"There was a point right around my 20th birthday where I questioned myself, “What am I doing with my life? Why is this going on? How could this be happening? What am I going to do for the rest of my life? Am I always going to look like this? Am I always going to live a life of pain? Am I going to have a fulfilling career? What am I going to do?”
I was a performer who was missing a leg.
I just remember talking to the hospital psychiatrist about it, and he said, “It’s good to be angry and upset because of what you’re going through. You’re allowed to think and feel that way. But you have to turn it around. This is going to end. You’re going to beat this and you’re going to get through it.”
While I was hooked up to all these things, it was only difficult to sit there and say, “I am going to see the light at the end of the tunnel.” But it was at that point where I said I am going to do something about it. I went back to school. Instead of thinking about all of the crap at the hospital, I just started doing what every other college kid would do: go out with friends, stay out late, pulling all nighters, not coming home until 3 in the morning—making some bad decisions. I just tried to be normal and tried to have fun. It was that year in college that really kept me going."