 Trying to get the fan blade out of the frame. No! Almost! Am I going the right way? We're gonna say that's close enough. All right! Oh, it's like right above me. This is not gonna work. Let's try that. Ha! I did it. Hello there, my beautiful internet friends. Welcome back to my channel. Thank you so much for joining me here today on Faultless Joe. I am Joe, if you do not know me. I'm missing a foot. That's the title of this channel. And I'm gonna talk to you about the day 16 years ago that caused all of this, that caused me to eventually lose my leg that left me in pain for many, many years in the in-between and what actually happened on that day. I previously done a video about going back to the place where all of this happened. If you wanna see that, I'll link it up above. I think it's a pretty cool video. It's probably my favorite one that I've ever filmed because I tried to get like artistic with it. Let me know if I succeeded or failed there. I would highly recommend watching this video but this one will make perfect sense without it. Also, as we dive in today, if you would do me a favor and give this video a thumbs up if you like it at all, you know, I would appreciate it. It helps my video get out to more people. It really helps my channel and helps the algorithm here. So if you feel like doing that, that would be delightful but no worries if you don't. So I was 13 years old when I had an accident that caused a really bad ankle break that led to years of surgeries and procedures and more surgeries and more procedures and increasing pain until eventually at the age of 27, there were no good options left and the only logical thing for me to do with the agreement of my doctors and the encouragement of them was to amputate my leg. So that's decision I made two years ago and I've documented pretty much that whole journey on this channel but I've never really talked in depth about the day that I fell off the horse that I had that accident that led to all of this happening. So one thing you should know about me is that I was a horse girl as a kid. I loved horses and there was something magical about horses for a little 13 year old Joe. In fact, one day when we moved to Colorado we were driving down Black Forest Road. If you're curious, look it up on a map and there was this wide open field stretching towards the mountains and I thought to myself in my little 10 year old brain because that's how old I was when I moved, it would be the coolest thing in the entire world if one day I could gallop across that field, my hair streaming behind me as I was on this beautiful horse and I would just be this perfection of everything that I wanted to be. And guess what guys, that day actually came. This is gonna sound like a side story but I promise it's the same one. When I was 12 years old I became obsessed with Welsh corgis. I thought my life would be complete if only I could have one and my mom found an ad in the post office for corgi puppies. Now she did not want me to have a corgi puppy but she thought maybe I could help out with the corgi puppies, which was a lovely idea. I called the owner and she said, sure. So when the puppies were born I was there for their birth, which was awesome. And then I found out that this lady ran a barn and that's where I saw my opportunity. That's where I saw my in and I thought, you know what? Not only am I going to find a way to convince my mom that me having one of these corgi puppies is the right choice, I'm also gonna find a way to pay it off by working at that barn and being around horses, which is what I wanted anyway. So this was like a double win. And wouldn't you know, it actually happened. I give a lot of credit to my mom in the situation and also to the owner of the barn, Francis, who was absolutely lovely to me. These were pure red corgi puppies and she actually let me work off my debt there because they weren't exactly cheap but I didn't have the money for it. She let me work it off by working at the barn by mucking out stalls, by brushing down horses and I learned so much. I had no context or background for how to take care of horses or anything about them. I had never ridden one before to my knowledge and I got to be around them every day. Growing up, I was homeschooled, meaning that whenever I got done with the work I had for that day, I was done. And so I'd often be at the barn by two o'clock and I'd stay there until the sun started going down at five or six or seven and my mom would pick me up and I'd smell like a horse for days and I loved it. I promise this is all leading up to the day that I actually fell off the horse and shattered my ankle. As I worked at the barn, as I learned about horses, as I worked off my debt for my adorable little corgi puppy, Princess's name by the way, this is him and he was perfect. So it was never part of the deal for me to actually ride any of the horses, but the people at the barn were really nice so they let me ride from time to time. I never had really many formal lessons. I just sort of learned how to ride from picking up from what people were doing, from riding easy horses that basically taught me the basics of riding and it was awesome. And another very important point in this story is that this barn was located directly across the field, the field, the field where my hair was going to stream in the wind behind me and I was gonna be a beautiful princess riding on a strong horse and it was right there. And so I wasn't gonna ask but I always had in the back of my head if an opportunity ever arose that maybe I had a horse, I was gonna take it and I was gonna ride it in that field. I never did have a horse but a few of my friends who worked at that barn with me who had horses told me that they were gonna go riding in this field one day and I was ecstatic. I definitely got myself invited to that. I was like, please, please take me. I know I'm not that cool but please let me come with you. They took pity on me, the homeschooled girl that was like three years younger than them and were like, fine, yes, you can come with us. But, but, but, I did not have a horse so I needed to find one. I asked the owner and the owner's daughter if I could take one of their horses and they said, yes, absolutely. You can take Georgia. Georgia was an ex racing horse. She was a thoroughbred mare. She was chestnut in color and absolutely beautiful. And what I didn't quite realize about horses is that riding them in an arena, in a circle, you know, maybe jumping over a few things when they're in a contained area is very different than when you take a horse out in an open landscape, especially a horse that used to race and knows how to go very fast. So on this magical Saturday morning, my mom brought me to the barn, dropped me off and I tacked up my horse. The three of us walked our horses across the road. We found a little gate to get in, right? I don't technically think that all of this was legal but I was 13, what did I know? And we mounted our horses and we took off and it was truly incredible. This was the first time it ever actually galloped. Like I thought maybe I had in an arena, but no, there is a big difference between a horse going in a circle and a horse going in a straight line towards the horizon because that's what they're built to do. And Georgia, my horse, took off. And that exact moment is when I realized, oh, I have not done this before. This is very different. It's thrilling and terrifying. I remember just sort of like holding on for dear life, the reins and trying to like keep my balance and my composure, but it was that thrilling kind of frightening that feels freeing and like I was actually flying and I was like, this is it. My hair is streaming in the wind behind me. I look awesome. This is a perfect day. And everything went well for the first couple of fields we went across. We'd like get to the top of the hill, say everybody be safe, then we'd just go and we'd gallop for a while and then we'd come back. And it was the third field we came to. We came over this little ridge, Georgia took off. I was feeling a little bit more comfortable with the whole going super, super fast thing at that point. And then all of a sudden things started happening and things started happening really quickly. I remember the motion of going over her right shoulder. I didn't know what happened, but I found out after the fact that she had stumbled, she had tripped. Thankfully she didn't hurt herself. She didn't break a leg or anything like that. She kind of started to go down and I was already off balance from like trying to learn how to gallop on a horse going full speed for like the first time. And I could not stay up. I went over her shoulder. I remember that picture. And then I remember hitting like the back of my shoulders, almost my neck on the ground. It was a really hard fall. I remember darkness. Like I was laying in the grass with my eyes closed as I kind of came to you cause I did get knocked out for a second and hearing my friends running towards me cause they saw what happened and they were obviously kind of terrified. And I was like, no, no, I'm okay. And I tried to get up and then I kind of passed out. They caught me and I stayed on the ground and began to realize something was very wrong with my ankle. I had fallen off horses before, twice before actually once I broke my hand the second time nothing happened. It was all right. But something really didn't feel right. Here's the thing. We had been galloping and going in this field for a while now. My horse had taken off and there was little cell reception and we were not close to any road. So it was kind of a freaky situation in retrospect. At the time I was really out of it. I wasn't really thinking about how are we gonna get out of here when I can't walk? And also I lost a horse but we were able to make a phone call to the owners of the barn eventually and they brought a golf cart out to get us. I think I was in that field for probably about an hour with the pain in my ankle sort of gradually getting worse as I sort of came out of shock. They loaded me up in the golf cart. They took me to the road. My mom was waiting there and she immediately took me to the hospital. A quick side note about my lovely, beautiful horse, Georgia. For the record, I've said this in other videos but she didn't do anything wrong, right? She tripped. I tripped all the time in real life. I chose to ride her. Things happened, right? There's no resentment towards this lovely horse. But someone actually found her by the fence, by the road. They saw a fully saddled horse with no rider and from my understanding it kind of freaked them out but thankfully the horse got home safely. Everyone else was all right. So my mom takes me to urgent care first and there's no room at the inn. They are very, very busy. They say, you know what? I see that something's probably wrong but like it's gonna be hours. So you might wanna go home, just ice it, see what happens, right? This was from like a two second look. So we did that but by the time I got back home I was in so much pain, I couldn't get out of the car. So we went right back there and my mom said, no, we were taking care of this right now and I started getting x-rays and the pain continued to get worse and we realized it was actually a pretty bad break. The bottom of my tibia, which is the big bone in your leg had broken off and been shoved up an inch into my leg. Now, if you remember me describing the fall, I didn't fall on my ankle. I still have no idea to this day how I shattered my ankle so badly but it is what happened. The doctors were fascinated by my x-rays because they had not seen this kind of a break before. Again, it's not a good thing to impress doctors with new things they haven't seen before. They told me I needed to go to the hospital. I probably need surgery that night. We got there, they called in the surgeon, turns out the surgeon didn't get the message so there was no surgeon coming. They sent me home with pain medication and said, go see a specialist. You're gonna need surgery on this. Long story short, three days later because the swelling was so bad they couldn't cut into it because I didn't think they could stitch it back together. Three days later, I did have my first ankle surgery and it went okay but the problem is it didn't heal right so they had to break it again two months later and that led to everything that followed after that. Another surgery, a year later, an ankle fusion. After that, hardware removal. After that, that still didn't work so let's go on to injections. Okay, that's still not working. Maybe there's scar tissue. Let's open it back up and this went on for years. This went on until the time that I was 27. Like I mentioned before, during that whole time I still tried to stay really active. I did as much as I could but there was always pain. It got worse and worse and worse and to the point where I was not really walking that much. I was walking sometime but it was with a lot of pain and I didn't wanna live anymore. I didn't wanna live that life anymore. I couldn't do anything I loved. I was holding on to a piece of my body that was just dying and just causing me pain and suffering and there was no reason for that. There was the option that they could have replaced my ankle at that point but it wasn't a very viable option because at most it would have bought me like 18 months if it worked to maybe five-ish years but even then I would still need an amputation. I still have gone through another surgery. One that is not known to be successful in young people. One that would even more limit my mobility and I have to scale back what I was doing anymore and then I would still have to lose my leg and so I decided I'd rather lose it at 27 than 32 and that's what we did and the rest is history. Most of it which is documented on this channel in older videos. It changed the course of my life. It changed the course of being a teenager. I spent so many months and months and months on crutches and walking boots, taking pain medications like I said in increasing doses. It really changed my life but those moments happen and we can't predict when they're gonna happen. I'm glad that I had fun memories of that day up until the point that I fell off. I did get to realize my dream of just feeling gorgeous and awesome even though I was a 13 year old with bad skin and not a lot of social skills but for that moment galloping the field I was perfect. Up until the moment I took a tumble and everything changed. So that is what I remember of the day that changed my life forever. It is a monumental day in my life. It happened in August. I think it was August 16th. I have lost a little bit of track of the dates over the years which means I'm coming up on the 16th, yeah 16th anniversary of it happening but I'm finally getting towards the place with my leg. Now this one where I'm able to start doing more. I'm able to hike. I'm able to maybe in the near future run I can get on a bike sometimes. It's something I'm really grateful for. I'm able to do more now without a leg slowly but surely than I was able to do when I had that ankle that just wasn't working for me. So it's a decision that was complicated and overwhelming and a lot more than I expected but one I'm very grateful I got to make. Thank you for listening to my story here today guys. I really appreciate it. Thank you to my patrons for sponsoring these videos, for supporting me. You really helped me more than I can say. I'm really grateful for each and every one of you. If you're interested in joining my Patreon in financially supporting this channel and what I do here, here's a link on screen, how you can do that and also the link is in the description down below if you wanna click it. There are different perks and tiers and things like behind the scenes videos or bloopers videos or early access from time to time and updates and things of that nature so check it out. To you watching this video right now, thank you for hanging out with me for a few minutes. Thank you for listening to my story. I really appreciate it. I don't know who you are but I know that you are someone, you are a person who has so much value somewhere in the world watching this video with me, choosing to spend a few minutes with me and it means the world to me so thank you. I love you guys, I'm thinking about you and I'll see you in the next video. Bye guys.