 You never know what life is going to throw at you. You're going through daily life, taking care of the kids, going to work, and then you get thrown a curveball. My name is Margaret Anderson. I'm 51 years old. I was a teacher, a high school teacher locally. My husband and I have been married for 25 years and our son, Eric, is 11 years old and our daughter, Amelia, is 7 years old. So we met in Baltimore in the natural products trade show going up in Escalator. The challenge was she lived in New Jersey and I lived in Arizona, so she was geographically undesirable. And so over the course of a year we decided that we needed to be together. Eventually I convinced her to move to Arizona and then we got engaged. I had chemotherapy and radiation and it all culminated in my having an otologous stem cell transplant where I'm giving my own stem cells that had left me, you know, while I was, I'm grateful to be alive, I'm grateful to be here, but it also has some long-term side effects and the lowered immunity is one of them. And she recovered, but she from that point was always immune compromised, so a little more susceptible to colds and flus and things of that nature. And then she dropped the hammer. She said, I need to be close to my parents and, you know, nobody told me the rules. If you married a Jersey girl, you have to move to Jersey. So, you know, we started to rebuild our life. My daughter was born in February of 2013 and so I was home with her and I just thought with two young kids that I was feeling run down because of childcare, normal stuff. One night I couldn't even get off the couch. I spent the night on the couch because I was that exhausted couldn't make it up the stairs. He noticed that I had black splotches on my flank all along my stomach and back. He took me to my primary care physician. She told my husband to immediately send me right to JFK to the ER. I really blacked out at that point. The attending physician noticed that she was in distress and she immediately was rushed into emergency and they had to put lines in her arm and they tried to get lines other places. When the bacteria overtook her bloodstream and her immune system the cascade was very, very quick. If you look at the laundry list of symptoms for septic shock I had them all. The extreme fatigue and exhaustion and the mental acuity being off and my dexterity was off and they were trying to take care of the heart rate and take care of the blood pressure take care of the circulatory issues. It was almost like, what do we tackle first? She's incredibly strong, right? Everything that they threw at her she fought through it and it was a difficult time. For two weeks, kind of back and forth every day was a new report, a new story kind of a new thing to worry about. It was hard. My daughter was just an infant. My son was only four. It was devastating. I didn't even think about being grateful to be here but I was just worried about what I could have lost. We were very fortunate that we had a lot of support. The hospital was great. We were able to be really involved with her care every day from early in the morning until late at night we were able to be there to comfort her and to support her. My family, my mom, my brother, uncle's sister, they all came out over those first months to help out. We were very fortunate. Came out of sedation a little bit at the coma a little bit so I was so confused. I thought I was in the hospital in Arizona and the first thought that I had was that I relapsed. I remember saying, oh no, it's cancer again. I thought I was in the hospital for cancer not for septic shock. So it was like a month of dealing with the coma for a couple of weeks and then trying to rebuild my strength and then get the circulation see if it would get back and at that point we recognized that it wasn't going to get better. We first started to notice that my toes were turning blue. They looked like little blueberries that the circulation wasn't getting down there and the gangrene started to set in and at that point it looked like amputation was inevitable. My daughter, like I said, was an infant. She's so young. My son was young. I had to take care of them. My husband was doing double duty and he was trying to work and also take care of the kids and we had a lot of support but that was my main motivation to try to take care of my family again. I met Dr. Ustall post-surgery after my double amputations and Dr. Ustall laid out pretty clearly that I had a lot of work to do. I would have to strengthen and prepare my residual limbs so they could support the prosthesis and eventually bare weight on them and do the physical activity to lead somewhat some semblance of a normal life. It was never even a thought to me to not have the limbs. I needed the limbs. I needed the prosthetics. I had to chase around two kids. There was no question that that's what my course was going to be. I was going to work toward that goal. My first interaction with Margaret was while she was in the hospital in the rehabilitation center. She had really survived this catastrophic event where she was really just shut down. She had what we call multi-organ system failure where she required dialysis, IV fluids. She had periods of confusion because of low blood flow to her brain. And ultimately she lost both legs because of the poor blood flow due to low blood pressure. She was really very sick and she was slowly emerging from that period of this terrible devastating illness and then subsequent disability because of the patient of both her legs. Here we have a young, hopefully otherwise healthy mom with two young kids working as a teacher that now her life has changed so dramatically and we're thinking we're planning on how to get her back to that. But we can't sort of complete the whole process in one step. We go small steps at a time. So the staff at JFK was incredible for physical therapy and for all the work she did for occupational therapy and rehab and just really working to get the mental acuity back. They were fantastic. I remember that early on I had to shrink-wrap my limbs so they wouldn't swell so I could fit into my temporary prosthetic and I didn't even want to touch my limbs at first. I was really... I remember just staring at the hospital and the nurses were like, grab them. While it helped me, I think with the realization of what my new situation was it was also kind of hard to let go. It's not like you get released from the hospital the swelling goes down post-surgery and then you could automatically jump into your prosthetics. It's a time-consuming process because you are shaping the legs, you are shifting so much. So it took several months. I was impatient at that point. I wanted my new legs but I was in the temporaries the more you walk on the legs the more that you get the fitting right and then you're ready. So it really is a very comprehensive multi-specialty approach where we're making sure the medical problems are under good control her recovery from all of her other insults to her body were getting better and yet doing the physical approach to fitting her with artificial legs even that process alone is a long, slow, step-wise process. The transition period between where she could get on her legs and maneuver she was completely wheelchair bound so all of the little things that we take for granted had to be accommodated and even today you can't shower in the legs right so when she gets ready for bed she takes her prosthetics off and then she's in the wheelchair and she's got the same challenges that anybody wheelchair has. I had that first moment taking my first few steps with the occupational therapists at JFK and they just took away and had their arms out. I had someone in front of me and someone behind me so that I wouldn't waver and that was for the longest time I'm staring at these legs, the prosthetics the sleeves, all of the equipment which is so foreign to me at that point it gets to a point where you can feel the nerves as if they're going down to my feet and it almost feels natural and and that comes with time I mean that was jubilation that was another ping did it so I set all the little goals I'm going to go home I'm going to lift a laundry basket I'm going to be able to pick up my daughter I remember that clearly as one of my big goals being able to pick up and carry my children for me the first time she could bend over and pick our daughter up off the floor and pick her up and hold her that was an amazing my whole school it's fantastic when we see patients regain their independence in almost any activity but for a patient that loses both legs to amputation and then is finally able to get up and walk that's really what rewards me and our whole team when she says I want to go back to walk on the beach with my family that's a fantastic goal so to get her there really meant building a program that got her from where she was right now at a very low physical functional level to what was then going to be a very high functional level I've always loved the beach I mean the shore I love coming from Jersey and loving the shore but that was one place that my family liked to go some of our best memories are going down the shore that is our place and it's one place that I can at least forget a little bit about this situation it's different I'm not running to the shore like I used to as a teenager but it's one place where we can all go and kind of breathe and relax and kind of feel our place in the scheme of life here when you have two artificial legs walking on the beach is very challenging we had to go step by step back to just simple walking on a level surface then building up her endurance and her balance and then walking outdoors on uneven surfaces getting back home with her family and then finally then getting to the point where she can tolerate something as unstable and unsteady as sand at the beach I'm grateful for all of the people who chipped in and helped build me back up to something newer something that is different than what I've lived for 40 some odd years it's an adjustment but there is an overarching sense of gratitude I mean how do you thank someone who has given you another lease on life and who has supported you every step of the way when you're at your when you're stripped bare of everything and you're at your lowest I mean it's a tremendous sense of gratitude when Margaret's in her prosthetics she is mobile to take care of the normal things around the home to drive her car with hand controls she's able to go to the store she's able to take care of the kids with some concessions and adaptations around the house to make things work better for her she has very much a normal life plus she has robot legs it's trying to be as normal as you possibly can it's a very significant challenge but she's an incredibly strong woman she's an incredibly strong person and she's adapted and we've all adapted from where she started to where she is today it's a miracle it's a big adjustment even 7 years later for me and it's constantly evolving as it should because I'm doing new things now I've done before and just allow for the bad days and be flexible with it I want to get better I want to get stronger and get better and still advocate for amputees I belong to a couple of groups that do discussions and support and also legislative support for amputees I'd like to think that we're now a very average life EJ enjoys karate, riding bikes playing with his sister Amelia is a wonderful 7 year old we have normal activities trying to take school in stride going to church on the weekends visiting the grandparents going swimming we very much enjoy going to the beach we're fortunate that we can travel a little bit in normal times kids love going to Hershey for example so all of these things we're able to enjoy and we're very very fortunate to have that my advice is to find out what's important for you to do for me it was going to the beach it was being able to share that time with my family you don't have to let go of your dreams it might be a different way to go about it you might have to circumvent the way that you thought you were going to achieve what you wanted and along the way you discover these new goals that you have for yourself and it's a big victory you have to be open to constantly surprising yourself when you're an amputee because you will surprise yourself