 Good morning there, my beautiful, lovely internet friends, and welcome back to my channel. I'm gonna let you in on a shocking secret. I'm an amputee. It's true, and in my comments section, I'll often get the same questions over and over again about like, how did you learn how to drive? How did you learn how to swim? Because in a lot of people's minds, these are gonna be the most difficult activities. False, ouch, that pulled my hair out. This is very sticky and jelly, and it'll catch your hair and it doesn't feel good. False, this video I wanna reveal the top five most difficult things that took me so much time to learn, and some of them that I'm still learning. Now, I am in an Airbnb right now. It's pretty cute. I actually did just wake up, so I'm gonna talk to you as we get ready for the day. Let's head downstairs and get my leg on first. First things first, coffee, and this place has an espresso machine, which I'm kind of obsessed with, so let's get that sweet, sweet caffeine flowing. I absolutely love this adorable little breakfast nook, so let's sit here, sip some coffee. Let's start off with traveling, because this has been something that you think I would have figured out by now, but even three years into this whole limbless thing I still struggle with. So think about when you travel, right? Like, you gotta think about socks, underwear, what kind of outfits you're gonna wear, what kind of medications you might need, make sure it's all packed and good to go. Take that and then double it, and then add on the stakes that if you do not remember correctly or plan far enough ahead, you're not gonna be walking. That sounds dramatic, but it's also kind of honest. I went on a trip to Hawaii where I was at the beach and some sand got in the valves of my leg, and it was broken for like a day. Like, I could still walk, but it was making weird noises. It wasn't suctioning onto me correctly. It was really uncomfortable, and I was like, am I gonna spend the next eight days in Hawaii unable to walk? There are a lot of things that can go wrong in general with your leg, but to think ahead to bring all of them, you're kind of bringing an additional suitcase. And here's an example of what I was packing when I was going to Hawaii, right? If I wanted to be fully prepared. So it's a lot of thinking ahead. It's also a lot of additional anxiety, and these aren't things that you can pick up at like the local CVS or Walgreens. They are things that you have to get from your prosthetist and pretty much just them or it takes a while to order. So if something breaks, if something goes wrong, I'm SOL. Figuring out how to be comfortable on planes. Do I leave my leg on? Do I take my leg off? Do I ask a stewardess to put my leg in the overhead bin? It was just different. There's definitely a huge learning curve to traveling, to planning ahead. And it's the one thing on this list that I'd say I'm actively still getting better at. Okay, coffee is flowing through the veins. Let's get dressed for the day. You know, I was gonna like put makeup on and look super cute for the camera, but you guys saw me when I just woke up, so I think we can dispense with that. Yes, all right. Thing number two that was incredibly difficult, frustratingly and unexpectedly so is an amputee. But before we get to that, a word from our very fitting sponsor today. I'd like to give a big shout out to our sponsor today, AWS Courses Launched on Amazon. AWS Courses are tech industry based and they work to overcome the barrier to entry in the tech world. So speaking on a personal note, over the past three years, my life has looked a lot different than it did before. There have been so many things to adapt to, overcome and figure out how to cope. 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So check out AWS courses today. Link in the description to start learning new skills today. Thank you so much to AWS courses for sponsoring today's video. Thank you for checking out that link and helping to support this channel. And with that being said, let's get back into it. I'm not really sure what that was. Yeah, let's back into the topic at hand. Okay, so skill number two that was very difficult to learn as a new amputee that I never would have even considered being a thing. How to communicate how your leg feels very, very clearly. So when you are getting fit for a prosthetic socket these things are not cut and dry. You don't just like get casted for your leg. Everything feels fantastic and you're good to go. It'd be really nice if it works that way but it doesn't. There are a lot of complications like the fact that there are gonna be pain and pressure points. The fact that your limb is gonna be shrinking and changing sizes for years upon years. If you go into your prosthetist and you're like, hey, my leg doesn't feel good. They're not gonna be able to fix it unless you get very specific about exactly what is hurting. Exactly what doesn't feel good. Is it pressure or is it pain? Is it only with certain movements? Does it last longer than 15 minutes after you take your leg off? Are there any red marks involved? And then they take your leg back. They make some adjustments. They give it back to you. You try it on and you have to figure out if it feels okay and that can be really difficult when everything feels so foreign and so weird. And for me personally, I feel like that's one of the reasons why getting fit for a prosthetic leg that fits good takes so much time because you're trying to figure out does this feel right? I don't know. I've never done one of these before. Sometimes you don't know until you've walked on it for days. And when I say, hey, it hurts here when I walk. Fix it, Zach. He has to be an artist and figure out how to best alleviate pressure in the area that I've hopefully clearly communicated. Working with a prosthetist is a collaborative process and you have to be willing to be like, nope, that's not it. Nope, that still doesn't feel good. I'm so sorry. I really appreciate the work that you're doing but this still hurts. You've got to find a way to be articulate, to be very respectfully and kindly as sort of for your own body because there is no way they can make this work well for you if you cannot communicate what you need. Okay, so true story. I've been in this Airbnb for just about three days now and I've spent absolutely no time in this adorable room. Look, there's like a chess area. I could play chess with myself. That would be sad but let's do it. Should I be white or black? I think white starts first, doesn't it? I shall start with the Queen's Gambit. Is that a thing? I don't know. I watched the show, it was pretty cool. Take that. Really? Should I open with that move? I can counter this in a heartbeat. Thing number three that was kind of my sworn enemy for a brief period of time was stairs. Learning to walk on stairs was much more difficult than learning to take normal steps on a prosthetic leg because the mechanics of how your limbs move are completely different. There were so many times I would kind of jack up my hip or kind of tweak my lower back because I was still trying to walk downstairs like I had two meat legs but I didn't. Here's the thing, prosthetic legs, absolutely incredible but they do not move the same way that a foot that is joints does. So you've got to learn how to step differently and also the balance takes a little while to get control of. The thing that I learned that was really helpful was that you cannot step with your full prosthetic foot down on a stair. You kind of have to dangled off the side here. I'll show you. Like this because your ankle doesn't have the range of motion that it used to have. To be able to bend your knee and kind of kick that forward you've got to have the motion of coming down the stair to do that effectively. It did take a little while to kind of gauge how to do that comfortably and naturally where now I can just kind of bounce down stairs where at first it was very specific watching where I was putting my feet because I didn't want to fall. Because honestly I had seen enough doctors and I didn't want an ER trip for a busted wrist. I think it is clear with my two opening moves that I've beat, do you surrender? Yes, yes I do. Okay, awesome. Let's move on. Oh, I didn't realize that they have a Mr. Rogers book sitting here. I absolutely love Mr. Rogers. He's like my hero. Let's make the most of this beautiful day. Okay, so thing number four. The social impact of being in amputees is pretty substantial. So there are little things that you'd probably expect like people staring at you in public if they can see that you're missing a leg, being asked questions, some changes in relationships. Though honestly, most people in your life if they care about you, if they're close there's not like a major relational change. But the one thing that became very exhausting very quickly was having to find words to quickly tell people I didn't know my story. Because a lot of people ask like, oh my God, hey, I see you're like, what happened? And for a long time I always felt like a deer in the headlights because it was like, this is new to me. This is still kind of painful. I want to be able to answer your question to satisfy your curiosity. But maybe I'm a little overwhelmed right now. Maybe I don't like the fact that I no longer feel invisible in society. I don't like the fact that everyone's staring at me and wondering about me. And so how do I answer your question? Kindness and compassion make this a good interaction but also get out of it as quickly as possible. So what I figured out that I had to do is find a very concise way that was almost rehearsed and memorized to be like, oh yeah, I had a really bad horseback riding accident. They worked to try to save my ankle but it didn't work and here we are now. Politely exit conversation because there are some days where I might be up for having a chat with someone about it because people have questions but there are other days where especially at the beginning there it was a little overwhelming to talk about especially when it could come out of nowhere. And while I could always say, hey, I appreciate the question. I'm not in a place to talk about this. I found that for me sort of having the rehearsed sentence to fall back on where I could answer someone's question, be kind and then move on worked really well for me. But that was definitely a learning curve to realize I cannot tell everyone my full story every time they ask because that is so emotionally exhausting and draining to me. Which brings us to thing number five. Let's move to another room because seeing changes are more interesting in videos I feel like. Oh wow. This couch does not look comfortable to look at. It is very comfortable to sit on though. Let me make myself at home and rip my leg off. Okay, so I realized by clicking on this video what you were probably expecting at least I'm guessing is a long list of structural logistical things like the actual process of learning to walk which yes was hard or learning to bike again or things like that but in all reality for me and my personal experiences is gonna vary for everybody. Everything that happened in my mind like all of the mental aspects of adjusting life as an amputee were exponentially more challenging because I can learn a skill, right? Like I can learn how to walk properly, walk correctly. But the next thing that really took a while to learn and was a challenge to adapt to was expectations. When I lost my leg people had one of two reactions, right? Either they thought that I was incredibly inspiring I was definitely gonna run marathons immediately now because why wouldn't I? Or they thought it was sad and pathetic and my life was over and they wouldn't want to live my life if they were in my situation. It was very divided by people on the internet or sort of on the periphery of things or even some like acquaintances who expected me to be this pillar of inspiration. I'm just gonna say something that's super not socially acceptable but I realized that I fit into society's mold of acceptably disabled. What I mean by that is I am still fairly independent I'm grateful for that ability right now. I fit into enough of the parameters of America's version of acceptably attractive able to talk about this. I realized that when it comes to disability I'm sort of the entry level and most people find a way to be comfortable with because I can present myself like an able-bodied person even though I am not one. And so oftentimes the perception of me is someone who's incredibly inspiring, incredibly positive because I'm still living life incredibly oh my God you're just amazing. And I really, it took me a moment to learn what to do with that because suddenly as I was going through this massive life change, a huge loss, a lot of grieving a lot of people were looking up to me and expecting me to be something or to do something cool just because I had lost my leg. Most of the representation you see of amputees in the media is like paralympic athletes and commercials. Now we're seeing more disabled models which is absolutely amazing, you know running and doing cool things. You hear these amazing stories of so and so lost their leg and they still climb this amazing mountain. Oh my God, that's incredible. And so a lot of people's only interaction with amputation or disability is that like you must be doing incredible things. Wow, look at you. And it can be difficult to get past that and be like nope, I'm still just a person. I don't have to be inspiring. I don't have to do jack shit. Sorry for cussing dad. And kind of on the flip side when people have this expectation of your life is over and poor, poor you you feel a need to prove them wrong which I think is okay but for me can get into toxic territory pretty quickly where I'm like I have to show everybody I'm 100% okay and I'm doing great all the time and look at me doing all these things. It becomes easy to neglect the grief because you want other people to think you're positive you're doing this, you're gonna be just fine. You wanna be just fine but there is a process of pain and hurt that you gotta feel that you gotta go through and you don't have to be happy go lucky all the time. You don't have to be inspirational. You don't have to be anything other than exactly what you are. And it took me years to learn that to figure out what I actually wanted to do. Like I actually did want to learn how to run. I actually did want to run a 5K. I got to do that. It was amazing but that was for me that wasn't for the expectations of other people. It wasn't to prove someone wrong or to be inspiring just because I could be. It was because it was something I genuinely wanted. Realizing that people have very set and preconceived notions when it comes to you is a weird thing to navigate. I've talked about this before but there's kind of this thing that we like to refer to as inspiration porn that's like the posters of someone in a wheelchair getting up and going outside and we're like, wow, what's your excuse not to get outside today if this person can do it with all they're facing? And it really is very patronizing and not very helpful when it comes to seeing disability as whole people and not as the only aspect of your identity. There's just a lot to mentally adjust to and honestly more than anything the mental health process of learning how to be an amputee, learning what this actually means to me, learning how much of my identity this is gonna inhabit or not. It takes a long time and is an ever-revolving process. Now I wanna take a left turn for just a second and talk about some of the things that people would think would be very difficult. Swimming, literally no different. I mean like it feels a little different because I'm kicking with like just my nubbin but no, I don't swim in circles. Driving super simple, I literally just tuck my leg underneath my other leg and I drive with my left foot. Sexual intimacy is something a lot of people have questions about like well how do you do it? And I'm like well first of all that's not necessarily your business but second of all, part of me is gone but not a lot changes with that. Those are my top five logistical and also just interpersonal and mental things that took a lot of learning and some of them are still very much in process. I'm curious to any of these surprise you or what would you like to hear about as far as what was difficult versus what was easy, let me know in the comment section down below. Thank you for hanging out with me and letting me share pieces of my little life with you I really appreciate it. Big thank you again to AWS Courses for sponsoring today's video. Please check them out in the link in the description. I think what they're doing is really cool and you could get started for free, taking these courses for free right now. So check it out. To my amazing patrons over on Patreon, thank you for allowing me to do what I do with your generous support. It means the world to me and to you watching this video right now, thank you so much for spending a few minutes out of your day, here with me today, here in me chat. It means the world to me. You could be anywhere else doing anything else but you chose to hang out with me for a few minutes and I really appreciate that. I love you guys, I'm thinking about you and I will see you in the next video. Should I take a shower today? I don't know, I'm gonna be like alone in this house the rest of the day. My hair doesn't look too greasy, does it? All right, I think I'm gonna skip the shower. Don't tell anyone. Hey. And her from the sky.