An indomitable spirit
That describes Aimee Copeland, a beautiful young woman who lost both hands, two feet, and one leg as a result of an attack of so-called flesh-eating bacteria (necrotizing fasciitis) after a zipline accident:
Copeland looks forward to her career of service. She says she’s in the best shape of her life, and the happiest she’s ever been.
She says she’d even go on that zip line again if she could do it over.
“Knowing the impact that I have and will continue to have, and knowing how this experience has shaped my life for the better, a million and one times, I would go on that zip line again,” she recently told students and faculty at West Georgia.
Of course she’d like her legs and hands back, she adds later. But “my life has been (shaped) by everything that happened to me,” she says. “I wouldn’t trade everything that I gained to get them back.”
An extraordinarily strong person in body, mind, and spirit.
Copeland reminds me of Amy Purdy, another athlete who has weathered incredible physical challenges and come out way way ahead.
I also note that (although the Copeland article doesn’t use the word) they both lost limbs to (in Copeland’s case, her hands) and almost died from septic shock, a terrible illness I wrote about in this post.
“Three days after her amputation, a doctor told her parents that her chances of survival were slim to none.”
Wow. Just plain wow.
As an intern in the late ’60s, I cared briefly for a young man in previous vigorous good health with a hemorrhagic pneumonia, found post-mortem to be due to Aeromonas hydrophila. He came in with shortness of breath and chest pain, started coughing up cups of blood, and died rapidly of hemorrhagic pneumonia in both lungs. Which is to say both lungs had an infinite number of capillary ruptures that bled into the air spaces.
We wrote up and published a case report because there were no records of human Aeromonas infections then. It was found on salamanders. He had not been anywhere near nor inhaled or swallowed standing water.
Aeromonas is still an exceedingly rare infectious agent.
It is not the same as bugs that more often “eat flesh” a few hundred cases a year.
We should recall in this regard the thousands of Thalidomide babies born with tiny flippers instead of arms. They are just as resourceful as this gal. They feed themselves with their feet. They write and paint with them too. Yes, they do.
A wonderful, inspiring story. May she live long and prosper!
I roomed for a semester in college with a young man who had lost one leg just below the hip due to an accident on his parent’s farm. I was inspired by his capability to deal with his loss. He had become a first class gymnast to develop the upper body strength to help him get around without his prosthesis. I watched him compete in gymnastics and wondered if I had the inner strength to deal with such a loss.
I wonder how many people faced with the same challenges don’t do well? What percentage of the population is not able to accept their fate and work so arduously to overcome it? I guess those stories are seldom, if ever, told.
We don’t realize how fragile life is. To live a long life in reasonably good health is a blessing.
I used to work at a grocery store where we had some regular customers who seem to have stepped out of a Flannery O’Conner story. There was a guy who lost three limbs in ‘Nam, a woman born with a deformed arm, and a man whose rare form of cancer ATE HIS FACE.
All these people were a lot easier to get along with than many of the customers who had whole bodies. They did not flip out because we did not carry a product that was only carried in some other part of the country. There’s a lesson in there.
JJ:
bad events are not fate, as I understand fate. Fate is preordained. I do not accept fate as anything more than an erroneous concept.
What I posted about the thousands of Thalidomide babies, now middle-aged adults, is true. Children born with defects have an amazing ability to accept and adjust. I have seen it so many times. I saw a happy 14 year-old receive communion today, and she is a Downs’. I have seen a four year-old dying of cancer comfort her weeping mother.
The problem is that we as adults are not very often so accepting and adjusting. Self-pity is something we drape ourselves in.