May 27, 2021 • 41 mins
In the first of our two part series with Amy Purdy, paralympic snowboarder, motivational speaker, Dancing With the Stars runner up and author, we take a deep dive into Amy's journey. From losing both of her legs at 19 to becoming a decorated athlete and hero to many, Amy has chosen again and again to view challenges as opportunities.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Sam Edis and I'm Amy Nelson. Welcome to
What's Her Story? With Sam and Amy. This is a
show about the world's most remarkable women, their professional and
personal journeys. Together, we'll hear from gold medalists, best selling authors,
and leaders of the world's most iconic brands. She was
(00:24):
called a hero by Oprah Winfrey. She has two prosthetic legs,
she's a Paralympic snowboarder, and she was the runner up
on Susan eighteen of Dancing with the Stars. Today, we
welcome Amy Purty to the show. Amy was such an
incredible guest that we decided to split this into two episodes,
So today we share with you heart one of this
(00:47):
inspiring conversation. So Amy, tell us about your childhood in
Las Vegas. Gosh, I mean, you know, growing up in
Las Vegas is interesting, and it's one of those places
where people always say, wait, you were born and raised
in Las Vegas, Like, how many people are actually born
in Las Vegas? But I'm one of them, And I
(01:10):
always dreamed of getting out of there. To be honest,
I felt like it just wasn't it just wasn't where
I wanted to be. I loved the outdoors. I love
the mountains. I knew there was a whole world out there.
In fact, my aunt Um, she lived in Australia, and
I remember she'd come back and tell us all these
stories of her travels, and like that was the that
(01:32):
was the only bit of information I had really that
there was this whole outside world, and so I really visualized,
like and daydreamed, right, just just traveling the world and
seeing what's out there. And Vegas felt so boring. But
my family, you know, we did everything we could to
be in the outdoors, and I think that's where my
love for the outdoors came. My my family would go
(01:55):
up camping on the weekends. We had a family cabin
up in the mountains that we would go up to
on the weekends in the summer, and then we would
ski on the weekends in the winter. Although I was
never very good at skiing, it just was something my
family did for fun, and we weren't really into sports.
I mean, I I definitely do not come from a
(02:17):
big sport family in Vegas. You don't. At the time,
we didn't have a sport team, so it's not something
that we really grew up around. I never played sports.
I did clog dancing when I was twelve years old
with my sister. That's about the most athletic thing I did.
And then and then I fell in love with snowboarding
(02:39):
though at the age of fourteen, and that wasn't really
a sport. It was more of a lifestyle, like when
you think about skateboarding and like a skateboarder, you know,
that's what the snowboarders were like at that time too,
where it was just like this isn't like I'm training
for a sport. It's like, this is just kind of
what I do. And so I was introduced to it,
actually not at fourteen, at fifteen, fell in love with it,
(03:01):
and you know, even then definitely did not consider myself
an athlete. So that's one thing I want to say
is a lot of people just assume that, you know,
if you're an athlete, you were born an athlete, you
were born into an athletic family, or you've always been
an athlete. I did not become an athlete until I
was thirty years old. I would love it if you
would share with us your post college plans, because your
parents did not have an expectation that you would necessarily
(03:23):
go to college. There was no college plan. And I
didn't go to college because I didn't I didn't know
what I wanted to do yet I definitely knew what
I didn't want. I didn't want to stay in Las Vegas.
I didn't want to. You know. I had a lot
of friends who are either going to college they knew
what they wanted to do, you know, or they were
(03:44):
going to go to the community school and figure out
what they were going to do, or you know, they
were going to work at the bank or work at
a clothing store. And that felt like death to me,
Like I thought, I can't. It just gave me the
Sundays to think about, like that, that's what I that,
That's what I was going to do after high school.
But yeah, I really didn't know what I wanted to do.
And I ended up meeting this girl, Um, who was
(04:09):
about my age. She was maybe twenty years old. I was.
I was actually eighteen, but I was. I was snowboarding
in Utah and I was I was out to lunch
with my mom and my dad and she was our
our wit, our waitress, and she Um. We started talking
and she's like, oh, I'm getting ready to quit because
I'm moving to Salt Lake City and we were like, oh,
(04:30):
what are you what are you going to do there?
And she said, well, I'm doing this massage school. And
She's like, it's really cool. This is what it's all about.
And that was the first time that I was like,
maybe I'm going to do that too, and she ended
up becoming my roommate. I signed up that day for
a massage to to be a massage therapist. We got
(04:52):
a place in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the day
after I graduated high school, I moved there and started
my journey of becoming a massage therapist. And then when
you were nineteen, everything changed overnight, and then all the
plans that I had really, you know, even though my
plans were loose, right I I visualized myself traveling the world.
(05:17):
Now I had this job that would travel with me,
and I thought that I knew where my life was going,
you know, you really, I don't know. I guess when
you're young, you really feel like you just know how
things were going to work out, you know, and you're
on a good path and life is good and you
know the world's your oyster. And that's really how I felt,
especially doing massage. I loved my job. I loved it
(05:39):
and I was helping to heal people. I was making
really really good money for being nineteen years old, so
I was just saving money, and I was saving it
so that I could travel the world. And then I
would just I'd have this job that would travel with me.
I wanted to live in skiing resorts all across the world,
and then suddenly my life took a detour. I went
to work one day, so I started working. I went
(06:01):
back to Las Vegas after Salt Lake to work at
this world class spa there. It's called Canyon Ranch, and
I was so excited to be working there. I was
the youngest massage therapist, and so I went in feeling good,
just as usual, and about half of my way through
my day, so about three massages in, I realized that
(06:24):
I was exhausted. And at first I kind of blamed
it on the person I was massaging, because I thought,
you know, sometimes people can like give you energy, sometimes
people just suck the life out of you. I really
was like, gosh, like what's going on with this guy,
Like he's draining my energy. But over the next hour
or so, I realized that my energy level continued to fade,
(06:46):
and I just realized I was very fatigued, and my
back was a little bit achy, my neck was a
little bit achy. So, thinking I had the flu, I
went home from work early. My temperature that night was
a D and one, which is typical flu like symptoms.
That's not bad. Right next morning, my temperature broke. Seeing
that I felt better, my family decided to follow through
(07:06):
their travel plans and go out of town. And I said,
don't worry about me. I probably have a twenty four
hour flu or something. But that afternoon, instead of feeling better,
I started to feel worse. And I remember my mom
calling me to check on me, and and I said, Mom,
I feel like I'm dying. But you know, you always
feel like you're dying when you have a flu or
(07:27):
you have a cold. I didn't actually think I was dying.
I just felt so so sick. And my mom said, well,
you probably have a twenty four hour flu. You probably
are a little dehydrated, you know, go to the emergency
room if you need to. And I got off the
phone with her, and I closed my eyes and fell asleep.
And I fell into the deepest sleep I've ever felt.
(07:48):
In fact, I tried to wake myself up multiple times
and I couldn't. I was I was forcing my eyes
awake and I could not wake up. And then suddenly,
out of nowhere, I heard this voice say, Amy, get
up and look in the mirror. And this voice was
so startling that I instantly opened my eyes. I looked around.
(08:09):
I didn't see anybody there, and that's when I started
to realize just how sick I was. I tried to
get into a seated position, and I was weak, and
I was shaky. My heart was beating out of my chest.
It was racing. I scooted to the edge of the
bed and I put my feet on the floor and
I stood up, and I realized that I couldn't fill
(08:31):
my feet. I looked to the floor and my feet
were purple. And I looked at my hands, and my
hands were purple. And I looked at my reflection in
the mirror, and my my nose, my chin, and my
cheeks were purple as well. So I knew right in
that moment that I was dying and something was seriously wrong.
And so my cousin happened to walk in right at
(08:52):
that moment. Because my mom had called her to come
check on me, and she took one look at me
and she cried, Amy, it looks like you're dead. And
I said, I I'm dying. I'm dying. I know I am.
I have to get to the hospital right now. So
she rushed me to the hospital and I was immediately
put on life support. I was given less than a
two percent chance of living. They called my parents and
(09:14):
said I maybe had two hours left to live. They
knew I was in septic shock, but they didn't know why.
They didn't know what I had yet, and my blood
pressure had crashed, my heart rate was through the roof,
you know, everything that they look for when um seeing
if somebody's going to make through, make it through this.
And so they told my parents, you know, she maybe
has two hours left to live. We don't know what
(09:36):
your daughter has, but get here right now. My parents
were about five hours away, so they jumped in the car.
My dad actually ripped the handle off his truck getting
into his truck that fast, and they rushed to Vegas
and I made it through the night. It took about
five days to figure out that what I had was
(09:56):
actually something called ninja cocklemaningitis, which is a bacterial meningitis.
It's rare to get and it's incredibly deadly, and we
really don't know how I got it. It spread like
the flu or the cold. Somebody could have sneezed on
me and the elevator at work, and maybe that's how
I got it. But due to this little microscopic bacteria,
(10:19):
over the course of two and a half months, I
lost my spleen, I lost my kidney function, I lost
the hearing of my left ear, and then due to
the septic shock that my body went into, I lost
both my legs blow the knees. So my life dramatically
changed overnight, and um, I had to completely, you know,
(10:42):
figure out a new place in the world and how
I was going to come back into the world and
where I belonged in the world. And I ended up
having to kind of create it for myself. That reaction
that you had to the most horrific trauma anyone can
really ever envision in for their own body, for their
own life, and at such a young age. What was
(11:05):
so unusual was your reaction and your determination. And your
sister's wedding was just a couple of months later, and
she offered to postpone it, and you said, no, We're
going to have that wedding, and you surprised her by
walking down the aisle, which defied all odds. Now, what's
(11:26):
so interesting is that now you've probably that into a
career where you motivate other people to to defy the
odds in their own lives. What is it about you
that enabled you to do that and still does today?
You know, I do think that I, first of all,
have been my whole life very goal oriented, where I
(11:49):
just I need something, I need something to look forward to,
even when times were bad, I'll create something for myself
to just keep moving forward. And I realized now looking back,
my mission in life has always been to find a
way to find a way to walk again, to find
a way to snowboard again, you know, whatever it may be,
(12:11):
to to figure out the possibilities. And the first thing
that I know helped me get through what I went
through was I was very grateful to be alive even
though I lost my legs. It puts everything into perspective
because I almost lost my hands as well. My hands
(12:33):
were actually at one point worse than my legs, and
so when I only lost my legs. I felt lucky,
and I felt like, Okay, things could have been so
much worse. Thank god I actually pulled out of this good.
I only lost my legs, my kidneys, my spleen, and
my hearing of my left ear. Like, thank God, I'm good.
(12:54):
And so it's amazing how life does that, right, like
you need perspective. To some people, that would be the
worst thing in the world. But I knew that things
could be so much worse. I was that close to death.
I had a near death experience. I I flatlined on
the operating room table. At one point, I had you know,
(13:15):
heart shockers shock my heart back into rhythm. There was
multiple times over the first few weeks that I died
or was very close to and where my family had
to say goodbye. So to actually survive that, I felt
so grateful. And then to know that things could have
been worse. I mean, people who go through what I
(13:35):
went through oftentimes lose their legs above the knees, oftentimes
are scarred from head to toe because of the septic shock.
It gives you this rash. And I didn't have the rash,
So I got very lucky to not be scarred. From
head to toe. I got so lucky to save my
hands and my fingers, so I just kind of naturally
at that time felt grateful I didn't have to force myself.
(13:57):
I really felt grateful for I had. And I then
also had to kind of figure out what does this
mean for my future? And and I try to visualize
my future, and I had no idea what that looked like. Okay,
I'm a snowboarder, a massage therapist, I painted, and now
can I do those things again? Am I going to
(14:19):
be able to snowboard again? Am I going to be
able to work on my feet all day as a
massage therapist? Am I gonna be able to travel? Like?
You know? What does my life look like? Now? And
that's what really prompted me to set these goals for
myself to help pull myself through this. So um. I
remember being willed into the operating room and being terrified
(14:43):
they were getting ready to amputate both my legs below
the knees, and I had no idea what to expect.
I had never seen anybody with two prosthetic legs before
in my life, let alone someone young and you know
someone Yeah, I just I didn't know it to expect
and and I was so scared, and I thought, Okay,
(15:05):
I'm gonna give myself three things that I'm going to
work on when I get out of this this operation.
And the first was that I wasn't going to be
a victim. And the reason that hit me is everybody
felt so sad because of what I was going through,
my family, my friends. It was heartbreaking and it didn't
(15:26):
feel good. It didn't feel good to have people feel
sorry for me, and I wanted to be able to
show them I'm going to be okay, it's going to
be fine. And so I thought, I am not a victim.
I am going to figure my way through this. I'm
going to take this and I'm going to use it somehow.
And so then the second goal was that I would
(15:47):
somehow help other people on this journey. I didn't know
what that meant, but I thought, when I figured this out,
I want to help others to do the same. And
the third thing was I wanted a snowboard that year
because I had never missed a season of snowboarding before
and I wasn't about to. So I was like, Okay,
whatever it takes, I'm going to try to figure out
a way to snowboard this year, I'll get my prosthetics
(16:09):
and we'll figure this out. And so that's what I
went into the operating room with. And that's kind of
the goals that I that I held, you know, true
to my heart, and what I kind of moved towards
as I got out of the hospital, and and and
it gave me something to hang onto, right, kind of
pulled me into the future a little bit and and
helped me not look backwards at how things were, you know,
(16:31):
I was now like, well, this is where it's at,
and now I just got to pick up pieces and
move forward and figure this out. So walking to my
sister's wedding, I think it was just kind of an
extension of that where first of all, I didn't want
to be a victim, right, I did not want people
to feel sorry for me, And my sister's wedding was right,
it was so I believe I left the hospital or
(16:53):
I had my legs amputated. I think it was August
twenty one, and my sister was supposed to get married,
you know, just a few days later. She actually pushed
the wedding into September, but it really didn't give me
much time to prepare, and I didn't want people to
feel sorry for me because our whole family, all our friends,
(17:15):
you know, that was that that was right out of
high school, So you've got a lot of friends at
that time, right, It's kind of like all our high
school friends are there. There was gonna be hundreds of
people there, and I just didn't want people feeling sorry
for me. I just thought, I don't want to be
wheeled down the aisle because I was, um, my sister's
made of honor, like I don't. I don't want to
be wheeled down the aisle and have everybody feel sorry
(17:37):
for me. So I decided I'm gonna walk in her wedding.
I'm gonna make this happen. And I went and got
my prosthetics made. First of all, you know, massively one
of the most challenging probably a few days of my life,
because the reality of how hard my life was going
to be kind of hit me at that point that, oh,
(17:58):
you don't just get legs and go these hurt they
don't fit. Your body is not made to stand confined
in carbon fiber. It was incredibly overwhelming to think of
what my life was going to be like. In fact,
my mom and I crawled into bed and didn't get
out for days because we were so overwhelmed. Like, Okay,
(18:19):
all that this vision of oh, I'm going to do
these things. Now I'm going to realize just how hard
all of this really is to do Again, however, I thought, well, okay,
I'm gonna walk in my sister's right wedding. I'll just
start there. So I started working with the physical therapist
for the week. I you know, got my legs worked
on a few times, and I ended up walking down
(18:40):
the aisle in her wedding, surprising her. She didn't even
realize that I was, you know, working towards that. In fact,
they wheeled me to the door before walking outside, and
then I got up and walked. And it makes me
want to cry. I actually haven't thought about it and along,
but everybody was crying right like, everybody was falling, And
(19:05):
for me, I felt like, okay, okay, if I can
do this, it's going to be okay. You know, if
I could take one step forward, eventually I'll get there.
Just keep moving forward. So for me, it was a
really great little goal example of what the possibilities are.
(19:28):
And then I just needed to make them bigger. Do
you still live your life that way? In this idea
of like, sorry, I'm gonna cry to you, we're all crying,
you know, but do you still live your life that way?
And what I take away from what you say is
it's really amazing idea of like, as long as we
(19:48):
can hold on to one goal, to one small goal,
to something I do, I do because life, as it
continues on, you deal with more challenge, is you know,
And just because you've lived one story doesn't mean you're
not going to live more. In fact, the longer we live,
the more different stories and journeys and challenges and obstacles
(20:11):
we're going to face and overcome and get through. And
so you for me, that's that's one thing that helps
pull me forward. It's because it makes me feel in control. Right,
Like if you're just at the mercy of the world
and you're just kind of floating in the wind, I mean,
who knows where you end up, and sometimes it could
be amazing, right, But for me to have a little
(20:33):
element of control over my situation is Okay, this is
what I'm gonna do, and this is the time frame
I'm going to do it. In I've always functioned really well.
I realized with a time frame, right, so my sister's wedding,
I'm walking, but I'm walking to my sister's wedding. That
gives me three weeks right to get comfortable in these
prosthetics and go. And then you know, I set the
(20:55):
gold of snowboard again that season, and so I think
I made it. It was like the very end of
the season that the season closes in April, and it
was like the end of March that I that I
did it because I said that I would. So yeah,
having these goals and having a time stamp on them
has always given me something to look forward to and
(21:17):
and has made it said that I don't look backwards,
right because there's no time to like, I gotta there's
something to work towards every single day to get where
I want to be. And so yeah, I would definitely
say I still operate that way. And now for a
quick break. So most recently you had a health setback
(21:38):
and is that something you're still getting your yourself out of. Yes,
So this was huge. You know, as I said, the
more life we live, the more stories will have. At
one point, the biggest story of my life. The biggest
journey of my life was losing my legs at nineteen.
But then I went twenty years living my best life, traveling, snowboarding,
(22:02):
you know, figuring out the possibilities doing all the things
I love to do onto prosthetic legs. And then all
of a sudden, about two years ago, it was a
February of two thousand nineteen, my world flipped upside down
again when I had this cramp in my my left
(22:22):
calf and I was actually doing a speech in Las Vegas.
So at that time, I was traveling all over the
world snowboarding and speaking. I'd you know, I'd be in
China speaking and Japan snowboarding, and Asia's third Europe speaking
and coming back to the US and snowboarding, and you know,
it was like just back and forth and back and forth.
Really for quite a few years I was doing that.
(22:44):
And so I was in Vegas doing a speech and
I felt this cramp in my left calf, and I
didn't think too much of it because obviously having prosthetic
legs you get used to a level of aches and pains.
Things don't necessarily feel normal. But this pain continued it on,
and I actually had a flight in Nebraska and do
a speech there as well. So I did the speech
(23:05):
in Nebraska. Actually was on crutches, and I thought, well,
maybe my prosthetic needs to be fixed. I didn't think
it was me. I was thinking, Oh, my prosthetic leg
just doesn't fit right right now. But the morning after
this speech I was in Nebraska, I woke up to
a scruciating pain in my leg. Ripped the sheets off,
(23:29):
realized my leg was as white as the sheets I
was laying and and didn't have blood and my leg
was cold. I was terrified. I threw my legs kind
of over the edge of the bed and just rubbed
my leg like crazy, trying to get blood flow. And
I was googling right away. I was like circulation issue.
(23:49):
Oh gosh, I might have a blood clow. I travel,
you know, I travel all over the place. So I
was thinking, Okay, deep vein thrombosis something like that. I
looked up a picture and it did not look like
that at all, So, my gosh, that's I don't think
that's what I have. And anyways, I I made the
quickest flight I could out of there to get to Denver.
As soon as I landed went straight to the emergency room,
(24:12):
and that's where I was diagnosed with a massive blood
clot from almost my hip down every artery of my
left leg. So you have one arterial system down your
left leg. It's kind of all connected. You have your
phamoral and your popliteal and then it breaks off into
arteries blowbany. Well, that entire system was a blood clot,
(24:33):
and I knew that was bad. Like there's many things
in my life where I'm like, Okay, this is bad,
but it's gonna be fine. This was I think the well,
the second time in my life really where I'm laying
in the emergency room going Okay, this is really really bad.
This is really really bad. Like this isn't something you
(24:54):
just get over, you know, in the day or two
or a month or two, Like this is a big deal.
So I ended up having multiple surgeries to remove this
and where we think it came from, where we actually
know it came from. My prosthetic had been pushing behind
my knee for quite some time, and I thought that
(25:17):
I was bruising my calf. Every time that my my
calf would hurt, I thought, oh, I gotta get my
prosthetic fixed. But really I was bruising the artery and
I was injuring the artery, and over time that artery
just gave up. And so here the legs that have
taken me so far in my life are now what
just knocked me off at my feet. And so I
(25:37):
have had about ten surgeries over the last two years,
all to save my legs, save the remainder of my leg,
and a fight to walk again for the second time
in my life. And it's a journey that I never
could have imagined. You know, I was living my best
life really before this happened. Like I thought, I figured
it out again, right, like okay, fought back from meningitis,
(26:00):
from losing my legs to go on and live my
dreams and goals and everything, to now all of a
sudden having the rug pulled out from under me and
literally start over from square one again. And so it
has been really the most challenging journey of my life.
And it's so interesting because you know, as you get older,
(26:21):
things do change. Some of the things that maybe helped
me get through what I went through twenty years ago
maybe aren't really that relevant now, you know, Like there's
different things now that are helping me on my journey,
helping me gain perspective, and helping me to move forward.
And these are all things that to be honest, you know,
I hate to be this kind of you know, toxic
(26:44):
positivity person, but you can always find something good in
every situation. And this has taught me so much more
than I knew before um about dealing with challenge on
a day to day basis, about uh, not just overcoming
and healing and continuing on, but continuing on while you're
(27:07):
facing challenge. You know, maybe there's a lot of people
out there who won't overcome whatever it is they're facing.
It's something they're living with the rest of their life.
And and and this is my first real experience of
of having kind of a chronic challenge that I'm facing
(27:29):
but also still trying to show up as my best
self in the world and how to do that. So
it's been a huge journey. And actually that's that's why
I started my podcast, Bouncing Forward, is to to share
all the things I'm learning along the way and to help,
you know, others be able to do the same. Do
(27:49):
you have bad moments, bad days? How do you get
yourself out of those? Oh? Yeah, oh my gosh. Okay,
So I had I had a really bad week last week,
probably one of the worst weeks I've had in my life.
So I had a surgery about a month and a
half ago, and I was this close to walking. So
(28:14):
in January and February, my leg was actually it felt great,
everything was functioning really really good. I just needed to
get a prosthetic and walk. So that was that was.
You know, I've been waiting two years for this. I
was so excited for that. And suddenly we saw that
my famoral artery, which is that it's your second largest
(28:36):
artery in your body. So that's the artery that was
injured initially, all of a sudden decided to close. It's
like just two years later, I just decided it's going
to collapse, close and be done. And I'm like, oh
my gosh, I'm being ready to walk. And so we
rushed in open it up, and it ends up collapsing
the entire arterial system in my leg and that's it.
(28:58):
The surgeons are like, that's it can't do anymore. This
is you know, clearly, this this artery is so injured
that it doesn't want to come back at all. And luckily.
You know, here's another thing you just gotta you gotta
find the positive moments in every situation to get through sometimes.
And one of the positive things that happened is the
(29:21):
human body is miraculous. It is incredible. Like what I've
seen my body do over the last two years has
truly been miraculous. Because when this arterial system collapsed in
my leg, all of a sudden, this thigh artery that
you have one more artery in your leg, and it's
(29:41):
a thigh artery that usually just speeds blood to your thigh,
it just opened up three times its normal size and
started branching off like roots from a tree, branches to
go below the knee and feed my legs. So I
didn't even realize that this had happened, that the whole
material system collapse, because all of a sudden, this little
(30:02):
artery decided to grow three times it's normal size and takeover.
And so there's just these like beautiful moments in all
of it where you go, oh my gosh, like the
human body is made to survive. It is made to
survive if you support it right, if you take care
of it, it gives me that much more. Uh, just
motivation to keep my body healthy because of what it
(30:25):
what it does for me. And and you know, if
you fight for your health and your body, it will
fight for you when you can't. You know, you might
be in a coma. I remember twenty years ago thinking,
oh my gosh, I've been in a coma this whole time.
Yet my body fought for me and and I survived.
I had nothing to do with that. It was all
my bodies. So it's so amazing um to kind of
(30:48):
be a part of this process. And like I, my
body has been through so much. I have scars from
head to toe. I'm right now thinner than i've been,
I have no muscle. I've had ten surgeries this year.
I've had anesthesia, my skin straw. It's like everything is
not how I would want it to be. Yet I
have more appreciation for my body right now than I've
(31:10):
ever had because of what it's done and what it's
gotten me through. And now for a quick break back
to this week and why it was so horrible. So
what was so horrible this week is that knowing that
this artery collapsed and the surgeons can't do anything to
(31:31):
fix it, it really comes down to me now totally
surrendering where I don't have control. It's not like going
for another surgery. It's like I have to surrender to
what my body is going to do. And it's really
up to my body if it's going to uh be
enough to get me to walk again or not. And
(31:52):
there's more major surgeries that could come down the road. Um,
if I don't have enough circulation of my leg, I
could have more of my leg amputated. But course you
know that's something I'm trying to avoid. But it is
an option. Um, which options were good. I'm telling you,
if you have an option, then you're in a good spot.
But but this week was so I was so sad.
(32:15):
It's I was just so sad that my body went
through so much. I was so scared that I wouldn't
walk again. Um, there's now not something to look forward
to to pull me through, right, like when it comes
(32:35):
to like, Okay, we'll do that surgery and see if
that works. It's kind of like I just that this
week thought, God, I'm just kind of at the mercy
of this. And I actually have been dealing with a
level of pain that I've never had before. Um, I've
never dealt with chronic pain before, and I've got a
level of that right now, and it makes it very
(32:56):
hard to be inspired and motivated, makes it very hard
to you focus on your future and dreams and goals
and visions when you're constantly pulled back into your body
because it hurts. And so it's given me a whole
different perspective on what a lot of people go through.
A lot of people deal with chronic pain and UM
and this is kind of a little bit of it
(33:17):
that that I'm experiencing. So I just I had a
week where I just was really really down and realized
I was actually dealing with a little bit of depression
this week because I just felt like I don't have
anything to get me through. So this is how I
turned it around. I Um, I decided, Okay, it can
(33:39):
be so overwhelming when we think about these big dreams
and goals. So I'm just gonna break it back down
to those little baby steps, And I thought of what's
important in my life, and I wrote those things out
kind of as pillars of my life. My relationship that's
with my husband, with my family, with my ends. UM
(34:01):
that's important. UM, nutrition that's important, because that's what's going
to keep my body strong and fighting for me right, um, fitness,
that is hugely important. The only thing I can really
do for my leg right now is work out and
stay strong and kind of convince my body that it
needs blood flow. So on business of course that's important.
(34:23):
How am I keeping you know, my my business going
during all of this? So I wrote these these pillars
of my life down almost like spokes to the wheel,
right Like you look at a wheel and you've got
a spoke and that's your that's your life, like, that's
your core, uh, most important. It's funny, amy, So I
call it a pie. I have a book called The
Pie Life, and it's all that, how each each slice
(34:44):
of your life is important and you make goals for
each slice. It's very similar to what you're saying. I
love that. I love that, and yeah, I don't know why.
This week I was visualizing spokes of a wheel kind
of right like, and if and if if one of
those spokes that's gone, the wheels gonna wobble a bit, right. So,
these are like the five or six things that you
you're absolute life necessities to stay healthy and strong and
(35:10):
whole and fulfilled and to live your best life, right,
And so I started looking at those spokes and those
pillars and realizing, you know, here I'm concerned about how
am I going to snowboard again or how am I
going to you know, live my best life again? But
when I look at those pillars, I realized I was
lacking in a lot of areas. You know, I'm like, gosh,
(35:31):
my relationships, like you know, my husband, I had this
big argument. We've been through a lot of stress through
all of this, like what does that need to be nurtured?
And then I'm like, gosh, I haven't been eating the
way I want to. What do I need to put there?
And then I started thinking about fitness. I'm like, okay,
this needs to be my absolute everyday priority and it
hasn't been. And so I decided, I'm going to do
(35:55):
two things in each of these little areas that are
handship well super easy. What's two things that I can
do today to make change? And I thought, okay, um, fitness, Okay,
I'm going to call a personal trainer and I'm gonna
and the second thing that I can do right now
(36:15):
is I'm going to get on the floor and do
leg exercises. Okay, those are my two goals? Did those two?
You know? For nutrition, I've been kind of eating what
I what I want to get through all of this,
and I'm like, okay, no more dairy starting today, and
more vegetables. It's like I could start that today and
I did. And so I went through each one of
(36:36):
those pillars and just thought, are two very tangible, simple
goals that I could do today, um, to help me
feel like I am getting, you know, back on track
to being my best self. And I am telling you
it changed everything for me. I mean within minutes, just
by making the call to a trainer and getting on
(36:58):
the floor and doing leg extra sizes. I mean, I've
been doing physical therapy, but it's like I just I
needed to take it to the next the next level,
right and so um anyways, I just think you know,
the reason I was so uh not feeling good and
having such a bad week as I was feeling out
of control, I was feeling like I'm so far away
(37:21):
from my best self. And I was also starting to
think that I needed these outside things like how like
you know, I have all these outside goals and dreams
and I'm like, okay, well, don't touch those yet. I
need to take care of the inside things. I need
to do the inside work. Then I can expand my
(37:43):
business ideas and brand and all that stuff. Right, and
so anyways, I just feel that, um, those those two
simple tangible goals that that you can begin right now
that just into a little bit closer to where you
want to be. Just that feel so good. And confidence
builds on confidence. So if you do these little tiny
(38:05):
things that make you just a little bit more confident,
then you're like, Okay, now I can do something a
little bigger, and that makes you a little more confident
eventually you get there. It's so incredible because it's first
of all, everyone can relate to feeling so down and
feeling like you've already given everything you have and why
(38:25):
and then you get into a place of why this
is happening and you you have such an extreme version
of that. But the fact that you're able to pull
yourself out of it is so inspiring. I think for
anyone who's facing challenges, whatever those challenges are, everyone has
a challenge, whether you see it or not, right, everyone
has something absolutely Oh my gosh, I mean, we are
(38:47):
all going to have a lot of somethings and there
may be some people that have maybe more visible challenges
like me, but we are all going to go through
grief and loss and s hadness and confusion and uncertain
teeth throughout our entire life. And knowing that it's not
the end of the world. Um, knowing that those are
(39:10):
the things that actually help you grow as a person,
and actually having little tools that help you get through
that's huge. Just to know you've got something in your
toolbox to get through this situation, that's huge. And so
that's um yeah, I mean, that's that's something that I'm
really inspired by right now, not only because I'm in
(39:32):
the thick of it and I'm living it, but you know,
through my podcast Bouncing Forward, I'm trying to share the
tips and tools to get through each one of these
challenging moments because I do believe that our challenges are
oftentimes disguises for opportunity. And when I look back in
my life, every big opportunity I've had was also the
(39:55):
most challenging thing I've ever gone through. So whether it
was trying to snowboard again, you know, I won three
Paralympic medals. That's amazing, but it was the biggest challenge
of my life figuring out how to get there right.
So that's where we're going to stop this episode with
Amy Purty and we'll welcome her back next week to
speak more about Dancing with the Stars, her Paralympic snowboarding career,
(40:18):
and her OPRAH connection. Plus we'll do the Lightning Round
with Amy and we'll have Lue Burns join us for
the male perspective. Thanks for listening to What's Her Story
with Sam and Amy. We would so appreciate if you
would leave her view wherever you get your podcasts, and
of course connect with us on social media and What's
Her Story podcast. What's Her Story with Sam and Amy
(40:41):
is powered by my company, The Riveter at the Riveter
dot C O in Sam's company, park Place Payments at
park place Payments dot com. Thanks to our producer Stacy Para,
our social media manager Phoebe Crane Fuess, and our male
Perspective Lou Burns O
Hi, I'm Sam Edis and I'm Amy Nelson. Welcome to
What's Her Story? With Sam and Amy. This is a
show about the world's most remarkable women, their professional and
personal journeys. Together, we'll hear from gold medalists, best selling authors,
and leaders of the world's most iconic brands. She was
(00:24):
called a hero by Oprah Winfrey. She has two prosthetic legs,
she's a Paralympic snowboarder, and she was the runner up
on Susan eighteen of Dancing with the Stars. Today, we
welcome Amy Purty to the show. Amy was such an
incredible guest that we decided to split this into two episodes,
So today we share with you heart one of this
(00:47):
inspiring conversation. So Amy, tell us about your childhood in
Las Vegas. Gosh, I mean, you know, growing up in
Las Vegas is interesting, and it's one of those places
where people always say, wait, you were born and raised
in Las Vegas, Like, how many people are actually born
in Las Vegas? But I'm one of them, And I
(01:10):
always dreamed of getting out of there. To be honest,
I felt like it just wasn't it just wasn't where
I wanted to be. I loved the outdoors. I love
the mountains. I knew there was a whole world out there.
In fact, my aunt Um, she lived in Australia, and
I remember she'd come back and tell us all these
stories of her travels, and like that was the that
(01:32):
was the only bit of information I had really that
there was this whole outside world, and so I really visualized,
like and daydreamed, right, just just traveling the world and
seeing what's out there. And Vegas felt so boring. But
my family, you know, we did everything we could to
be in the outdoors, and I think that's where my
love for the outdoors came. My my family would go
(01:55):
up camping on the weekends. We had a family cabin
up in the mountains that we would go up to
on the weekends in the summer, and then we would
ski on the weekends in the winter. Although I was
never very good at skiing, it just was something my
family did for fun, and we weren't really into sports.
I mean, I I definitely do not come from a
(02:17):
big sport family in Vegas. You don't. At the time,
we didn't have a sport team, so it's not something
that we really grew up around. I never played sports.
I did clog dancing when I was twelve years old
with my sister. That's about the most athletic thing I did.
And then and then I fell in love with snowboarding
(02:39):
though at the age of fourteen, and that wasn't really
a sport. It was more of a lifestyle, like when
you think about skateboarding and like a skateboarder, you know,
that's what the snowboarders were like at that time too,
where it was just like this isn't like I'm training
for a sport. It's like, this is just kind of
what I do. And so I was introduced to it,
actually not at fourteen, at fifteen, fell in love with it,
(03:01):
and you know, even then definitely did not consider myself
an athlete. So that's one thing I want to say
is a lot of people just assume that, you know,
if you're an athlete, you were born an athlete, you
were born into an athletic family, or you've always been
an athlete. I did not become an athlete until I
was thirty years old. I would love it if you
would share with us your post college plans, because your
parents did not have an expectation that you would necessarily
(03:23):
go to college. There was no college plan. And I
didn't go to college because I didn't I didn't know
what I wanted to do yet I definitely knew what
I didn't want. I didn't want to stay in Las Vegas.
I didn't want to. You know. I had a lot
of friends who are either going to college they knew
what they wanted to do, you know, or they were
(03:44):
going to go to the community school and figure out
what they were going to do, or you know, they
were going to work at the bank or work at
a clothing store. And that felt like death to me,
Like I thought, I can't. It just gave me the
Sundays to think about, like that, that's what I that,
That's what I was going to do after high school.
But yeah, I really didn't know what I wanted to do.
And I ended up meeting this girl, Um, who was
(04:09):
about my age. She was maybe twenty years old. I was.
I was actually eighteen, but I was. I was snowboarding
in Utah and I was I was out to lunch
with my mom and my dad and she was our
our wit, our waitress, and she Um. We started talking
and she's like, oh, I'm getting ready to quit because
I'm moving to Salt Lake City and we were like, oh,
(04:30):
what are you what are you going to do there?
And she said, well, I'm doing this massage school. And
She's like, it's really cool. This is what it's all about.
And that was the first time that I was like,
maybe I'm going to do that too, and she ended
up becoming my roommate. I signed up that day for
a massage to to be a massage therapist. We got
(04:52):
a place in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the day
after I graduated high school, I moved there and started
my journey of becoming a massage therapist. And then when
you were nineteen, everything changed overnight, and then all the
plans that I had really, you know, even though my
plans were loose, right I I visualized myself traveling the world.
(05:17):
Now I had this job that would travel with me,
and I thought that I knew where my life was going,
you know, you really, I don't know. I guess when
you're young, you really feel like you just know how
things were going to work out, you know, and you're
on a good path and life is good and you
know the world's your oyster. And that's really how I felt,
especially doing massage. I loved my job. I loved it
(05:39):
and I was helping to heal people. I was making
really really good money for being nineteen years old, so
I was just saving money, and I was saving it
so that I could travel the world. And then I
would just I'd have this job that would travel with me.
I wanted to live in skiing resorts all across the world,
and then suddenly my life took a detour. I went
to work one day, so I started working. I went
(06:01):
back to Las Vegas after Salt Lake to work at
this world class spa there. It's called Canyon Ranch, and
I was so excited to be working there. I was
the youngest massage therapist, and so I went in feeling good,
just as usual, and about half of my way through
my day, so about three massages in, I realized that
(06:24):
I was exhausted. And at first I kind of blamed
it on the person I was massaging, because I thought,
you know, sometimes people can like give you energy, sometimes
people just suck the life out of you. I really
was like, gosh, like what's going on with this guy,
Like he's draining my energy. But over the next hour
or so, I realized that my energy level continued to fade,
(06:46):
and I just realized I was very fatigued, and my
back was a little bit achy, my neck was a
little bit achy. So, thinking I had the flu, I
went home from work early. My temperature that night was
a D and one, which is typical flu like symptoms.
That's not bad. Right next morning, my temperature broke. Seeing
that I felt better, my family decided to follow through
(07:06):
their travel plans and go out of town. And I said,
don't worry about me. I probably have a twenty four
hour flu or something. But that afternoon, instead of feeling better,
I started to feel worse. And I remember my mom
calling me to check on me, and and I said, Mom,
I feel like I'm dying. But you know, you always
feel like you're dying when you have a flu or
(07:27):
you have a cold. I didn't actually think I was dying.
I just felt so so sick. And my mom said, well,
you probably have a twenty four hour flu. You probably
are a little dehydrated, you know, go to the emergency
room if you need to. And I got off the
phone with her, and I closed my eyes and fell asleep.
And I fell into the deepest sleep I've ever felt.
(07:48):
In fact, I tried to wake myself up multiple times
and I couldn't. I was I was forcing my eyes
awake and I could not wake up. And then suddenly,
out of nowhere, I heard this voice say, Amy, get
up and look in the mirror. And this voice was
so startling that I instantly opened my eyes. I looked around.
(08:09):
I didn't see anybody there, and that's when I started
to realize just how sick I was. I tried to
get into a seated position, and I was weak, and
I was shaky. My heart was beating out of my chest.
It was racing. I scooted to the edge of the
bed and I put my feet on the floor and
I stood up, and I realized that I couldn't fill
(08:31):
my feet. I looked to the floor and my feet
were purple. And I looked at my hands, and my
hands were purple. And I looked at my reflection in
the mirror, and my my nose, my chin, and my
cheeks were purple as well. So I knew right in
that moment that I was dying and something was seriously wrong.
And so my cousin happened to walk in right at
(08:52):
that moment. Because my mom had called her to come
check on me, and she took one look at me
and she cried, Amy, it looks like you're dead. And
I said, I I'm dying. I'm dying. I know I am.
I have to get to the hospital right now. So
she rushed me to the hospital and I was immediately
put on life support. I was given less than a
two percent chance of living. They called my parents and
(09:14):
said I maybe had two hours left to live. They
knew I was in septic shock, but they didn't know why.
They didn't know what I had yet, and my blood
pressure had crashed, my heart rate was through the roof,
you know, everything that they look for when um seeing
if somebody's going to make through, make it through this.
And so they told my parents, you know, she maybe
has two hours left to live. We don't know what
(09:36):
your daughter has, but get here right now. My parents
were about five hours away, so they jumped in the car.
My dad actually ripped the handle off his truck getting
into his truck that fast, and they rushed to Vegas
and I made it through the night. It took about
five days to figure out that what I had was
(09:56):
actually something called ninja cocklemaningitis, which is a bacterial meningitis.
It's rare to get and it's incredibly deadly, and we
really don't know how I got it. It spread like
the flu or the cold. Somebody could have sneezed on
me and the elevator at work, and maybe that's how
I got it. But due to this little microscopic bacteria,
(10:19):
over the course of two and a half months, I
lost my spleen, I lost my kidney function, I lost
the hearing of my left ear, and then due to
the septic shock that my body went into, I lost
both my legs blow the knees. So my life dramatically
changed overnight, and um, I had to completely, you know,
(10:42):
figure out a new place in the world and how
I was going to come back into the world and
where I belonged in the world. And I ended up
having to kind of create it for myself. That reaction
that you had to the most horrific trauma anyone can
really ever envision in for their own body, for their
own life, and at such a young age. What was
(11:05):
so unusual was your reaction and your determination. And your
sister's wedding was just a couple of months later, and
she offered to postpone it, and you said, no, We're
going to have that wedding, and you surprised her by
walking down the aisle, which defied all odds. Now, what's
(11:26):
so interesting is that now you've probably that into a
career where you motivate other people to to defy the
odds in their own lives. What is it about you
that enabled you to do that and still does today?
You know, I do think that I, first of all,
have been my whole life very goal oriented, where I
(11:49):
just I need something, I need something to look forward to,
even when times were bad, I'll create something for myself
to just keep moving forward. And I realized now looking back,
my mission in life has always been to find a
way to find a way to walk again, to find
a way to snowboard again, you know, whatever it may be,
(12:11):
to to figure out the possibilities. And the first thing
that I know helped me get through what I went
through was I was very grateful to be alive even
though I lost my legs. It puts everything into perspective
because I almost lost my hands as well. My hands
(12:33):
were actually at one point worse than my legs, and
so when I only lost my legs. I felt lucky,
and I felt like, Okay, things could have been so
much worse. Thank god I actually pulled out of this good.
I only lost my legs, my kidneys, my spleen, and
my hearing of my left ear. Like, thank God, I'm good.
(12:54):
And so it's amazing how life does that, right, like
you need perspective. To some people, that would be the
worst thing in the world. But I knew that things
could be so much worse. I was that close to death.
I had a near death experience. I I flatlined on
the operating room table. At one point, I had you know,
(13:15):
heart shockers shock my heart back into rhythm. There was
multiple times over the first few weeks that I died
or was very close to and where my family had
to say goodbye. So to actually survive that, I felt
so grateful. And then to know that things could have
been worse. I mean, people who go through what I
(13:35):
went through oftentimes lose their legs above the knees, oftentimes
are scarred from head to toe because of the septic shock.
It gives you this rash. And I didn't have the rash,
So I got very lucky to not be scarred. From
head to toe. I got so lucky to save my
hands and my fingers, so I just kind of naturally
at that time felt grateful I didn't have to force myself.
(13:57):
I really felt grateful for I had. And I then
also had to kind of figure out what does this
mean for my future? And and I try to visualize
my future, and I had no idea what that looked like. Okay,
I'm a snowboarder, a massage therapist, I painted, and now
can I do those things again? Am I going to
(14:19):
be able to snowboard again? Am I going to be
able to work on my feet all day as a
massage therapist? Am I gonna be able to travel? Like?
You know? What does my life look like? Now? And
that's what really prompted me to set these goals for
myself to help pull myself through this. So um. I
remember being willed into the operating room and being terrified
(14:43):
they were getting ready to amputate both my legs below
the knees, and I had no idea what to expect.
I had never seen anybody with two prosthetic legs before
in my life, let alone someone young and you know
someone Yeah, I just I didn't know it to expect
and and I was so scared, and I thought, Okay,
(15:05):
I'm gonna give myself three things that I'm going to
work on when I get out of this this operation.
And the first was that I wasn't going to be
a victim. And the reason that hit me is everybody
felt so sad because of what I was going through,
my family, my friends. It was heartbreaking and it didn't
(15:26):
feel good. It didn't feel good to have people feel
sorry for me, and I wanted to be able to
show them I'm going to be okay, it's going to
be fine. And so I thought, I am not a victim.
I am going to figure my way through this. I'm
going to take this and I'm going to use it somehow.
And so then the second goal was that I would
(15:47):
somehow help other people on this journey. I didn't know
what that meant, but I thought, when I figured this out,
I want to help others to do the same. And
the third thing was I wanted a snowboard that year
because I had never missed a season of snowboarding before
and I wasn't about to. So I was like, Okay,
whatever it takes, I'm going to try to figure out
a way to snowboard this year, I'll get my prosthetics
(16:09):
and we'll figure this out. And so that's what I
went into the operating room with. And that's kind of
the goals that I that I held, you know, true
to my heart, and what I kind of moved towards
as I got out of the hospital, and and and
it gave me something to hang onto, right, kind of
pulled me into the future a little bit and and
helped me not look backwards at how things were, you know,
(16:31):
I was now like, well, this is where it's at,
and now I just got to pick up pieces and
move forward and figure this out. So walking to my
sister's wedding, I think it was just kind of an
extension of that where first of all, I didn't want
to be a victim, right, I did not want people
to feel sorry for me, And my sister's wedding was right,
it was so I believe I left the hospital or
(16:53):
I had my legs amputated. I think it was August
twenty one, and my sister was supposed to get married,
you know, just a few days later. She actually pushed
the wedding into September, but it really didn't give me
much time to prepare, and I didn't want people to
feel sorry for me because our whole family, all our friends,
(17:15):
you know, that was that that was right out of
high school, So you've got a lot of friends at
that time, right, It's kind of like all our high
school friends are there. There was gonna be hundreds of
people there, and I just didn't want people feeling sorry
for me. I just thought, I don't want to be
wheeled down the aisle because I was, um, my sister's
made of honor, like I don't. I don't want to
be wheeled down the aisle and have everybody feel sorry
(17:37):
for me. So I decided I'm gonna walk in her wedding.
I'm gonna make this happen. And I went and got
my prosthetics made. First of all, you know, massively one
of the most challenging probably a few days of my life,
because the reality of how hard my life was going
to be kind of hit me at that point that, oh,
(17:58):
you don't just get legs and go these hurt they
don't fit. Your body is not made to stand confined
in carbon fiber. It was incredibly overwhelming to think of
what my life was going to be like. In fact,
my mom and I crawled into bed and didn't get
out for days because we were so overwhelmed. Like, Okay,
(18:19):
all that this vision of oh, I'm going to do
these things. Now I'm going to realize just how hard
all of this really is to do Again, however, I thought, well, okay,
I'm gonna walk in my sister's right wedding. I'll just
start there. So I started working with the physical therapist
for the week. I you know, got my legs worked
on a few times, and I ended up walking down
(18:40):
the aisle in her wedding, surprising her. She didn't even
realize that I was, you know, working towards that. In fact,
they wheeled me to the door before walking outside, and
then I got up and walked. And it makes me
want to cry. I actually haven't thought about it and along,
but everybody was crying right like, everybody was falling, And
(19:05):
for me, I felt like, okay, okay, if I can
do this, it's going to be okay. You know, if
I could take one step forward, eventually I'll get there.
Just keep moving forward. So for me, it was a
really great little goal example of what the possibilities are.
(19:28):
And then I just needed to make them bigger. Do
you still live your life that way? In this idea
of like, sorry, I'm gonna cry to you, we're all crying,
you know, but do you still live your life that way?
And what I take away from what you say is
it's really amazing idea of like, as long as we
(19:48):
can hold on to one goal, to one small goal,
to something I do, I do because life, as it
continues on, you deal with more challenge, is you know,
And just because you've lived one story doesn't mean you're
not going to live more. In fact, the longer we live,
the more different stories and journeys and challenges and obstacles
(20:11):
we're going to face and overcome and get through. And
so you for me, that's that's one thing that helps
pull me forward. It's because it makes me feel in control. Right,
Like if you're just at the mercy of the world
and you're just kind of floating in the wind, I mean,
who knows where you end up, and sometimes it could
be amazing, right, But for me to have a little
(20:33):
element of control over my situation is Okay, this is
what I'm gonna do, and this is the time frame
I'm going to do it. In I've always functioned really well.
I realized with a time frame, right, so my sister's wedding,
I'm walking, but I'm walking to my sister's wedding. That
gives me three weeks right to get comfortable in these
prosthetics and go. And then you know, I set the
(20:55):
gold of snowboard again that season, and so I think
I made it. It was like the very end of
the season that the season closes in April, and it
was like the end of March that I that I
did it because I said that I would. So yeah,
having these goals and having a time stamp on them
has always given me something to look forward to and
(21:17):
and has made it said that I don't look backwards,
right because there's no time to like, I gotta there's
something to work towards every single day to get where
I want to be. And so yeah, I would definitely
say I still operate that way. And now for a
quick break. So most recently you had a health setback
(21:38):
and is that something you're still getting your yourself out of. Yes,
So this was huge. You know, as I said, the
more life we live, the more stories will have. At
one point, the biggest story of my life. The biggest
journey of my life was losing my legs at nineteen.
But then I went twenty years living my best life, traveling, snowboarding,
(22:02):
you know, figuring out the possibilities doing all the things
I love to do onto prosthetic legs. And then all
of a sudden, about two years ago, it was a
February of two thousand nineteen, my world flipped upside down
again when I had this cramp in my my left
(22:22):
calf and I was actually doing a speech in Las Vegas.
So at that time, I was traveling all over the
world snowboarding and speaking. I'd you know, I'd be in
China speaking and Japan snowboarding, and Asia's third Europe speaking
and coming back to the US and snowboarding, and you know,
it was like just back and forth and back and forth.
Really for quite a few years I was doing that.
(22:44):
And so I was in Vegas doing a speech and
I felt this cramp in my left calf, and I
didn't think too much of it because obviously having prosthetic
legs you get used to a level of aches and pains.
Things don't necessarily feel normal. But this pain continued it on,
and I actually had a flight in Nebraska and do
a speech there as well. So I did the speech
(23:05):
in Nebraska. Actually was on crutches, and I thought, well,
maybe my prosthetic needs to be fixed. I didn't think
it was me. I was thinking, Oh, my prosthetic leg
just doesn't fit right right now. But the morning after
this speech I was in Nebraska, I woke up to
a scruciating pain in my leg. Ripped the sheets off,
(23:29):
realized my leg was as white as the sheets I
was laying and and didn't have blood and my leg
was cold. I was terrified. I threw my legs kind
of over the edge of the bed and just rubbed
my leg like crazy, trying to get blood flow. And
I was googling right away. I was like circulation issue.
(23:49):
Oh gosh, I might have a blood clow. I travel,
you know, I travel all over the place. So I
was thinking, Okay, deep vein thrombosis something like that. I
looked up a picture and it did not look like
that at all, So, my gosh, that's I don't think
that's what I have. And anyways, I I made the
quickest flight I could out of there to get to Denver.
As soon as I landed went straight to the emergency room,
(24:12):
and that's where I was diagnosed with a massive blood
clot from almost my hip down every artery of my
left leg. So you have one arterial system down your
left leg. It's kind of all connected. You have your
phamoral and your popliteal and then it breaks off into
arteries blowbany. Well, that entire system was a blood clot,
(24:33):
and I knew that was bad. Like there's many things
in my life where I'm like, Okay, this is bad,
but it's gonna be fine. This was I think the well,
the second time in my life really where I'm laying
in the emergency room going Okay, this is really really bad.
This is really really bad. Like this isn't something you
(24:54):
just get over, you know, in the day or two
or a month or two, Like this is a big deal.
So I ended up having multiple surgeries to remove this
and where we think it came from, where we actually
know it came from. My prosthetic had been pushing behind
my knee for quite some time, and I thought that
(25:17):
I was bruising my calf. Every time that my my
calf would hurt, I thought, oh, I gotta get my
prosthetic fixed. But really I was bruising the artery and
I was injuring the artery, and over time that artery
just gave up. And so here the legs that have
taken me so far in my life are now what
just knocked me off at my feet. And so I
(25:37):
have had about ten surgeries over the last two years,
all to save my legs, save the remainder of my leg,
and a fight to walk again for the second time
in my life. And it's a journey that I never
could have imagined. You know, I was living my best
life really before this happened. Like I thought, I figured
it out again, right, like okay, fought back from meningitis,
(26:00):
from losing my legs to go on and live my
dreams and goals and everything, to now all of a
sudden having the rug pulled out from under me and
literally start over from square one again. And so it
has been really the most challenging journey of my life.
And it's so interesting because you know, as you get older,
(26:21):
things do change. Some of the things that maybe helped
me get through what I went through twenty years ago
maybe aren't really that relevant now, you know, Like there's
different things now that are helping me on my journey,
helping me gain perspective, and helping me to move forward.
And these are all things that to be honest, you know,
I hate to be this kind of you know, toxic
(26:44):
positivity person, but you can always find something good in
every situation. And this has taught me so much more
than I knew before um about dealing with challenge on
a day to day basis, about uh, not just overcoming
and healing and continuing on, but continuing on while you're
(27:07):
facing challenge. You know, maybe there's a lot of people
out there who won't overcome whatever it is they're facing.
It's something they're living with the rest of their life.
And and and this is my first real experience of
of having kind of a chronic challenge that I'm facing
(27:29):
but also still trying to show up as my best
self in the world and how to do that. So
it's been a huge journey. And actually that's that's why
I started my podcast, Bouncing Forward, is to to share
all the things I'm learning along the way and to help,
you know, others be able to do the same. Do
(27:49):
you have bad moments, bad days? How do you get
yourself out of those? Oh? Yeah, oh my gosh. Okay,
So I had I had a really bad week last week,
probably one of the worst weeks I've had in my life.
So I had a surgery about a month and a
half ago, and I was this close to walking. So
(28:14):
in January and February, my leg was actually it felt great,
everything was functioning really really good. I just needed to
get a prosthetic and walk. So that was that was.
You know, I've been waiting two years for this. I
was so excited for that. And suddenly we saw that
my famoral artery, which is that it's your second largest
(28:36):
artery in your body. So that's the artery that was
injured initially, all of a sudden decided to close. It's
like just two years later, I just decided it's going
to collapse, close and be done. And I'm like, oh
my gosh, I'm being ready to walk. And so we
rushed in open it up, and it ends up collapsing
the entire arterial system in my leg and that's it.
(28:58):
The surgeons are like, that's it can't do anymore. This
is you know, clearly, this this artery is so injured
that it doesn't want to come back at all. And luckily.
You know, here's another thing you just gotta you gotta
find the positive moments in every situation to get through sometimes.
And one of the positive things that happened is the
(29:21):
human body is miraculous. It is incredible. Like what I've
seen my body do over the last two years has
truly been miraculous. Because when this arterial system collapsed in
my leg, all of a sudden, this thigh artery that
you have one more artery in your leg, and it's
(29:41):
a thigh artery that usually just speeds blood to your thigh,
it just opened up three times its normal size and
started branching off like roots from a tree, branches to
go below the knee and feed my legs. So I
didn't even realize that this had happened, that the whole
material system collapse, because all of a sudden, this little
(30:02):
artery decided to grow three times it's normal size and takeover.
And so there's just these like beautiful moments in all
of it where you go, oh my gosh, like the
human body is made to survive. It is made to
survive if you support it right, if you take care
of it, it gives me that much more. Uh, just
motivation to keep my body healthy because of what it
(30:25):
what it does for me. And and you know, if
you fight for your health and your body, it will
fight for you when you can't. You know, you might
be in a coma. I remember twenty years ago thinking,
oh my gosh, I've been in a coma this whole time.
Yet my body fought for me and and I survived.
I had nothing to do with that. It was all
my bodies. So it's so amazing um to kind of
(30:48):
be a part of this process. And like I, my
body has been through so much. I have scars from
head to toe. I'm right now thinner than i've been,
I have no muscle. I've had ten surgeries this year.
I've had anesthesia, my skin straw. It's like everything is
not how I would want it to be. Yet I
have more appreciation for my body right now than I've
(31:10):
ever had because of what it's done and what it's
gotten me through. And now for a quick break back
to this week and why it was so horrible. So
what was so horrible this week is that knowing that
this artery collapsed and the surgeons can't do anything to
(31:31):
fix it, it really comes down to me now totally
surrendering where I don't have control. It's not like going
for another surgery. It's like I have to surrender to
what my body is going to do. And it's really
up to my body if it's going to uh be
enough to get me to walk again or not. And
(31:52):
there's more major surgeries that could come down the road. Um,
if I don't have enough circulation of my leg, I
could have more of my leg amputated. But course you
know that's something I'm trying to avoid. But it is
an option. Um, which options were good. I'm telling you,
if you have an option, then you're in a good spot.
But but this week was so I was so sad.
(32:15):
It's I was just so sad that my body went
through so much. I was so scared that I wouldn't
walk again. Um, there's now not something to look forward
to to pull me through, right, like when it comes
(32:35):
to like, Okay, we'll do that surgery and see if
that works. It's kind of like I just that this
week thought, God, I'm just kind of at the mercy
of this. And I actually have been dealing with a
level of pain that I've never had before. Um, I've
never dealt with chronic pain before, and I've got a
level of that right now, and it makes it very
(32:56):
hard to be inspired and motivated, makes it very hard
to you focus on your future and dreams and goals
and visions when you're constantly pulled back into your body
because it hurts. And so it's given me a whole
different perspective on what a lot of people go through.
A lot of people deal with chronic pain and UM
and this is kind of a little bit of it
(33:17):
that that I'm experiencing. So I just I had a
week where I just was really really down and realized
I was actually dealing with a little bit of depression
this week because I just felt like I don't have
anything to get me through. So this is how I
turned it around. I Um, I decided, Okay, it can
(33:39):
be so overwhelming when we think about these big dreams
and goals. So I'm just gonna break it back down
to those little baby steps, And I thought of what's
important in my life, and I wrote those things out
kind of as pillars of my life. My relationship that's
with my husband, with my family, with my ends. UM
(34:01):
that's important. UM, nutrition that's important, because that's what's going
to keep my body strong and fighting for me right, um, fitness,
that is hugely important. The only thing I can really
do for my leg right now is work out and
stay strong and kind of convince my body that it
needs blood flow. So on business of course that's important.
(34:23):
How am I keeping you know, my my business going
during all of this? So I wrote these these pillars
of my life down almost like spokes to the wheel,
right Like you look at a wheel and you've got
a spoke and that's your that's your life, like, that's
your core, uh, most important. It's funny, amy, So I
call it a pie. I have a book called The
Pie Life, and it's all that, how each each slice
(34:44):
of your life is important and you make goals for
each slice. It's very similar to what you're saying. I
love that. I love that, and yeah, I don't know why.
This week I was visualizing spokes of a wheel kind
of right like, and if and if if one of
those spokes that's gone, the wheels gonna wobble a bit, right. So,
these are like the five or six things that you
you're absolute life necessities to stay healthy and strong and
(35:10):
whole and fulfilled and to live your best life, right,
And so I started looking at those spokes and those
pillars and realizing, you know, here I'm concerned about how
am I going to snowboard again or how am I
going to you know, live my best life again? But
when I look at those pillars, I realized I was
lacking in a lot of areas. You know, I'm like, gosh,
(35:31):
my relationships, like you know, my husband, I had this
big argument. We've been through a lot of stress through
all of this, like what does that need to be nurtured?
And then I'm like, gosh, I haven't been eating the
way I want to. What do I need to put there?
And then I started thinking about fitness. I'm like, okay,
this needs to be my absolute everyday priority and it
hasn't been. And so I decided, I'm going to do
(35:55):
two things in each of these little areas that are
handship well super easy. What's two things that I can
do today to make change? And I thought, okay, um, fitness, Okay,
I'm going to call a personal trainer and I'm gonna
and the second thing that I can do right now
(36:15):
is I'm going to get on the floor and do
leg exercises. Okay, those are my two goals? Did those two?
You know? For nutrition, I've been kind of eating what
I what I want to get through all of this,
and I'm like, okay, no more dairy starting today, and
more vegetables. It's like I could start that today and
I did. And so I went through each one of
(36:36):
those pillars and just thought, are two very tangible, simple
goals that I could do today, um, to help me
feel like I am getting, you know, back on track
to being my best self. And I am telling you
it changed everything for me. I mean within minutes, just
by making the call to a trainer and getting on
(36:58):
the floor and doing leg extra sizes. I mean, I've
been doing physical therapy, but it's like I just I
needed to take it to the next the next level,
right and so um anyways, I just think you know,
the reason I was so uh not feeling good and
having such a bad week as I was feeling out
of control, I was feeling like I'm so far away
(37:21):
from my best self. And I was also starting to
think that I needed these outside things like how like
you know, I have all these outside goals and dreams
and I'm like, okay, well, don't touch those yet. I
need to take care of the inside things. I need
to do the inside work. Then I can expand my
(37:43):
business ideas and brand and all that stuff. Right, and
so anyways, I just feel that, um, those those two
simple tangible goals that that you can begin right now
that just into a little bit closer to where you
want to be. Just that feel so good. And confidence
builds on confidence. So if you do these little tiny
(38:05):
things that make you just a little bit more confident,
then you're like, Okay, now I can do something a
little bigger, and that makes you a little more confident
eventually you get there. It's so incredible because it's first
of all, everyone can relate to feeling so down and
feeling like you've already given everything you have and why
(38:25):
and then you get into a place of why this
is happening and you you have such an extreme version
of that. But the fact that you're able to pull
yourself out of it is so inspiring. I think for
anyone who's facing challenges, whatever those challenges are, everyone has
a challenge, whether you see it or not, right, everyone
has something absolutely Oh my gosh, I mean, we are
(38:47):
all going to have a lot of somethings and there
may be some people that have maybe more visible challenges
like me, but we are all going to go through
grief and loss and s hadness and confusion and uncertain
teeth throughout our entire life. And knowing that it's not
the end of the world. Um, knowing that those are
(39:10):
the things that actually help you grow as a person,
and actually having little tools that help you get through
that's huge. Just to know you've got something in your
toolbox to get through this situation, that's huge. And so
that's um yeah, I mean, that's that's something that I'm
really inspired by right now, not only because I'm in
(39:32):
the thick of it and I'm living it, but you know,
through my podcast Bouncing Forward, I'm trying to share the
tips and tools to get through each one of these
challenging moments because I do believe that our challenges are
oftentimes disguises for opportunity. And when I look back in
my life, every big opportunity I've had was also the
(39:55):
most challenging thing I've ever gone through. So whether it
was trying to snowboard again, you know, I won three
Paralympic medals. That's amazing, but it was the biggest challenge
of my life figuring out how to get there right.
So that's where we're going to stop this episode with
Amy Purty and we'll welcome her back next week to
speak more about Dancing with the Stars, her Paralympic snowboarding career,
(40:18):
and her OPRAH connection. Plus we'll do the Lightning Round
with Amy and we'll have Lue Burns join us for
the male perspective. Thanks for listening to What's Her Story
with Sam and Amy. We would so appreciate if you
would leave her view wherever you get your podcasts, and
of course connect with us on social media and What's
Her Story podcast. What's Her Story with Sam and Amy
(40:41):
is powered by my company, The Riveter at the Riveter
dot C O in Sam's company, park Place Payments at
park place Payments dot com. Thanks to our producer Stacy Para,
our social media manager Phoebe Crane Fuess, and our male
Perspective Lou Burns O
Hosts And Creators
Samantha Ettus
Amy Nelson
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