By the time most people get to the point of amputation, it’s amputate or die, up to that point if you were asked would you prefer amputation or death you probably would’ve picked death. But when reality kicks in….

When you come too after surgery a missing limb is a shock, and it’s not just that once, when you dream you have two legs or arms, so every day you wake up you get the same shock again and again. This is normal.

The physical pain is bad enough, the phantom limb pains can be incredibly sharp (like cramp) and relentless, but the emotional pain can be far worse. The side effects of medication can be worse than both the physical and emotional pain it’s supposed to ease. You are a lesser person physically and you have to work really hard to not be emotionally. No amount of encouragement can help because you have find yourself.

How can you do that? First is acceptance, you will never be the same person, you have to accept that and accept the position you find yourself in a proper balanced way – reality. Then you have to see what you can do and work with that. It takes time, don’t let anyone rush you, you have to go through this and come out the other side yourself. People will send you videos of disabled people climbing mountains and doing incredible things thinking they’re motivating you, not realising it will only make you feel worse.

We’re all different and along with the amputation can be sickness, cancer, disease, age, arthritis, diabetes and a multitude of other disablements we don’t have to match up to others. Some can use a prosthetic and others will never be able to. It’s okay, we all make our own individual journey.

There are many times you might wish you had chosen death, but you didn’t, you rose to the challenge and the bigger the challenge, the more you’ll grow.

You might even feel sorry for those that have an easy life.