 Hello there, my beautiful internet friends, welcome back. The rest of this video is going to be an open letter to MMA fighter, Chris Weidman. He recently suffered a horrific injury during a fight and is facing the small possibility of amputation. As such, I wanted to take some time to share my expertise as of low than the amputee and also someone who's been very involved with martial arts for years now and to share a couple words of wisdom that I wish more people had told me before I became an amputee and this also goes for anyone who is facing amputation. So with that being said, let's dive in. Hi, Chris, I'm Jo. I go by full of show on the internet because I am down a foot. This is due to a horseback riding accident years ago. I had a bunch of surgeries, eventually opted for amputation so I could start living a more active life. A week and a half ago, I was at a friend's house watching your fight and I saw what you went through and my heart broke for you. I know injuries happen in fights, right? But that kind of injury is so rare and really horrific to have to go through. I watched a recent Instagram video where you said that amputation is something that is potentially on the table. On the off chance, that does have to happen. I wanted to share a couple things with you. I want to acknowledge the fact that facing something like this for anybody is a lot but especially when you are an athlete and when you are a high level athlete, it's crushing and it's terrifying. It's not something anyone should ever have to face. Unfortunately, many people do. First and foremost, losing a leg is a big deal. Like let's not sugarcoat that. It's scary and it's a lot but I promise you, it's not the end. It's not the end of your life. It's not the end of doing everything that you love. It is a major change but life is beautiful and worth living on this side of limb loss. I know a lot of people who said to me things like, oh, I couldn't lose a limb. I'd rather die and I understand where that's coming from but the reality is this is obviously a challenge. It's been a lot to go through but it's just one piece of my life. If you do have to go through amputation, it is a big loss. It is a grief that is worth processing. It's worth talking to professionals and friends and family members, acknowledging the emotions you have going through it, taking the time to grieve that loss but like any loss, there is life on the other side of it. When I was facing this myself, it was so overwhelming because there were so many questions I didn't even know where to start, right? I was Googling amputation and limb loss and trying to find all the information I could and there's only so much you can know. As I went through this, you realize how incredibly adaptive and perseverant we are as people, as human bodies, it's amazing how quickly your body can recover after something like this. Like a lot of people are putting on prosthetics and starting to learn how to walk eight weeks after surgery. I think a lot of people, myself included, before I became an amputee, look at amputees and feel a lot of mixed feelings. Curiosity, like what is that prosthetic? What's going on there? What's their story? What happened? Maybe, honestly, some discomfort. That's different. I don't know that much about disability. I don't wanna say the wrong thing. Maybe it's just weird. I don't know where you find yourself on that spectrum, but I know that I had a lot of preconceptions and misconceptions about amputees and about amputation. And I think the biggest one is that it becomes your whole identity and it becomes your whole life. And for a brief period of time and adjusting to amputation, yeah, that might absolutely be accurate, but at the end of the day, I'm still just Joe and I'm the same Joe I was before losing my limb. I just had different experiences and I've grown a bit as a person and gone through some stuff and here we are. If you have to lose a limb, please know that you're still gonna be you. To be honest with you, though, I spend a lot of time talking about amputation online because I like being a part of this community. I wanna share my experience in reality, ask my friends or family members. It's not a topic of conversation that comes up that much because it's just a normal part of life now. Oftentimes, if I'm wearing pants, people forget that I'm an amputee. You get to make life whatever you want it to be and being an amputee can be as little or as much of your identity as you want it to be. I know that you, Chris, have gone through your fair share of surgeries so you're very familiar with recovery times and what all that looks like. For a lot of people within six to eight weeks, they're getting fitted for a prosthetic, learning how to walk, getting comfortable on that, and then just excelling from there. I had friends who were running marathons within like a year. That was not me, it took me a lot longer. Everybody's timeline is a little bit different but now, at this point, I'm trying snowboarding for the first time. I'm trying Ninja Warrior gym because that stuff's awesome. Learning how to run, I'm back in horseback riding. I'm taking my dogs for hikes in the mountains of Colorado. I'm very active and I lead an active life. Jiu-jitsu, I'm but a lowly, no-stripe blue belt but it's very difficult for anyone to keep side control on this side so I mean that's a plus. With my prosthetic leg, you learn the adjustments you need to make and the adaptations for different kinds of sports that you need to make but you can still live a super active life. Though by no means is it the same as having a meat leg as I like to call it. There are incredible innovations with prosthetics. We can do really cool things now. I'm honestly more active now than I was before my amputation. Facing cutting off a body part is not something that many people have had to look at. There's no good guidebook for going through this. However, the community of amputees out here are freaking awesome. If you have any questions, if this becomes a potential reality in your life, if you're going through with this, please don't hesitate to reach out to support groups or amputees that you might know or myself, whoever because a lot more people have gone through this than I even knew about. Like there are millions of amputees out there living awesome lives and also many of us who are very willing to answer your questions, talk about fears, talk about concerns. There's a lot of information out there and I have a lot of other videos about kind of the more logistical process of like going through an amputation and prosthetics and what that's like and adjusting to it and learning to walk again and then getting active and all of that. So I'm not gonna dive into any of those details right now because I don't think that's probably what you need but if you do have any questions I am more than happy to answer any question. If you need any support, please don't hesitate to let me know. I am so sorry that you're going through all of this that you suffered the injury that you suffered that you're having to face this really hard recovery now that there are terrifying options like amputation but coming from a below the knee amputee which is I believe what you would be facing as well if you have to go through with this. I promise you there's a way through it. My heart and a lot of hearts are with you as you go through this. With that being said I'm gonna keep this short and to the point but I really just wanted to reach out and say to you Chris or to anyone watching this you might be facing this. It is absolutely petrifying. It's not anything anyone can ever prepare you to have to face with that being said though there's so much support, so many resources and more than that. I know for a fact that there is a way that you can get through this. I hope that anyone watching this is able to keep all their limbs, able to keep all their body parts but in case you aren't I just wanted to share a couple words today and like I said please feel free to reach out. Thank you so much for watching everybody. I truly appreciate it. I'm gonna end that here. Thank you to my patrons over on Patreon for supporting these videos. I appreciate it and most importantly to you, whoever you are watching this video right now thank you so much for taking a few minutes out of your day to listen to this today, to hang out with me. You could be anywhere else in the world doing anything else and you chose to listen to me for a few minutes. I truly appreciate that. I love you guys. I'm thinking about you and I'll see you in the next video. Bye guys.