Most people with limb loss are not striving for careers in comedy. But many use humor in some of their activities to do more than just make people laugh. Dave McGill, Derrick Lewis, and Kevin Trees use humor to provoke thought, to offer people with limb loss a sense of community, and to let them know they are not alone.
Dave McGill: Blogging
When writing his blog, less is more (https://limblogger.wordpress.com), Dave McGill rarely sets out to make readers laugh. McGill, vice president of legal affairs & reimbursement for Össur Americas, lost his left leg above the knee in 1996 after being struck by a car. In 2010, he started his blog because he says he “had 14 years of stuff piling up in [his] head with no outlet for it.”
While getting laughs may not be McGill’s foremost concern when he’s unpiling that stuff in his head, a guy who writes about his limb-loss music top ten list or “bologna amputees” can’t be totally uninterested in amusing his readers.
“I’ve done stuff designed to make people laugh,” he acknowledges. “That’s just me having a good time and trying to be somewhat humorous.”
But what McGill usually tries to do is share useful information on serious subjects. In doing so, he finds injecting small doses of humor can make the articles more reader-friendly.
“When I do a post on, for example, the impact of healthcare reform, instead of just walking through the mechanics of a 2,000-page law, I might use fictional characters and humorous situations to illustrate how those things work,” he explains.
Still, if provoking laughter isn’t McGill’s main blog-writing goal, he believes in the value of humor, noting that the stark reality of amputation “often leads people with limb loss to recognize the absurdity and humor in a lot of ‘important’ situations that really aren’t.”
Derrick Lewis: T-shirt Designs
Derrick Lewis is pleased that other people share his sense of humor. To some, that may sound a little off, because in 2007, Lewis’ right leg was amputated below the knee—a consequence of peripheral arterial disease.
And what’s funny about that?
What’s funny is that Lewis, who works with Houston-based New Life Brace and Limb as a patient advocate visiting pre- and post-op amputation patients to share educational information and insights on dealing with limb loss, designed T-shirts before his amputation and has continued this avocation since. But he now does so with a twist: He creates shirts that riff on his amputation. His designs include such slogans as “LMLO (Laughing My Limb Off),” “$1000 Reward for Missing Limb,” and “I’d Lend You a Hand But…”
“My sense of humor was crazy before, and I think my amputation intensified it,” he explains.
While he hopes his funny T-shirts make a profit, his reward isn’t monetary. It just makes him feel good to know that his designs help brighten the day of others.
“I just like seeing other amputees that are into my T-shirts, seeing other amputees that have the same sense of humor,” he says. “My friends say I’m off. I guess I’m okay with being off.”
If being off means helping people with limb loss and others find a way to look at life in amusing ways, then Lewis’ “off” is right on.
Lewis’ designs can be found at www.zazzle.com/deesamputees.
Kevin Trees: Blogging
Kevin Trees aims for his blog, The Amputee Policeman (ampcop.com), to let people with limb loss know that they are not alone. He wants them to know, for instance, that others’ prosthetic legs have unexpectedly come loose, accompanied by the flatulent noise of their sockets losing suction, too.
In 2003, Trees suffered major trauma to his right side in a motorcycle accident, and in 2005, his right leg was amputated above the knee. After being fitted with a prosthetic leg, Trees returned to work with the Louisville, Kentucky, Metro Police Department and is now a sergeant—one of only a few police officers with an above-knee amputation in the United States.
As he adjusted to life with a limb missing, encountering the frustrations and foibles that accompany it, Trees realized that others were having the same experiences. In his blog, which he started in 2012, he shares common occurrences of amputee life.
“When I talk to amputees, they are embarrassed to say, ‘Does your leg almost fall off, too?’” he explains. “But everyone’s leg has almost fallen off.”
So Trees writes about the top five embarrassing places he has fallen, about the rude questions he has been asked, about amputees and intimacy—and many other topics. With honesty and humor, he covers subjects that are normal experiences for all amputees.
“When amputees realize that their normal involves falling, people staring, people asking questions—that this is something everyone is going to experience—then a level of defense comes down,” he says.
And if Trees’ blog helps people with limb loss become more comfortable with their new normal, he is happy to have helped.
