 Oh God, this is so weird. Oh, I hate saying this. I can viscerally remember what it felt like. Oh my God. I literally did not know that I said this. I have no recollection of saying that. Hello there, my beautiful internet friends. Before we dive into this video, I forgot to film a very important part. And by the way, the reason you're not seeing my face right now is because I feel pretty sick. What you're about to watch is me reacting and reviewing videos that I made when I was trying to make the decision to cut my leg off exactly two years ago today. October 11th is the two year anniversary of my leg amputation, which is crazy to think about. And I'm about to go through all the videos that I made while I was trying to make that decision. But if you allow me 30 seconds before we dive in, I just wanna thank some really important people, namely my husband. When you go through something like losing a limb, it's not just you who experiences it. He has been by my side for everything, for every up and every down. I can never express my love and gratitude for that, Brian, thank you so much. My family has been beyond incredible. My mom and my dad have been vital in me being able to go through any of this. Do so many friends. I can't tell you how much you mean to me and how much you've helped this whole process. I can't name everybody. I'm gonna put some names up on screen, but I just wanna say you all mean the world to me and I'm so grateful. And you guys, you who clicked on this video and is watching this, you have been such a vital part of my healing and my journey getting here. So thank you. In reviewing the past two years, it's not just me. There's no way I could have gotten here without all of the support from so many people. I'm so grateful for them. Okay, enough with the sappy. Let's dive into this video. I'm really excited to share it with you. Hello there, my beautiful, lovely, talented, delightful internet friends. Welcome back to Footless Show. I am Jo. I am missing a meat foot and today, October 11th, marks exactly two years since this happened. I've been invaded. I took that step exactly two years ago. I still very distinctly remember the day that I walked into the hospital and I knew I wasn't gonna be able to walk back out. I knew that there was gonna be a part of my body that was gone. But in the weeks and months leading up to that, I had to do a lot of serious thinking. No one really prepares you for how to make a decision to chop a body part off if it's not serving you well anymore and there's no hope left for it. And it was the biggest and scariest decision I've ever made and the biggest risk I've ever taken. If you don't know me or my story, the long and short of it is, is that when I was 13, I had a bad horseback riding accident. It shattered my ankle. They fixed it up and it didn't heal right. So they had to do surgery again and it didn't heal right. So they had to do surgery again and that pattern continued for quite a long time. And by the time I was 27, I'd had over 10 surgeries and procedures on my ankle and it just was trash. It felt horrible, it was so painful. It made it so that I couldn't really live life. I was still walking around, I was still doing stuff, but I was in a lot of pain and all of the activities that made me me, all the things that I wanted to do, I was no longer able to do. And so after extensive thought and consulting with friends, consulting with surgeons, we made the decision that a baloney amputation was my best hope, was my best chance at a life that was less pain and more something I actually wanted to be around for. So one of the ways that I kind of processed this decision and helped figure it out for myself was by talking into a camera. True story, I recorded myself in some of the videos you're gonna see talking about this decision process, talking about what I was thinking and feeling and all of that. And I didn't really have any intention of ever publishing it on the internet. I mean, I recorded it with the purpose of it could be used for that one day, right? But I thought, this is so obscure no one's gonna ever wanna hear about this. Who has to make the decision to cut their own leg off, right? Apparently a lot of people being an elective amputee is not that rare of a thing when it comes to amputees. And when I made the decision that amputation was the best choice for me, I decided to publish those videos. And what came next, I never could have expected. I continued to make videos kind of going through the hospital and coming back home and recovering, it was really therapeutic for me to do that. And that became this YouTube channel but I have not watched back those videos, those first videos that I've published since I published them. I've seen like bits and pieces if I went in to check on comments or something like that. But I've not actually watched myself from two years ago making the weirdest, most bizarre, uncomfortable, terrifying, exciting, mostly terrifying decision of my life. So today we're gonna take a journey back in time and watch those videos. As we dive in, if you feel like giving this video a thumbs up, hitting that like button, it helps this video get out to more people. And if you wanna see more of me, hit that subscribe button, I'd really appreciate it. Hey guys, my name is Jordan and right now I have two legs but in a few months I may only have one. I am actively in the process of trying to decide what the best option for my future is and I may be having my leg amputated. Just a cosmetic note to start off, I look like I haven't slept in days and also I've not seen the sun in weeks here. Maybe you should get outside, Joe. I am recording this video to start my journey and if I do decide to have this leg amputation I will probably start publishing these videos as part of sort of my journey of healing. So that brings up a really good point actually. If you don't know, this is actually my second channel. My first channel is Trauma Talk and I was running that channel for about a year before I recorded this video and on that channel I talk about difficult subjects like life and the aftermath of trauma and I realized that putting things into words for other people helped me make sense of my own life and my emotions and my experiences. And so when I knew I was gonna be facing this kind of bizarre decision, this kind of life change, I was like, you know what? I'm gonna use that tool that I've recently discovered. I'm gonna talk into a camera and see if it helps me process things and it turns out it really did. I got through the surgery a few months later at the follow-up appointment. My surgeon walked into the room and was basically like, how's it feeling? I was like, well, it still sucks. And he was like, oh, okay, well, you have no options left, bye. That's actually a true story. I appreciate the surgeon who did work on me for that surgery in March. But when I went to the follow-up appointment at the time that it should have been all healed, he literally told me, yeah, there's no good options left, bye. I guess what I'm saying is he could really work on his bedside manner. But I think that conversation was what really got me thinking about, okay, you're saying there's no options left, but there has to be something and I'm gonna find that something. And I did find that something. I have been dealing with this for over half my life. I have been having surgery, after surgery, after surgery for half my life, trying to save a piece of my body that hurts constantly. And I am wondering if the best option isn't just to admit where it is. And if the fastest way to life that I actually get to live is not just to have it amputated. And I know that probably sounds bizarre to people and I know that a lot of people will probably comment that I'm insane or ungrateful and I'm not. And they have commented that I'm insane. I seem so analytical and serious here. Do I always seem analytical and serious? I'd like to think maybe not all the time. To be fair, this was a very analytical and serious decision to make. Everything hurts all the time and it's affecting other joints in my body. Something that I think is interesting is there's like a lot of, I remember how I felt here and you kind of see it in the video that there was a lot of justification of like, listen, I know this sounds nuts, but I know this sounds crazy, but things hurt, things really hurt. Like you need to understand that they hurt. I've always had an issue validating my own pain, validating my own experiences. And when it came to making this serious of a choice, I felt like I had to convince other people that what I was feeling was real because no one else could feel my body and saying like I'm going in, I'm walking in to have my leg amputated sounds nuts to a lot of people. And one thing that I've learned over the past couple years is that I don't need to justify my choices and experiences and my physical experience to everyone. I'm young and otherwise healthy and I don't have kids right now and I have a great support system. So it makes sense to me to have a leg amputation now. So that was a huge decision factor for me was kind of the timing and the age. I knew, listen right now, I have great health insurance, I have a support system, I'm young and otherwise healthy. I have no idea if that's gonna be the case in a few years and this amputation is gonna happen regardless like short of some kind of medical miracle. I am going to need a leg amputation, whether it's now or in a few years after we've gone through more surgeries that aren't gonna fix it but maybe just sustain it. And part of my thought process was like, if it's inevitable, why not just tackle it when I can choose the timing? But I don't know how to measure the emotional impact of it, the emotional impact of being a 27 year old girl with no leg. I think the answer with that one is there's no way to really put a number to it or measure it. The emotional impact is huge. It's life changing. It affects you and everyone around you. This is all kind of freaky and scary and frightening to think about. But part of me is also excited at the possibility of maybe in two years, like after the recovery is mostly done, like being able to run and being able to do. Oh my God. I literally did not know that I said this. I have no recollection of saying that. Maybe in two years, when it's all recovered, it's literally been two years and I'm just now maybe starting to run. I was a bit of an oracle. Now, September 7th, so it's just a few more days before the appointment, which we'll find out some more information about whether or not I'm moving forward with the imputation and I've discovered something. People really like giving their opinion about my choice and the consensus seems to be that I'm making a bad choice and even considering this at all. As much as I would like to say that that doesn't affect me because it's my choice, my body, it's my story, it does. Yeah, so let's just pause there for a moment. That was something that was a little challenging, especially as I was really in the decision process and talking to people about it and this was actually like a conscious spoken consideration. Everyone had their two cents and I mean this is true with any major life choice or change, people will like input their opinions whether they're asked for or not. But I had lots of people who knew nothing about my actual medical history or what I was experiencing, hearing that I was thinking about this like at work and coming out to be in me like, listen, there's this alternative medicine thing that you really need to try. You should never, you should never cut up a part of your body, it's a part of your body, you should keep it. Try this miracle thing that my friend found that situation is kind of maybe similar to yours but not really and you'll be fine. It was hard getting everybody else's input at a time when I was trying so hard to filter what I actually wanted. I didn't have a lot of experience making decisions for myself about my life and my body and really having, really claiming my voice with that and I was trying to do that through this process. It's hard to have people who don't, who haven't been here for the last half of my life telling me that I'm wrong and then I have people sharing miracle doctor stories and ones that don't even like relate to my situation and I would say that if you have a friend considering something that you haven't gone through, maybe try to listen a little more than you speak because it's hard to have people who literally know two minutes of my story telling me what I should do. So the whole other people's opinions thing did weigh pretty heavily on me, especially because it's always been my nature, it's always been sort of what I've bent towards to please the people around me to make them more comfortable. So when I'm considering this really uncomfortable thing that's very scary for me and other people are made uncomfortable by hearing about it through the grapevine and are telling me what I should do, it was really hard to separate like what I actually wanted and what I thought would be good from the noise of what everyone else thought. It took, it was a process, that's for sure. I still stand by that by the way, if you have a friend who's going through something that you haven't personally experienced, I do generally think that it is a wise idea to listen at least twice as much as you speak. Check it out guys, all right. Oh God, this is so weird. This is my messed up. I hate saying this. Kind of hard to see here, but I've had two major surgeries there, two major surgeries there. That's the most recent one. I can't describe to you how weird and uncomfortable it is to see me like touching that part of my ankle and pointing it out and to see my ankle because I can viscerally remember what it felt like. And I'm really glad it is no longer a part of my body because oh, I almost like feel sick. That's not what I expected to feel. Let's continue. One there, back there. Oh God. Got a couple heavy. I did like those scars. Those ones didn't hurt as much. So that's the leg that we're considering removing and it will like click and pop and it's not like hell out of nowhere and I spend every night icing it. That was one of the worst parts is that it was kind of unpredictable. I had some good days with my ankle for sure and I'd be like doing great and then something would shift in there and it would be really bad pain and I would not be able to do much of anything for the rest of the day. It was always a guessing game and I never knew if I was gonna walk somewhere and then not be able to walk back or walk somewhere and then be in a large amount of pain trying to get back. So I just wanted to show it to you guys before we kind of go any further and maybe just have visual record that it existed. If I do, go ahead and remove it which is a weird thing to be saying. So yeah, at this point I'm thinking it's probably best. Given the information and life I'm living right now to go ahead with a lower leg amputation. But we'll see. That's a weird thing to say with a straight face, isn't it? What a bizarre, bizarre world we live in. Hey guys, it's show. So today is the day, the day. I'm going up to Denver. Ooh, I'm meeting with my surgeon. I'm gonna chat with him about the conversation whether or not we are going to amputate my leg and make a decision on if we're gonna move forward with other surgeries or just go to the finish line and have it amputated. And if we did that option, every day things would be getting slightly better. That was another really big thing that there was no hope of my ankle recovering or healing or getting better. Like I said, there was hope that it might be able to be sustained with some other surgeries and things like that. But it wasn't gonna fix itself and there was nothing that could fix it because it was too far gone. And I have the word hope tattooed on me because I'm lame like that. And hope is really important to me. And I think it can be found in so many places but looking down this dark hole of my ankle is only ever going to get worse was really challenging for me knowing that maybe there was this other thing that might render a better result. And I am in a position right now where maybe I could make this choice. I'm never sure how to articulate this best but it was really important for me to have this choice over my body. Gone through trauma as it relates to not having control over my own body. And I think that that definitely was a factor that played into my decision process here that like I didn't wanna be forced into something that was so life-altering. I wanted to be able to like choose the time and the place and do it on my own terms. I think a big reason that I've been able to go through things and get through things in the manner that I have is sort of this mindset of I'm gonna do this on my own terms. This isn't something I'd ever have wanted. I never in a million years would I choose this in a perfect world but this is the world that we live in and I'm gonna take control of my life in whatever small way I can. And if that's choosing when as opposed to waiting and having no real choice left even though it might just be like a mental trick I'm going to take the option where I get to say when I get to make that call. Hey guys, it's Joe. So I wanted to update you cause I'm doing it in nine days. I'm going to have it below the right knee. Remember the right side. Honestly, the decision eventually came down to trying to quiet all the voices and listen to myself and what I really want. And that's foreign to me in a lot of ways but realizing that if I'm making this decision for myself and my body it's what I need to do. And so yesterday I made that call. Was it really just 10 days from when I made the call to when they actually did it? I feel like I remember that as like weeks in between. Yeah, nine days I will have my lower leg removed and start a new chapter of life. I forgot that I published this video. So this video is one that I posted on Facebook once I had told like all my immediate family and like really, really close friends what I was going to do. I didn't want to talk about this decision a million times. And so I made a video and I posted on Facebook and I was like, here's what's up guys. And I don't actually remember what I said. I remember I was wearing earrings I really liked that day though. Let's see if I still like them. Hey guys, it's Joe. So I thought I would put out a quick video in conjunction with this message as I do a lot. Do you like how chipper I am? Like, hey guys, by the way, get my leg chopped off in a couple of days. Hope that's cool, bye. And I do, I do still like this earrings. They're very cute. If you read the message, you'll know that in a few days on October 11th which is Thursday, I am going to have a below the knee amputation on my right leg. I have had over 10 surgeries on my ankle. If you know me pretty well, you'll know that I'm generally kind of limping around. It hurts all of the time even though I try to live normal life. I try to be active. I try to do stuff. And over the last year, it's gotten to the point where I cannot do anything. I was really frightened of people giving me all their thoughts and opinions. And so this video was my way of being like, I have made the decision. Do with that what you will, but this is happening. And I didn't, I didn't want, I didn't want everyone to be like, no, don't do it. Or here's my two cents. Or like I was saying in the earlier video, like this person has this miracle cure that may or may not be related to what you're going through. After a lot of consideration and a lot of talking to people and consulting doctors and consulting other people who know what they're talking about and a lot of thinking, I along with my surgeons have come to the conclusion that this is the best choice for my life and for what I want my life to look like, hopefully. But I wanted to let you all know so that no one is particularly shocked if they see me in person in a month or two and I don't have a leg. I also wanted to say, I don't mean to sound like a jerk about this at all, but a lot of people have, as I've kind of been considering this just like random people. I'm not even talking about people on Facebook, but like told me what to do with my life or like told me, yes, you should do this or no, you shouldn't do that. But like if you have strong opinions on whether or not this is a good option for my life, I would kindly request that you keep them to yourself because this is a very emotional decision for me. I like how diplomatic I'm being about this. I was really trying hard to very kindly be like, please for the love of God, don't come at me with your cabbage diet miracle cures. Just please, please don't do that. That being said, I would love to see you guys after surgery. If you're interested in stopping by, I would love to talk to you. I mean, all things considered, I think this was a decent way of announcing it. People were actually very respectful. Once I was like, this is what I'm doing. I have decided this end of story. People were incredibly kind and supportive. I just want to pause for a moment and say that I'm really, I'm really glad that I documented this. It's therapeutic and helpful for me to look back on how I came to this decision and why I made this decision and where my thought process was and to kind of be reminded of, hi monkey, be reminded of some of that. And this video meant a lot to me. This was literally 24 hours before I was going to go to the hospital for this amputation. And I was like completely numb. And I was doing, I was doing all right, all things considered, but it was obviously a bizarre, I keep using that word, but very bizarre thing to face. I wanted to have a record of who I was before this. And I do have that record and I am very grateful for that. So with that being said, here's the last video I published of me with two legs. Hey everybody, it's Joe. It is now one day before my ankle amputation. We are headed up to Denver tonight to get everything prepared. And at seven, 30 tomorrow morning, I will have my right lower leg chopped off, amputated, taken off. I've gone through a lot of trauma, but I've never walked into a situation where I knew it was going to change my life forever. And this will. It was a very odd realization for me because like I said, I've gone through some traumas in my life. I have experience with moments where you realize there was a before and an after and things changed, right? But I never knew that they were happening at the time. I never knew that today I'm going to wake up and I'm never going to be the same at the end of this day, right? Like things will now be in terms of a before and an after. And I knew that I was walking into that. I knew that in 24 hours from filming this video, there was going to be an after. I was going to be in the after. And it's true. I mean, my life is very much segmented into before amputation and after amputation. It's a pretty clear change to make note of. I know that it will be really, really hard in a lot of ways. And I know that I can't prepare for that. I know that I can't predict my reaction. And I know that I'm walking into this. I'm literally going to walk into the hospital tomorrow. And I've had like, I've been like assaulted and I've had my house burned down and stuff like that, where it's changed my life forever, but I couldn't predict it. So it just happens and you just have to respond. And with this, it's weird knowing that this is going to happen. It's weird knowing that I'm anticipating an event that is changing my life forever. We've done everything we can to get ready and we're going to see how it goes. So I will post a video as soon as I can after surgery. I'm not sure how I'll be feeling. People report very different outcomes as far as pain after surgery and how they feel after surgery. So as soon as I know anything, I will let you guys know. I kept trying to figure out like, how much pain am I going to be in after my leg gets chopped off as compared to ankle surgeries? I never really could find a good gauge on that. All things considered, they did a decent job of controlling pain in the hospital, except for the moment that I woke up from surgery, which I have talked about before where the nerve block didn't work and I felt everything and they couldn't get pain under control. And poor, poor Brian, because he had to be there to see all of that and it was not fun or pretty. But in the end, they did get things generally under control and compared to other ankle surgeries I had, I would definitely rate this as by far the most physically painful. I'm feeling hopeful and terrified and we'll see how things go. Yes, I think we'll see how things go is really the only statement that could be made at such a time. So interesting to look back at. Okay, I'm gonna do a little bonus video here. I wanna see the first video that I did after I got back from amputation. Hey guys, it's Joe. So I am in the hospital. It is day two post amputation. I was so drugged up here. Cheered up. I've got an awesome purple cast curtsy of my surgeon. He was gonna make it boring and white. But then he had two special four to get me a purple cast. Anyways, surgery went well. The amputation went really well. No complications, which is awesome. Pain was really difficult to get under control after amputation. That's an understatement. Because the nerve block didn't really work and so I woke up and was in a ton of pain for hours and kind of like panicking also. Not from the amputation, but just like from the pain and from all the drugs and everything. So my husband came in and they were trying to get the pain under control for like three hours that I was like freaking out. But it went well after that. They put in, I can see these little cancels. Oh yeah. They put in a permanent, semi-permanent. I forgot about that. That's right. Into my leg, they implanted a permanent nerve block that was gonna drip, numb up my leg for weeks as opposed to just a few hours. And they kept that in, I wanna say like two weeks after surgery. It really was helpful. It was kind of a game changer. It really helped get pain under control. I don't remember if I left the hospital the second time, the second amputation with that or not. By the way, if you are new to my channel or you haven't heard my story, this surgery went well, but the healing did not go well because I had a fall that really messed things up thanks to a restaurant. And I developed a bursa that had to be removed and then that still didn't work because the bones hadn't healed properly. And so August of 2019, so a year and a few months ago, I had to have a revision where they chopped off my leg again, a little bit higher up. Still got to keep my knee though. That's the important part. I remember picking up my phone and wanting to like document this, wanting to make a video. Making videos was so therapeutic for me going through this process. It like gave me a reason to do something that day. It gave me a reason to try to frame things in my head and maybe a better light than what I was thinking or at least have a moment of checking in with myself and being like, okay, let's just think this through kind of thing. But those are all my pre-amputation videos. Those are all my decision process videos. Man, I'm really grateful that I can look back now. And it was worth it, but in the end, I am in less pain. There have been a lot of consequences, both good and bad from this decision, but all in all, without a shadow of a doubt, I can say that for me personally, I am so freaking glad that I got to make this choice for myself. There's no way I could have pictured everyday life as an amputee when I had both my limbs, but I can say without a shadow of a doubt that this is better than that ankle that you saw in that video that still makes me a little eugh, queasy to think about. I know I said this in the video that I did that was like, you know, my year anniversary of the second amputation a couple of weeks ago, but I know some of the people commenting on those videos as I put them up right before surgery. Like, I remember your names, I remember some of the conversations we've had, and I know some of those people are still watching my videos to this day. I may not have met you in person, but the fact that you have cared about and listened to my story for two years, absolutely floors me. I don't think I have a way to properly even conceptualize or try to put into words how crazy that is to me in the best possible way. And people who came in a few months, you know, into this whole process and have been watching videos since then. And you all have been such a huge source of support to me. I don't know how this would have gone had I not decided to put my story out there and see what happened, and this community that's grown up is beautiful. And you really are all my beautiful internet friends, and I am so grateful for you watching this. Like, sincerely, when I say at the end of every video you could be anyone in the world doing anything right now, but you chose to spend a few minutes with me and I'm really grateful. I truly mean it. Time is one of the most valuable assets anyone has, and you've given me some of your time, you've given me some of your time today, and many of you have given me a lot of your time over the past two years. And I am forever grateful, truly. Thank you. I'm gonna go ahead and wrap it up there and enjoy this anniversary and be really freaking grateful for it. Also, a huge, huge, huge thank you to all my patrons over on Patreon who have supported me throughout this journey, who continue to support me as I continue to try to move forward. I really appreciate your financial support and your emotional support, and just that community, thank you guys for being there. If you're interested in checking out Patreon, link on screen or down below. But with that being said, I'll just say it again, thank you so much for being here. You could be anywhere in the world doing absolutely anything, and you chose to spend a few minutes out of your day here with me, and that means so much to me. I love you guys, I'm thinking about you, and I will see you in the next video. Bye guys. Monkey says bye too. We got ourselves a little sleepy Sophie. A little sleepy Sadie. The whole gang is here. Anyways, bye guys. Have her from the sky.