“Sometimes in life, we are weakened so we can become stronger. Like an arrow, we are pulled back with tribulations, just to be shot forward into greatness.”
A salty, 67-year-old Vietnam veteran named Jerry Sullivan mumbled these words to me in his raspy smoker’s voice one morning in a garden at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Miami. It was July 2018, three months after I lost my left leg below the knee in a motorcycle accident. By then the nerves
had regenerated back into my shoulder, which was paralyzed for weeks after the crash. The road rash and other wounds had finally healed. My body was regaining strength, and my spirit was gaining power it never had before.
Jerry, a bilateral below-knee amputee who was more than twice my age, was one of the people who helped me get there.
Before my accident, I was an asshole. Excuse the language, but that’s the only word for it. I went through life like a ghost in the underworld of Greek mythology—empty and fast, with tunnel vision that would not allow me to see beyond my own ignorance. That’s the attitude that got me injured in the first place: I had the fantastic idea to take a 90-degree turn at 80 mph on my Harley. The bike slid out from under me and dragged me with it. After seeing the damage to my full-face helmet (which I only wore about half the time), my doctor told me I was extremely lucky not to have extensive brain damage.
I heard my mother crying as he spoke, and all I could think of was how fortunate I was to be able to hear her sobs and to feel the warm sun piercing through my hospital room window. Blessings come in many forms, and I had received a rich one: a second chance at life. This recognition was my first step toward healing. Lying there, wrapped in bandages from shoulders to toes, I was determined to take advantage of this gift.
My conviction was reinforced by people like Jerry, who has an amazingly positive outlook on life. Then there was my physical therapist, Ralphie, a Colombian immigrant who had already been battling multiple sclerosis for four years at that time. As Jerry and I rolled into the therapy room that July morning, Ralphie said through a cheesy ear-to-ear grin: “Oye Papo, something came in the mail for you today.” From his expression, I could tell that my
prosthetic leg had finally arrived.
As I took my first step in the foreign device, a sharp sensation shot up the nerves in my residual limb—the same jolt you get when you take your first step after your leg falls asleep. Over the next few weeks, a callus built up at the end of my leg, and the nerve sensation gradually died out. During that period, I spent every week looking forward to Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. For those three marvelous days, I was able to walk. It didn’t come easily—there was a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. There was also a lot of Ralphie shouting at me, “Lean toward your left, Cristian! Don’t forget to bend those knees! Look up, not down! Shift, Cristian, shift!” Ralphie drilled so deeply into my head over the next three months that I would even hear his voice in my dreams yelling, “Bend those knees, Cristian!”
One day in early November, I got the reward for all that hard work. Ralphie and my prosthetist, Thomas—a certified badass who received two Purple Hearts in the Vietnam War—stood in front of me in the physical therapy room with my primary doctor, Dr. Alviles. I felt like I was facing the Three Kings. In a nervous tone I asked these wise gentlemen, “Is everything okay? I haven’t done anything wrong, have I?” Ralphie calmly told me what I had been waiting to hear since the day of my accident: “Cristian, with the okay from Thomas and Dr. Alviles, I feel fully confident in letting you take your prosthetic home with you.”
A blanket of gratitude wrapped over me, echoing the gratitude I felt so many months earlier, when I felt grateful just to be alive. I walked out through the
hospital doors, with tears of happiness on my cheeks, and Jerry’s words rang in my ears. I felt like the tip of an arrow—flying forward into the future, with amazing momentum behind me and the whole world in front of me.
Cristian Martinez is a veteran who transformed his disability into a superpower. He believes the only limitations are in the mind. Follow him on Instagram at @cris_stumpy.
