Category Archives: Travel

In The Beginning

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I started climbing about the middle of 2007. I was working in the interior of British Columbia for a brief stint, and started going to a local climbing gym. I then took a two-day ‘Introduction to Outdoor Climbing’ course in Penticton at the end of that summer. After that I moved to Calgary and started hanging around one of the several local climbing gyms there. Same sort of deal as learning any individual sport as an adult – It could as easily have been tennis or golf lessons.

During these beginning phases, I was cramming my walking foot (the plastic one) into a climbing shoe. I know now that a foot designed for climbing is a different thing than a foot designed for walking, but at the time it was the available option. I’d never met anyone without a leg who climbed – I hadn’t met that many climbers, even and I simply assumed I was one of very few… (we prostheletizers can do the ‘assumption thing’ as easily as anyone).

I spent about a year and a half thrashing away, not being able to do much with my leg foot apart from employing it as counter balance and taking small steps onto bookshelf-sized holds. After one particularly frustrating day, I came home and Googled ‘prosthetic climbing foot’, or something similar. One of the top hits I received was a link to a thing called The Eldorado Z-Axis Climbing Foot. Its description mentioned Malcolm Daly and Paradox Sports. I decided to drop Malcolm an enquiring email and his response was to invite me to Ouray, Colorado to go ice climbing. In six weeks. So much for calculated career planning.

Meeting up with the Paradox crew in Ouray in the spring of 2009 was one of those eye-opening encounters. I think one of the consequences of limb loss due to cancer is that you end up in the ‘cancer crowd’, as opposed to the trauma-leading-to-missing-body-parts-or-loss-of-function crowd. They’re really quite different scenes. The majority of childhood cancer survivors reach the other side with limbs intact, and once you’re over the chemotherapy, I think there’s a tendency to move away from the community, as part of your own recovery process. As a result, I knew very few children without limbs during my cancer treatment days, and none afterwards. I attended one Champs seminar (think weekend health retreat only replace the meditation sessions with artificial limb show and tell), but I think I was too young and wrapped up in the whole treatment process to keep up the connections. By 2009, I was feeling pretty alone with my whole one-legged process.

When I went to Ouray I was all of a sudden immersed in this community of people who climbed, skied, cycled, ice climbed, snow boarded, paddled… They were getting out there. And while some ‘normals’ were invited along for the ride, most Paradoxians were missing something, whether it was a limb, a few fingers, or use of part of their body. Together we climbed frozen waterfalls. We ate. We drank beer out of somebody’s leg. All the usual climbing trip shenanigans.

They’re an inspiring crew. If you ever have the opportunity to go to one of their events I would suggest jumping on it – You’re likely missing more than they are.

The Cat Killer

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Years with a prosthetic leg have provided me with some interesting encounters with curiosity.

During the end of high school I was a lifeguard and instructor at the local swimming pool. The first day of class was always an experience. From that vantage point, curiosity seemed to win out over the indoctrinated social politeness until about the age of 5 or 6. Frequently, the first class with five-year-olds would involve a brief circle of question and answer that went something like this:

Kid: “What happened to your leg?”

Me: “I was very sick when I was a little girl and the doctors had to take it off. They gave me a robot leg instead.”

Kid: “Oh, okay.”

And that was it. No further explanation required, and afterward the kids never seemed to take much notice. Sometimes there would be no words, and then one or two kids would slide across the circle to touch it, looking to me for permission that I always gave. I vividly remember this one class when the kids sat down in a circle and the little boy to my left slid right up next to me so that his right leg was touching my left leg, looked me in the eyes, and rested his hand on my leg without saying a word. He stayed there until I got the class into the pool.

I wrote about the curiosity of children in the post ‘One Leg, Two Eyes’, and how the response of others can shape that curiosity. One of the consequences of having a visible history of trauma is you see, on a social level, what we do to shape, and restrict, curiosity.

Curiosity has a cultural element. In places I’ve worked in Southeast Asia, including Sri Lanka, India, and Indonesia, curiosity seems to be something that is embraced, or at least not discouraged. I go for massages from local women because it gives me an opportunity to talk to them, and put money back into the local economy in exchange for a service (as opposed to stuff, see the post First World Problems). Without exception, all of these women have asked me what happened to my leg. The last time I was in Indonesia the masseuse put her hands on my leg while saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” She ran her hands the length of my leg, and it was clear she had never seen anything like it before. Her curiosity was palpable, and I sensed there were many questions she wanted to ask. It seemed that only her English held her back.

Compare this to a recent encounter I had with a woman from work, here in Australia. We’ve known each other for months, and I’ve been to her house a number of times. She came to drop something off at my house, and I answered the door in shorts and a T-shirt. We had a conversation standing on the front porch, while she clearly made an effort not to even glance at my prosthetic leg. There’s no way she didn’t notice. She drove away without saying a word, and we’ve never discussed it since.

Humans are naturally curious beasts. Friendship and intimacy develop from mutual exploration into the human experience of others. I believe some of our ability to connect with one another has been lost in Western culture, and that this is, in part, because of the way in which curiosity gets smothered in favour of politeness, or social correctness, or our fear of asking too much.

First World Problems

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I am quite fond of the acronym ‘FWP’. I will often throw it out there after someone asks me about a challenge at work, just to remind myself that my problems are so few and so incredibly small relative to those of the majority of the people on this planet.

Recently, I was made wholly aware of the fact that the challenges I have with my prosthetic leg are also rooted in the first world context.

I have spent a fair amount of time in South-East Asia as part of my professional life. Every time I return to this part of the world I am reminded of how much I take for granted the luxuries of the first world – education, health care, potable running water, roads, transportation infrastructure, a safe and secure food supply, security, a functioning justice system, the list goes on and on. And every time I’m in South-East Asia I try to put money into the local economy in the form of service consumption because it seems to be one of the easiest ways to get money into the hands of people who need it, particularly women.

So the last time I was in Indonesia I went for a local massage. The woman asked me to take off all my clothes, as you are expected to do in these places. I’ve had a few massages before in various locations including India, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia, so I’m used to having women ask what happened to my leg. It’s interesting that what people guess to be likely the cause varies by setting. In Sri Lanka and the United States, I am most commonly asked if I am a soldier, while in Indonesia and India the first guess is usually motor vehicle accident.

Traffic accidents are one of the leading causes of disability in places like Indonesia, and one only needs to step out onto the street to realize that there are a lot of accidents involving pedestrians. I can only imagine that with the standard and availability of health care, limb loss is a common outcome.

In this instance, when I told the woman that I had been very sick as a child she was quiet for a while, and then said something to the effect of ‘if you were a woman in Indonesia you would not leave your house.’ That was it  – no follow up, no explanation, just those words. Her simple statement broke my heart.

It is because I was born in the first world that I received the treatment and surgery necessary to survive childhood cancer. It is because I live in the first world that I have access to people like Jon Allen who equips me with best prosthetics available to live an active life. And while I have had the experience of feeling marginalized as a result of my artificial leg, never to the degree that this woman so plainly described for me. I can only imagine the poverty and trauma that can stem from limb loss in these types of settings. I hope, with naïve optimism, that my presence in places like Indonesia shows people that such social exclusion is not the only way of responding to limb loss.

Mostly though, at the end of this encounter I was conflicted with emotion that was equal parts gratitude and powerlessness.