkowisco. They were talking about creating a handyman team, and I have a background in construction, so they asked, “Would you be interested in being a member of that? We need your language skills.” I said sure, and they asked, “When can you go?” So I went over there in about June of 2022 [three months after the Russians invaded].

Were you focused on helping amputees right from the start?
No, we were just building facilities. We built a squad bay on the second floor of Folkowisco’s warehouse [in southeastern Poland] for volunteers to live in. I later moved into it myself. Then we went on to our next project, in a village called Nahachiv, just over the border, about 10 or 12 kilometers into Ukraine. The director of the hospital there asked us what we could do to fix up the building, and we said, “Tear it down. It has black mold, big holes in the roof.” So then he took us to the plaza and had us look at the second floor of a block in the old Communist-era office spaces. He asked us, “Can you renovate four of these offices and make them into a workable clinic?” We started on that project on July 4, your Independence Day, and we finished at the end of October.

I was there almost six months in total, between Poland and Ukraine. While I was over there, I traveled around a fair amount on weekends, and I was meeting a lot of new amputees. They would ask me about my prosthetic: “What kind of leg is that? Is it expensive?” And I would tell them, “Yeah, it’s very expensive. But it’s not a question of the quality of the leg so much as where your head’s at.”

Three weeks after I got home, I went to Montreal to have osseointegration surgery, and I was trying to figure out a way to continue to help in Ukraine. So my idea was: I’m a cyclist, and I can use that to inspire people and raise funds to get prosthetics to amputees in Ukraine.

Tell me about your cycling background.
That was my sport before I got hurt. It’s a sport I was interested in as a kid. The typical farm boy in Eastern Ontario in the 1970s would not even think about cycling, because it was weird. It’s not hockey, it’s not football, it’s not traditional. But I’ve never been what you would call a traditional person.

I got pretty serious about bicycling after I screwed up my leg in the Marine Corps in the 1980s. I already had a weak knee, and I screwed it up worse in the Marines and got discharged. I couldn’t run anymore, and you can’t be an infantryman in the Marines if you can’t run.

And how does a Polish-Canadian guy end up as a US Marine?
That’s another story. And it might get my old recruiter in trouble.

OK, then. Let’s move on. You got discharged, and then what?
I rode competitively until about 1999, and then I couldn’t ride anymore because my knee was that bad. In 2001 I had the first of six knee replacements and revisions in a 13-and-a-half-year period. After surgery number six, I got my wish. I got my leg cut off.

When did you start advocating for that?
After the fourth one failed. My surgeon wanted to fuse the knee, and I said no, because I knew people with fused knees. After the amputation, one of my goals—you know, in the rehab center, they ask “What are your goals?”—and one of mine was to get back on the bike. I had no idea how amputees rode, and I didn’t have a bike anymore, but I was determined to do that. This was right after the London Olympics and Paralympics, and a European cycling magazine called Roller had an article about a Spanish cycling team that was made up of amputees. I was going to see my son in France that year, so I went to Barcelona and met their coach and their top rider, a gold medalist who’s a double amputee. He’s an AK and a disarticulated shoulder amputee, all on the left side.

They told me to go back to Canada and get a racing license for insurance purposes, so if I crashed someplace I’d be covered. So I did that, but I didn’t have enough money to get a bicycle. Then another amputee told me about the Challenged Athletes Foundation, and I applied as a vet to Operation Rebound, and that’s how I got my first bicycle. They’ve been supporting me ever since then.

In 2018 I went back to Barcelona, and that’s where I learned how to pedal correctly. None of the cyclists on that team in Barcelona wore prosthetics. They all pedaled with one leg. So I went and trained with them for two weeks, and it was discouraging. We would ride up in the hills of Barcelona, and I would just fall over from exhaustion, like that guy in Laugh-in on the tricycle. Literally, that’s what happened. I couldn’t get my foot out of the clips, and I would just fall over. And they’re showing me no mercy whatsoever. They’d be upset because we only did 140 kilometers that day.

I came back home and eventually got back into shape, and by 2021 I clocked between 13 and 14,000 kilometers on the local roads.

From a practical perspective, what was involved in organizing the HopeRaising Expedition?
I had to find a humanitarian aid agency dealing with prosthetics that had projects in Ukraine, so that people who donate can get the tax receipt. I started with the Ukrainian Canadian Congress. You may not know this, but the largest diaspora of Ukrainians in the world is here in Canada, We have about 2 million people that identify as Ukrainian. There’s a big concentration out west in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. They were the ones who came in the early part of the 20th century and were given, basically, 50 acres and a mule. Those are the people who settled that area. You see old Ukrainian churches scattered all over the place in the middle of the wheat fields out there.

The UCC doesn’t support projects like this, so then I called my Polish contacts and they put my in touch with the Freedom Space Foundation. They said they’d support me, and they talked to their Ukrainian friends and set up a route and identified riders to join me as I go through towns. There are safe biking roads in Poland, but not so much when you cross the border. Ukrainians drive like maniacs.

I could do the ride in two weeks, but there’s also the thing of Eastern European hospitality. I’m not just gonna pedal through towns without stopping. There’s a lot of social and promotional stuff. I gotta kiss babies and shake hands and be asked by old grandmothers if I am married and do I want to meet their niece or granddaughter. I have to be told by a lot of Ukrainians, “You know, for a Pole, you’re not a bad guy.”

The HopeRaising Expedition continues through September 11. You can make a donation at the project’s Zrzutka page.

The post Jakob Kepka Is Pedaling for Prosthetics in Ukraine appeared first on Amplitude.

The United States will send 225 athletes to the 2024 Paralympics, including dozens of competitors with limb loss. It’s arguably the most robust US Paralympic roster ever, combining world-record holders, prior Paralympic medalists, and emerging stars who are favorites to claim their first career medals. Here’s a breakdown of Team USA’s amputee competitors by age, state, sex, sport, medal status, and more.

Total Paralympians with limb loss / limb difference: 74

Here’s the breakdown of amputee athletes by sport: 21 track and field, 13 swimming, 11 paratriathlon, 10 sitting volleyball, 5 wheelchair basketball, 4 cycling, 3 archery, 2 parashooting, 2 paracanoe, 1 powerlifting, 1 wheelchair fencing, 1 wheelchair tennis.

Returning Paralympians: 58

Jessica Long is appearing in her sixth Games, Jeremy Campbell his fifth. Numerous amputees will be appearing in their fourth Paralympics in Paris, including Melissa Stockwell, Oksana Masters, Trevon Jenifer, and Matt Stutzman.

Rookie Paralympians: 16

This dynamic group includes gold-medal favorites such as Noelle Malkamaki and strong medal contenders such as Derek Loccident, Arelle Middleton, and Ali Truwit.

Previous Paralympic medalists: 38

Jessica Long leads this pack with 29 career medals, followed by Oksana Masters (17) Ellie Marks (5), and Jeremy Campbell (4). More than a dozen US Parlaympians with limb loss have three previous medals.

Teenage amputee Paralympians: 4

The four youngest amputees on Team USA for the Paris Paralympics are archer Jordan White (15), shotputter Arelle Middleton (16), paratriathlete Emma Meyers (18), and high jumper Ezra Frech (19).

Over-40 amputee Paralympians: 8

The geezer contingent includes Eric Bennett (50), Jamie Whitmore (48), Travis Gaertner (44), Melissa Stockwell (44), Josh Cinnamo (43), Mohamed Lahna (42), Matt Stuzman (41), and John Joss (41).

Amputee Paralympians by state

Twenty-eight of the 50 states have placed at least one amputee on Team USA. California has the largest delegation, with nine. Next up are Colorado and North Carolina (6 apiece); Oklahoma and Texas (4); Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Minnesota (3); Arizona, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Washington (2). Nearly two-thirds of the amputees on the roster hail from southern or western states.

Amputee Paralympians by sex

The 74 amputee athletes on Team USA include 40 women and 34 men. Half of the women are clustered in just two sports, swimming and sitting volleyball.

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