 This mother is treating a prosthetic arm as a privilege to be taken away. You've gotta be shitting me. Well hello there, my beautiful, lovely internet friends. This is a very impromptu video I'm recording on my iPhone. It is nine o'clock on a Monday night. I'm already in PJs, but my blood is boiling and I wanted to share a story with you and talk about why it is such an issue. And I'm guessing by whatever I choose to title this video or put in the thumbnail, you might also be horrified on the surface, like, sorry, what? But I did want to take a moment to actually dive in and talk about it from my own perspective. I am a below-the-knee amputee, so there's the proof for haters. I don't actually have haters, you guys are all absolutely amazing. So there is this tiktoker who goes by the name of Dusty Thunder and he'll read out these Am I the Asshole posts from Reddit and it gives him commentary on it and the description of this one alone is interesting. Let's dive in. Am I the Asshole for calling my ex a horrible mother and cussing her out in front of our children after she punished our daughter by taking away her prosthetic? While this story is awful and I think most people can agree on that, there's an aspect that I think might be easy to overlook, perhaps if you don't have the experience of living life as an amputee. My ex and I have an 11-year-old daughter and eight-year-old son and divorced shortly after our son was born. We're both still single and I get the kids every other weekend. My daughter, unfortunately, had to have her left arm amputated due to cancer as a toddler and now she has a prosthetic. Our daughter recently got into trouble at school. She helped several of her friends cheat on what's essentially the elementary school equivalent of final exams. My ex was punishing her and just asked me to follow the basic guidelines of nothing else. No electronics, no hanging out with friends, yada-yada, which was fine. When I went to pick up the kids on Friday, I noticed that my daughter didn't have her prosthetic. While she doesn't always wear it, she always takes it with her when she comes over. That was odd so I asked her what was up and she told her her mother had taken it for the week. You've gotta be shitting me. You've gotta be shitting me is absolutely correct. I was enraged but kept it together at first. I went inside and told her mother to give me her arm and she said fine, probably because I looked like I was about to have a coronary. Just the sentence I went inside and told her mother to give me her arm. In what world is that okay? But okay, let's persist here. As I was leaving, I told her I was going to talk to my lawyer about having custody changed and she followed me to the car and said I was trying to spoil the kids and this is why she's misbehaving. I lost it. I called her a terrible mother and went into a bit of a frenzy. He's trying to spoil the children by making sure that his young daughter who lost her arm to cancer as a toddler has her medical device which is so much more than a medical device. That is spoiling the kids. I'll link the whole video from Dusty down below so you can kind of take a look at the full context but we kind of have enough to go on there. I have been racking my brain since I saw this TikTok to try to come up with some kind of comparison for what this would be like. Like this would be like a parent taking away and then my mind just went blank because there really isn't an equivalent for an able-bodied kiddo that has this kind of an impact. In my opinion, this is horrifically mentally and emotionally abusive to this poor child whose mother is using her arm as a punishment, as a weapon. I do want to pause for just a moment and say that it's a very common thing for amputees not to always use prosthetic limbs if we have them. Even when my prosthetic is fitting nicely and doesn't hurt, it's never thoroughly comfortable so when I have the chance, I will generally take it off. So when he talks about his daughter not always wearing her prosthetic but always having it with her, super common experience for a lot of reasons. So the first thing that came to mind, I don't know this girl's story, I don't know her relationship with her prosthetic arm or with her disability, how she feels about it, what her social situation is, any of that. However, what I do know is that for a lot of amputees it takes some work to feel like your prosthetic that attaches to your body is actually a part of your body. Like it's actually yours. Sometimes it takes a while to get there and people feel like it, sometimes, you know, they don't ever. Where every limb on that spectrum is completely okay, I find myself where if my leg is working and not causing me a ton of pain, it absolutely feels like a part of my human body even though it's removable. But that relationship is not an easy one because you're talking about piece of like carbon fiber and metal and sometimes wires that has been fashioned for you. It functions as a part of your body but it can feel so obviously foreign, right? Nurturing that relationship is really important. I don't know if this is like a weird thing to say or not, I don't think I've talked about this publicly before but when I got my first prosthetic leg I wanted to love it and I did not. Did not feel like it was mine, should be mine, was a part of me, I just didn't like it. And one of the therapeutic exercises that I came up for myself was to write letters to it. Like we were in an arranged marriage. Again, I don't know if this is a good thing to talk about or not but it is what I did. And it was kind of a situation where I was like, listen, we're stuck together, I don't like you but I wanna learn to love you. So like, let's work on this together, we can make this work, we're both committed to it. And it was like, it was helpful for me to bond with this thing that is gonna help me through life that is gonna be immensely useful but I didn't like. It's taken years and a lot of work to get really comfortable with my prosthetic because well, a lot of reasons but primarily it is not a normal thing for a person to go through. There's not really a handbook for it. Maybe I should write one if there isn't. The reason I say all of this and talk about that context and like the relationship, the emotional relationship between you and your prosthetic is because wherever you land on that spectrum, it is a tenuous sort of relationship and when you have someone coming in and weaponizing what is a body part and a medical device but a body part against you, can't imagine how horrifically that could complicate this relationship with your prosthetic arm. Like just the mind, excuse my language but the mind fuck that that is horrible. This mother is treating a prosthetic arm as a privilege to be taken away like watching TV for the week or going to a sleepover at a friend's house. I feel like I keep using the word absurd but it is absurd to me. It's not a toy and I think maybe some people do kind of see it that way like ooh, this is this cool device. Like oh, it's robotic, that's awesome, you know? And that's fine, I'll have those conversations. We all have those conversations but it's not a toy. It is should you so desire and be able to have one part of you. And this is what I mean where I was trying to come up with some comparison for like what I could equate it to for a parent taking away from an able-bodied child but I honestly can't think of anything. Let me know if you have some comparison that makes sense in the comment section down below. Hi, editing Joe here. I'm looking at the wrong side of the camera. There we go, editing Joe here. Totally realized I forgot one of the most important points in this whole video because I was overwhelmed with the emotional impact of how screwed up this is but let's talk about the practical side of things too because you know, prosthetic limbs serve a purpose functionally in daily life, at school, at home, doing chores, hanging out with people. Like you are further highlighting, punishing, like making your daughter struggle, intentionally struggle with functional life things by treating a prosthetic as a privilege, like playing friggin' video games. Yeah, there's like, there's an entire practical side of things that needs to be addressed here as well. I'm not an upper extremity amputee, I only know what it's like to use a prosthetic leg and yeah, they're like, you know, insanely useful for me to most effectively navigate the world and for a lot of people that's true for arms as well. This is like a day later, still absolutely speechless, let's get back to it. But the level of cruelty and callousness that it would take to do that to your child. And I'd like, I never talk about parent-child kind of stuff, you know, cause like, I'm not a parent, right? What do I know? Except that this is one thing that I know that like that is, in my opinion, so very abusive and it has such a potential of causing long-term damage. Like my experience of being an amputee began being an adult. I had my entire childhood, teenage years of like, yeah, medical issues with my leg, but I did not lose that body part until I was 27, 28. I did not have to go through elementary school and middle school and high school as someone who looked very, very visibly different from people around me, which shocker tends to make you a huge target for bullying, kids can be jerks and adults can be even worse. This little girl is having to navigate life with this disability, with a prosthetic arm and I'm guessing she's probably rocking it because that's what you do, right? But like, can you imagine going to school and having friends be like, where's your arm? And being like, oh, my mother confiscated it as a form of punishment. Is cheating on tests a good thing? Absolutely not. Also, with the rest of the story, I absolutely understand the father's response. I do think it is awful that that happened in front of the kids because I am pretty darn certain when you then see your parents screaming at and cussing at each other, which is horrific already, over your prosthetic arm. And like, how can you not feel the weight of all of that? And like, that is so upsetting. Obviously how this was handled by both sides was not good. But don't ever take away someone's body part as a form of punishment. In fact, I'm actually kind of curious to look this up. If someone was to steal my prosthetic leg, would it be property theft or would it be like bodily harm? Okay, the short answer is it's complicated and I will put some links down below. And if you are a lawyer and happen to know the current answer to this question, I would be fascinated to hear it. There we have it. Horrible story, horrific thing to do, so damaging in my opinion, very abusive and should never, ever, ever, ever, ever occur. If you like impromptu videos like this, let me know. I think I'm gonna go drink some chamomile tea with honey, calm my blood pressure down a little bit more, cuddle up with my puppies, like that one right there. You can't really see him, but you can kind of see Leo lurking in the darkness out there.