'I still have a life' — amputees struggle to cope with loss

 

      Usually, they cry.
      Because losing a limb is not subtle, not a hidden loss, like losing a kidney. You see what is missing. Everybody does. A part of you is gone and never coming back. The absence affects your daily life — how you stand, walk, sit, if a lower limb. Or every time you reach for a cup of coffee or scratch your nose, if a hand.
     About 2 million Americans live with limb loss, with another 3 million born missing an extremity. About 500 people in this country lose a hand or foot, an arm or leg every day, most to vascular conditions, such as diabetes. The rest to trauma, particularly car and motorcycle accidents.   

     Last year Karl Fisher, a Zion medical van driver, lost both legs at the knee. He was 6 feet 7 inches before.
     "Now I'm 4 feet tall," he said.
     Fisher wept when he learned what would happen. He also cried when he met the man waiting outside his room one afternoon on the 20th floor of the sun-filled Shirley Ryan AbilityLab in Downtown Chicago.
     L. Bradley Schwartz, a Glenview lawyer, has visited 50 or so new amputees, to share his experience. He knows, their concerns — am I still me? When can I get back to living my life?
     You can consider him a volunteer, though he doesn't see himself as having much choice.
     "I can't ignore people that have been through this," he explained.
     Schwartz is what Shirley Ryan AbilityLab calls a "peer mentor."
     "A peer mentor provides their support, their insight, their lived experience to someone who's going through what Brad has gone through, to provide that insight so they can live successfully out in the community," said Cristina M. Mix, peer mentor coordinator at Shirley Ryan.
     And what has Brad Schwartz gone through? A medical nightmare almost beyond description.

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