COEUR D’ALENE, Idaho (AP) — It has been a year of firsts for Scott Rigsby.

In October 2006, he became the first double amputee to complete a half Ironman on prosthetics.

In March, the 38-year-old Georgia native was the first below-the- knee double amputee in the world to complete a marathon. In April, he got his picture in Sports Illustrated for the first time.

Now, he has his sights set on becoming the first double amputee to complete a full Ironman on prosthetics anywhere — in Coeur d’Alene.

His coach, physical therapist and training partner will tell you: Rigsby is one stubborn guy.

“I’m the guy you want to take to a street fight. We might not win, but the other guy is not going to want to come back. I don’t quit,” he said. “Do I have a chip on my shoulder? Yeah, more like a piece of granite.”

Rigsby believes losing his legs was part of a bigger plan.

“God didn’t do this to me. A man made a mistake and I don’t fault him for this,” Rigsby said. “He didn’t stop it because He knew I had the stuff, the guts, and He could use me in the world as an amputee better than if nothing ever happened to me.”

In 1986, Rigsby was riding in the back of a pickup truck on a Georgia back road with a landscaping crew. He was 18 and trying to make some cash before going off to college, where he planned to walk on and play football at Valdosta State.

“We were getting paid by the hour, so we weren’t driving like bandits to get back. We were just cutting up, you know, having a good time,” Rigsby said.

A semitrailer truck semi-truck went to pass the slower moving pickup. As it passed on a tight bridge, the right jack sliced open one of the pickup’s tires.

“It caused a blowout, blow out and we fishtailed into the bridge,” Rigsby said.

Moments later, Rigsby had been dragged 328 feet on the pavement and his foot was now lodged under the truck.

“I played high school football, so when I was waking up I thought, ‘Man, I really got my bell rung,”‘ Rigsby said. “It was bad because I had 6,000 pounds on my leg.”

Rigsby said he was “fortunate,” because another driver was a former paramedic and, even though they were on a rural back road, there was a nearby house where they could call an ambulance.

They were 12 miles from the nearest hospital, he had massive third-degree burns up his back, it was the middle of the summer in Georgia and he was sweating and bleeding on the pavement trapped under a truck.

“I’d lost my left heel. Somebody asked my friend to go back and look for my left heel,” Rigsby said.

They called the ambulance, but nobody thought to call someone who could lift the truck off.

“Where are you going to find Bubba the tow truck driver at noon in the middle of nowhere? Usually, he’s at the barbecue shack or a Waffle House,” Rigsby said.

That’s where it got “kind of like an episode from ‘Stairway to Heaven,”‘ Rigsby said.

Out of nowhere, a tow truck pulled up. The driver got out, pulled the trailer off his leg and then left.

“In 21 years, nobody can find where he came from,” Rigsby said.

Rigsby spent the next year in and out of hospitals. He lost his right leg the day of the accident, but doctors were able to save his left leg. Twice a day, a nurse would place and then pull off medical strips on his back, which “looked like somebody took a cheese grater to it.”

“I would clear out the waiting room because I would just scream,” Rigsby said.

He had 17 surgeries that first year.

After he was finished healing, he was able to go to Valdosta State with a prosthetic right leg. He transferred to the University of Georgia in 1993 where he graduated. He stayed active in college, playing club flag football and softball. After graduating, Rigsby worked odd jobs in Athens, Ga., but he wasn’t happy.

His right leg was his own, but it was a mess. Wounds would regularly open up, he constantly risked infection and it hurt.

“This leg was keeping me prisoner because, ethically, I couldn’t go to an employer and, well, I couldn’t go in good faith and expect to get a real job,” Rigsby said.

From 1994 to 1997, Rigsby said, he was drugged up on pain killers and “a little bit of everything,” including sleeping pills, anxiety pills, and Prozac.

It finally took an old friend to talk some sense into him.

“He said ‘You’re not who we love,”‘ Rigsby said. “He just said ‘You know, God has got a better pan for you.”‘

It worked.

“I flushed every pill down the toilet — literally, and slept for a solid week.”

A doctor told him he would probably be better if they took the other leg off, though, his insurance company did not think it was a good idea.

“They fought me hard. They thought I was crazy. They spent $5,000 to send me to a forensic psychologist,” Rigsby said. “He told them ‘Why did you send me this guy? He should have done this years ago.”‘

On June 21, 1998, Rigsby lay in a bath tub looking down at his only leg.

“I was making a big choice. The next day that leg wasn’t going to be there,” Rigsby said. “I did what I do before every big decision. I prayed.

“I said ‘I’m always going to be a double amputee below the knee for the rest of my life and I need you to step in if it’s not part of your plan.”‘

He made his peace with the decision and has never regretted it.

After a few months, he was ready to take back his life.

“I was finally at the end of medical procedures. I felt like Rip Van Winkle. Life had passed me by,” Rigsby said.

It wasn’t easy after that, but it was better.

A few years later Rigsby landed a job with a telecommunications company. He ended up ranking 19th in the country in sales and was making a very good living.

In 2000, Rigsby’s mom got sick and his dad asked him to move back to be closer to home. He applied for a job with one of the top prosthetic leg companies in the world.

Unfortunately, a new company president was coming in and “cleaning house and getting his Yes people in there.”

Later, when he was running competitively, the same company turned him down to be one of his sponsors.

“They don’t want you on their team unless you’re an elite athlete,” Rigsby said.

Years later, he would wear that company’s competitor’s legs in marathons and triathlons.

But, at the time, Rigsby felt like he was slipping. He lacked purpose.

“From 2002 to 2005, I pretty much just existed,” Rigsby said. “Like Thoreau said, I was leading a life of quiet desperation.”

He was at his parents’ house over Thanksgiving in 2005 when it came to a head. Rigsby said he was lying on his back in the living room with tears streaming down his face.

“I was angry with God because I wanted him to lay out this red carpet for me,” Rigsby said. “I just felt like God had abandoned me. Can’t you hear that I want to do things for you? If you open up the doors, I’ll run through them.

“Then, I felt a peace come over me. I felt like He heard me.”

In 2005, Rigsby was walking through a bookstore and saw a picture of Sara Reinertsen on the cover of a magazine. Reinertsen is an amputee who had recently completed the Hawaii Ironman in 2005.

Rigsby had his answer. His natural ability, stubbornness and desire to make a difference made triathlons a perfect fit.

Of course, lip service is easy.

“The only thing I knew how to do in January of 2006 was run,” Rigsby said.

Rigsby said he looked around and talked coach Tony Myers into taking him on.

“He called me up and said, bluntly, ‘I’m an amputee, and I want to do a triathlon. In fact, I want to do an Ironman,”‘ Myers said. “My mind just reeled from what he was saying. I told him to come in so we could talk.”

Myers’ first question for Rigsby: What have you competed in?

Nothing.

“Plus, no swim training. In my mind, that would have convinced me Scott, or anybody else, couldn’t do the 2.4 miles (of the swimming portion in triathlons),” Myers said. For the bike, “He didn’t even know how to shift gears. That’s how we started.

“We went outside. He put on his running legs, and he ran around my parking lot and that’s all I needed. I thought ‘This guy can do this.”‘

Myers said he realized Scott was strong enough so that swimming wouldn’t be an issue. The bike portion will always be an issue, he said, since the typical transfer of power happens with the feet.

Myers soon discovered what Rigsby’s training partner and physical therapist would also discover.

“He’s so bloody mindful,” said Kate McDonald, his physical therapist, who has lived in Atlanta for 12 years but still speaks with a South African accent. “I respect that about him, but he doesn’t always listen to me.

“I worry about him overtraining. It worries me because we have to put him back together again afterward.”

Without telling Coach Myers — who trains between 20 and 30 Ironman athletes a year — Rigsby competed in his first triathlon just months after he began training.

“He actually went off and did that one on his own,” Myers said. “I said he was single-minded. I didn’t say he was focused.”

In April 2006, after borrowing a friend’s bike, he competed in his first triathlon in Panama City, Fla. It was a sprint triathlon, which is the shortest-distance triathlon with a 600-meter swim, a 12- mile bike, and a 5K run.

“I barely knew how to pump the tires,” Rigsby said. “Every single person there — except for some Navy SEALS — had a wet suit. I didn’t even own a wet suit.

“I just had to see what would happen.”

The rain was coming in sideways, Rigsby said, and in the swim portion someone in front of him had to be pulled out by a jet ski. It was in Panama City he learned that “sand and prosthetics do not mix,” he said.

It wasn’t pretty, but he got it done.

“That was it. The next week I did another one and shaved 38 minutes off my time. I ended up doing six (triathlons) in seven weeks. I was working out my issues, man,” Rigsby said. “I didn’t have enough money to go see a therapist so I’d race every weekend.”

Rigsby’s training partner, Mike Lenhart, describes him as “super- competitive.”

“I would not underestimate the fact that this guy doesn’t have any legs,” Lenhart said. “He lines up with able-bodied guys with the idea in mind that he is gong to beat them.”

He stepped it up to Olympic distance triathlons the summer of 2006 and set his first world record in New York City that July by being the first double amputee to finish that distance, which is a 1,500-meter swim, 25-mile bike and 10K run.

In March 2007, Rigsby decided to run his first full marathon in Atlanta. No below-the-knee double amputee had ever finished a marathon before.

Rigsby is a big guy for triathlons and marathons, weighing in at about 170 without legs. Training for the marathon last month, he ran into some unforeseen problems.

“When I lose body fat, my legs lose fat too, and my sockets didn’t fit as well,” Rigsby said.

With prosthetics, Rigsby said, “The last thing you want to do is put something new on race day.”

The race went OK for about six miles, but he could feel the sockets slipping around. He pulled over on a bench to see how it looked. A local TV camera crew ran up to catch the action.

“I pulled off my prosthetic liner and blood spilled out everywhere on the side walk,” Rigsby said, with a chuckle. “It looked like Fangoria or something.”

He pulled off the other limb and the same thing happened. The TV crew cut away.

“I wiped my leg off and kept going,” Rigsby said. “If the body gets injured bad enough it will create endorphins. I knew if I could just push through the pain my body would say ‘This guy is just an idiot. He’s going to keep going, so let’s do something about it.”‘

Rigsby would have to stop two more times to make it through, but he made it.

Lenhart, who also ran the marathon, said “he absolutely earned my respect that day.”

McDonald, who would have him spend four days in an hyperbaric chamber afterward, said watching him cross the finish line was “atrocious.”

She added: “You don’t pity him. You respect him.”

Myers said there was no way to stop him anyway “short of taking his legs away.”

“The marathon was really rough on him, although, I’ve got to say, a 5:04 is good for any man, especially a first,” Myers said.

Rigsby laughs when he talks about crossing the finish line.

“They’re thinking ‘Oh my God, this guy just ran on bloody stumps for 26 miles.’ If you ever want street cred with runners — I wouldn’t suggest doing that, but I got some street cred,” Rigsby said. “It’s about keeping my part of the deal I made with God. If He opens the door, you run through and get it.”

Another part of the deal, he said, is to give back to the communities where he races.

He and Lenhart have started the Getting 2 Try Foundation, which pairs physically challenged athletes with challenged athletes. Rigsby also has his own Scott Rigsby Foundation to help challenged athletes.

Helping soldiers returning from war to come to terms with a new lifestyle is one of the foundation’s goals and one of Rigsby’s missions in life.

But, Rigsby said, the message applies to everyone.

“He’s had a tremendous impact on a lot of people,” Lenhart said. “There are a lot of couch potatoes who are getting off the couch and running 5Ks because of him.”

For Rigsby, it’s all part of the plan.

“Listen, we’re not here to acquire possessions or for our own pleasure. We’re here to prepare for the afterlife,” Rigsby said. “All the things people really like about me — those things were birthed out of a lot of trauma and pain.

“You can’t get character and integrity until you’re put in the fire and it is squeezed out of you.”

(c) 2007 Deseret News (Salt Lake City). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.

Apr. 27–PONCA CITY — Celeste Ready never thought she would be robbed of her ability to walk twice.

Ready, 19, lost her legs in a car wreck three years ago. Last weekend, she was still learning to walk on prosthetic legs when someone stole them from her home in the middle of the night.

Ready said the legs were sitting at the foot of her bed when she went to sleep, but as she got ready to put them on Monday morning, they were gone.

“I thought one of my brothers was trying to pull a prank on me, and I kept asking them about it until they thought I was the one pulling a prank on them,” said Ready, who is studying at Pioneer Technology Center to become a medical assistant.

“We looked everywhere until we figured out someone must have stolen them,” Ready said. “I said ‘Why would anyone want to steal my legs?’ ”

Police also were baffled when Ready reported the incident.

“We were a little bit suspicious, because there is no reason a thief would want to take something like that,” said Charlie Cartwright, chief criminal deputy for the Osage County Sheriff’s Office. “Even though the actual value is very high, artificial legs aren’t something you can turn around and sell for money, and nothing else in the house was taken.”

Although the motive remains unclear, investigators now think the legs were stolen and have identified several people who may have been involved in the theft, he said. The custom-made prosthetic legs are worth about $100,000.

“I can’t believe anyone would be so cruel,” said Sharon LeBouef, Ready’s grandmother of the recent theft.

Cartwright said anyone who may have information on the theft can call the Osage County sheriff’s department at 888-287-3150.

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Daily Oklahoman

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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Apr. 20–Keith Richmond’s souvenir from a motorcycle crash about 14 years ago is the prosthetic right leg that replaced the one that had to be amputated.

Now the Lynchburg man hopes to change to a leg with a microprocessor knee — a technology that will let him walk on uneven surfaces and more naturally navigate stairs and ramps.

And that means hunting and fishing again.

“I had to quit all those activities,” said Richmond, 51, after the motorcycle accident, which caused the loss of his right leg and injuries to the other, as well as damage to his back.

He tried out the $30,000 Otto Bock C-Leg in Lynchburg this week.

“I like it,” said Richmond. “It’s going to take getting used to.”

Richmond and Wilbert Green of Ruther Glenn near Fredericksburg each got to use the C-Leg Wednesday at Excel Orthotics and Prosthetics on Langhorne Road. The C-Legs were brought to Lynchburg by manufacturer Otto Bock’s traveling team.

The two clients seemed intrigued and pleased in the results they were getting from the hydraulic technology controlled by a microprocessor.

Fifty times a second the hydraulics are fine-tuned so that the knee can react to subtle changes encountered by the attached foot.

It feels different, too.

“It has some resistance I’m not accustomed to on my other leg,” said Richmond, as he learned to adapt to the new mechanism’s style.

“The knee knows when to bend,” Douglas Walters explained in an interview. Walters is an orthotist and owner of the Roanoke-based Excel.

People have to learn to trust the knee — to step forward and have the knee move forward, lift up and extend.

“It kind of walks for you a little bit,” said Walters.

“Because the motion of walking is more normal, it’s also less wearing on the natural leg,” said Walters.

Currently, two or three companies manufacture microprocessor-control systems, said Joe McTernan of the Alexandria-based American Orthotic and Prosthetic Association, a nonprofit trade association.

McTernan, in a telephone interview, said the essential design of a hydraulic knee is a cylinder filled with fluid. A piston in the cylinder mimics the natural movement of the knee joint. The tension can be adjusted to allow the leg to swing with “more or less resistance.”

The microprocessor feature, said McTernan, makes thousands of readings, “and based on the readings, adjusts the fluid in the cylinder and automatically changes the rate at which the knee swings.”

The feedback is based on the person’s walking pattern, “so every time the patient swings the leg forward it is swinging at the most appropriate rate for the conditions at that moment in time.”

The technology is becoming more widely available, he said, and more insurance companies are willing to consider it an advancement in technology “as opposed to experimental technology.”

Fitting the devices takes extra training because the knee must be programmed using a computer, he said. Prescriptions for the legs come from the physician.

He noted that the average fluid-based prosthetic knee costs around $2,700. “The microprocessor is significantly more expensive,” he said.

McTernan doesn’t see microprocessor legs becoming the norm in the near future, however. The legs provide more stability, which is important for patients who fall a lot, he said.

Not everyone needs microprocessor technology. A person with an above-the-knee amputation that only transfers from the bed to a wheelchair doesn’t need it.

“We try to provide the patient what’s needed for his use level,” said Walters of Excel.

Keith Richmond is an active person.

Amy Richmond said that because her husband’s present prosthetic leg needs so much effort by his good leg in walking and standing, “he’s wearing that knee out,” she said. “This is going to save his left leg.”

The couple recently purchased a farm in Kentucky, where the new way of walking on uneven grounds — and hunting game — could be a great help.

On Wednesday, Wilbert Green of Ruther Glenn also seemed truly pleased with his trial run with the C-Leg.

The Vietnam-era veteran didn’t expect to get the chance. But, he’d done so well since last June after his amputation due to diabetes that his therapist suggested he consider a computerized leg.

“I’m like, ‘Yeah, right,’” said Green. “I don’t think the VA is going to give me a $30,000 leg.”

However, through some private funding, with Veteran’s Affairs supplementing a little, it looks like it might happen.

“I’m excited about it,” said Green, who tried out the leg in walking, sitting and stair situations. “With the old leg, I’d have to drag it.”

Although it’s less than a year since he’s used prosthesis, he’ll still have to re-learn his old way of walking.

The C-Leg can return some of that natural grace.

“With this, it’s designed not to think about it, just to walk,” said Green.

His wife Gwen said that his ability to walk so much earlier than expected after his surgery is because “he’s a very determined person.”

“He ran track for many years. That has a lot to do with that type of mind-set,” she said.

And she said, “It’s all about his faith in God, and what he believes God has in store for him.”

Jeff Honma, a certified prosthetist/orthotist, is based in Los Angeles and works with the Otto Bock company. He was doing the computer programming for the legs being tried out in Lynchburg.

The hardest part most people have in using the C-Leg, said Honma, is “not thinking about how the knee works, and not thinking about the walking.”

Then, after awhile, “Timing becomes second nature.”

Scott Moltzan, also with Otto Bock, has an above-the-knee amputation and has worn the C-Leg for seven years.

He doesn’t have to look down at the ground anymore, said Moltzan, as he walked down the sloping grassy area outside the Langhorne road office, head up. “I can look right at you.”

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Copyright (c) 2007, The News & Advance, Lynchburg, Va.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

SAN DIEGO–Where some see scarred stumps and horrific wounds, Peter Harsch sees carbon-fiber feet, hydraulic legs and bionic knees.

Harsch became the Navy Medical Center San Diego’s first full-time prosthetist last fall as part of the military’s push to treat troops who have lost arms and legs in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The amputee center, the first major one on the West Coast, currently houses 17 patients but will expand to 40 beds in July. It could grow to 100 beds, depending on demand.

The center in southern California is a key part of a unit the Navy is building to treat traumatic brain injury, serious burns, combat stress and other debilitating battlefield injuries.

Petty Officer 3rd Class Daniel Jacobs’ legs were shredded and his hands lacerated in a roadside bomb attack in Ramadi in February 2006.

Such injuries once would have ended military service. Today, between 17 percent and 20 percent of amputees remain on active duty, compared to just 3 percent in the Vietnam War, Harsch said, and there is a good chance Jacobs will be able to rejoin a Marine squad.

“Is it realistic? Absolutely,” said Harsch, 36. “You never know how somebody is going to do. The heart and the will overpower pretty much anything.”

After eight months of surgeries and excruciating pain, Jacobs was told his shattered left heel would never again bear weight. He decided to amputate his leg below the knee.

“They said that I would walk better on a prosthetic on my worst day than I would on the best day if they saved my leg,” said Jacobs, 21.

Within days of his amputation, Jacobs took his first steps. Fitted with a super-light carbon-fiber leg, he can now run. His new foot flexes to preserve more kinetic energy than older devices.

His hands healed, Jacobs is now focused on returning to Iraq. Despite a phantom nerve pain from where his leg once was, it is the only place he wants to be.

“I just miss being with my guys,” he said.

According to the Army, which keeps tabs for all military branches, 571 troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan underwent amputations as of April 1. About two-thirds are from the Army. More than 100 lost more than one limb.

The Navy expanded the amputee center at its San Diego hospital to allow West Coast patients be closer to their families. The military’s other main centers are at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, in San Antonio.

After graduating from California State University, Dominguez Hills in 1998, Harsch worked as a private clinician, then at a prosthetics company. When the Iraq war began, he started consulting for the military and was offered the Navy hospital position.

He knew he could focus on patients instead of wrangling with insurance companies over expensive prosthetics. Several patients have lost both legs at a replacement cost of $120,000 (?88,000), a figure many insurers would balk at.

In the last four years, Harsch has seen a surge in development of artificial limbs.

One innovation is the bionic knee. The $80,000 (?59,000) device has an internal motor that enables the wearer to stand up more easily and walk up stairs. Microprocessor knees mimic a wearer’s natural gait and make constant adjustments as terrain and walking speed change.

Harsch is not an amputee. He competed last year in the “The Amazing Race” reality TV show with a woman who has an artificial leg, and he coaches for the U.S. Paralymics team.

His patients include Army Spc. Alroy Billiman, who lost his right arm in November when the Humvee he was driving struck a roadside bomb in Iraq’s Al Anbar province. Billiman, 27, is learning how to fire the muscles in the stump of his myoelectric arm.

“I just want to be a productive citizen,” said Billiman, who plans to move to New Mexico with his wife.

MIAMI–Jorge Aluar had pursued his goal of escaping Cuba and getting himself prosthetic arms and a new life in the United States with passion and determination.

He lost heart on his eighth day of drifting in the Caribbean, watching in despair as the 14 other Cubans in the boat with him fainted and vomited from dehydration and exposure, and decided to jump into the water and drown.

His best friend stopped him.

“I told him he had to keep fighting because he has two children in Cuba,” said Lazaro Jardines, 29, who arrived in Miami with Aluar almost three weeks ago. “If he took the first step in this process, he had to keep moving forward, until we all die or we all get rescued.”

Weeks later, the men _ part of the steady stream of hundreds of thousands who have fled Communist Cuba in search of a better life _ are getting adjusting to life in Miami.

Cuban-Americans have given the friends cash, a bed, a cell phone and clothing. A Cuban-American doctor will donate manpower to build and attach the prosthetics, which will cost $120,000 (?88,679) or more. Aluar, 37, already has Social Security and Medicaid benefit cards, and is hoping to raise the money to pay for the prosthetics.

“I want to replace my arms,” Aluar said Thursday. “After that, I plan to bring my wife and my children over. But what I want the most is to get new arms.”

His journey to the land he calls “paradise” has been long and fraught with pain and bleakness, and his desire to get here is what started it.

Aluar was first arrested in 1986 when he was 16, caught as he tried to leave by boat. A friend who visited him in jail suggested to might be able to win himself a medical release by injecting himself with a petroleum product similar to kerosene.

Aluar injected both hands, but jail officials sent him to a filthy punishment cell rather than a hospital. He finally was hospitalized when he became unable to use his arms. He had a heart attack, nearly died, and both his arms were amputated at the mid-biceps.

“When I saw myself without arms, I tried to jump from a third-floor window,” Aluar said. “I wanted freedom, but to go to the United States, not losing my arms in the process.”

He was 20 years old when he was released, but was jailed again six months later when an informer told authorities of his plans to contact a Miami radio station about his ordeal, Aluar said.

This time, he drank acid and got a fellow inmate to cut into his legs so he would bleed to death.

Again, he survived.

After his release in 1994, Aluar settled in Havana and married. He earned tip money as a tour guide. That, added to the roughly $6 (?4.40) a month and rationed food he received from the government, allowed him to barely provide for his wife, daughter and stepson.

“When you have no detergent, no soap to bathe, no oil, no rice to eat, it drives people crazy,” Aluar said. “You’re constantly fighting to feed your family.”

He dreamed of leaving Cuba.

He had heard about the United States from an uncle who opposed Cuban President Fidel Castro and was a political prisoner. Aluar tattooed “EEUU,” _ the Spanish-language abbreviation of USA. _ and “Only 90 miles and I’m happy,” a reference to the distance between Cuba and Key West.

That is also when he became friends with Jardines, his neighbor in Guanabacoa, a residential neighborhood outside of the capital. They bought animals in rural areas and resold them in Havana to add to their incomes.

Meanwhile, Aluar pursued his goal: he asked the Cuban government for permission to leave Cuba and obtained a Cuban passport. While awaiting an answer on whether he could leave, Aluar got word from medical officials in Cuba that he was not going to get artificial arms.

In January he approached the people closest to him about leaving by boat. Jardines pledged to help him. His wife grudgingly let him go.

Aluar, Jardines and 13 others clandestinely left Cuba in March on a rickety, homemade boat that broke down during the crossing. They Cubans spent 10 days adrift before they were rescued by a smuggler’s boat and taken to Cancun, Mexico. Aluar and Jardines were held there six days until a relative in Miami paid $2,000 (?1,478) for their release.

A bus ride to Tijuana, a border crossing, a taxi ride to San Diego and three flights later finally got the duo to Miami.

Under U.S. law, Cuban immigrants who reach land are paroled into the community and allowed to seek permanent residency after one year. Those who are found at sea are generally returned to Cuba.

Aluar is adjusting. He said he was shocked to see a man selling two bicycles for $20 (?14.80) (”That’s gold in Cuba”) and was astounded by an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet.

Jardines still looks after his friend, bathing and feeding Aluar daily, and he plans to look for a job and find a way to get both their families to Florida.

“If someone gives me $100 (?73.90), it’s for both of us,” Aluar said. “We go to eat some sweets, it’s one for him and one for me … And if we send some candy to Cuba, one piece goes to his children and another piece goes to mine.”

At work, or any other time Mike McNaughton wears slacks, his presence draws little attention. An uneven gait is the only clue to strangers that they might have seen him before.

In shorts, it’s different.

“Everybody knows who he is,” said McNaughton’s wife, Kim. “No matter where we go, we always have somebody coming up to us telling Mike thank you, or if they’ve got a family member in the service. We’ve always got somebody coming up to us saying something.”

It has been almost 4 years since a land mine in Afghanistan blew off most of McNaughton’s right leg and two fingers from his right hand. It has been three years since he famously jogged with President George Bush at the White House. The first event changed his life irrevocably. The second gave him visibility.

Now, McNaughton uses both.

McNaughton works for the Louisiana Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. He runs in road races to raise money and highlight the needs of other wounded soldiers. He speaks to schools, veterans and civic groups.

A single misstep has led McNaughton in new directions.

He didn’t have to be there.

After an 11-year Army career that included deployments to Bosnia and Saudi Arabia, McNaughton was honorably discharged in December 2000. While stationed at Fort Polk, he had met Kim - like him, a single parent. They married that same year.

Having been in the Army his entire adult life, McNaughton wanted to experience civilian life. He moved the family to Denham Springs, where Kim grew up, and took a job as an electrical technician with Cutler-Hammer.

Then came 9-11.

A native of Tarrytown, N.Y., McNaughton had friends in New York City. Then, someone from his former Army unit told him they were going overseas.

“My old platoon sergeant told him, ‘I wish Sgt. McNaughton was here now,’” McNaughton said. “That just made me feel like crap.”

“He was like, ‘Gosh, I feel like I should be doing something. I should have stayed in. I shouldn’t have gotten out because I let my country down,’ basically,” Kim said. “I told him, ‘You did your time. You did what you had to do.’ The more we talked about it, it wasn’t enough for him.” He joined the Louisiana National Guard. Three months later, his unit was called to active duty.

“I was, like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ ” Kim said. “I was, like, ‘No, there’s something you can do. You’ve got to get out of this. I don’t want to go through this.’ There was complete shock when he told me they were going.”

The 769th Engineer Battalion, left for Fort Polk on May 31, 2002, then was sent to Bagram, Afghanistan. McNaughton led a unit that was assigned to find and dispose of land mines.

Mines were an enormous problem. They were the passive-aggressive weapon of choice for both sides when the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan from 1979-89, and later when local factions vied for power. Millions were sown, and they became such a part of life that Afghan civilians, rather than use guard dogs, would plant mines in strategic areas of their property.

In his seven months in the country, McNaughton knew the subject intimately.

“Everyone in the community knew there were land mines there, but if you were outside the community, you were going to step on it,” McNaughton said. “It’s very different over there in their mind-set. You would have a pantry of food and stuff. They would have a pantry with some food and land mines in there, and everything ready to go, the fuse and everything.”

A world away - literally and figuratively - in Denham Springs, Kim, her son, Tristan, then 5, and their daughter, Makayla, then 14 months, kept in touch with him daily, either by telephone, e-mail or instant messaging. Kim spoke to him by telephone shortly before going to bed on Jan. 7, 2003.

About midnight, she got another call from Afghanistan, where it was already the next day. It wasn’t Mike this time.

The taste of TNT

In the sensory overload of being blown up, the oddest thing stuck in McNaughton’s mind - the taste of TNT.

It is a flavor foreign to most palates, but not to those whose job it is to find and destroy munitions. Its residue hangs in the air long enough to work its way into their nostrils, then their mouths, then their minds.

“Every once in a while I can remember the taste of that,” McNaughton said.

It would be a wonder if he could ever forget it.

His unit job that day was to expand an area that had been cleared of mines. The cleared area had been marked off, and McNaughton followed a Polish major, who reviewed the situation. They stayed several yards from each other and walked in the other’s footprints, just in case a mine hadn’t been detected or had been replanted after the area was cleared.

The Polish major may have nicked the mine before McNaughton placed his right foot down for the last time.

McNaughton did not lose consciousness. He urged those coming to attend to him to be careful. Mines later were detected only inches from his head and left leg.

“The one thing that stuck in my head when I went to the medic tent was a female medic said, ‘We have an amputee,’ ” McNaughton said. “I think that really goes in my head because I knew I was, but the fact that somebody said, ‘We have an amputee,’ I knew my life was changed forever.”

And not only his.

Getting the news at home

A phone call from one of his officers awoke Kim and gave her the basics - Mike had been wounded, would probably lose a foot but would survive, and she’d get a call as soon as he was out of surgery. As word spread, other soldiers’ wives called, and Kim eventually got to speak with the surgeon and with Mike, although he doesn’t remember the conversation.

That was Thursday morning. A whirlwind two days later, both arrived at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. The early reports were that Mike’s right leg would be amputated below the knee. Instead, he lost all but his thigh, as well as two fingers and part of his left calf.

Nearing his room, Kim was trying to be strong.

“I wasn’t worried about the leg,” she said. “I was kind of worried if his face was messed up, if I was going to react to it. I didn’t want to do that in front of him. He had a few scratches on his face, but it was him, and it was a relief to see him, to have him physically there with me. I knew that I could take care of things. It was just him. He just had bandages on him.”

Those bandages, however, would have to be changed. Kim had never seen her husband cry before. The pain was so intense that McNaughton screamed. He laughs about it now, saying the doctor who removed the bandages avoided him until he was about to leave Walter Reed four months later.

“He said, ‘I was just so scared to talk to you because you said you were going to take my esophagus out of my throat,’ ” McNaughton said.

Washing away the tears

In the meantime, Kim went to a bathroom to wash tears off her face and compose herself.

“She did not want me to see her like that,” McNaughton said. “That showed a lot because it showed me, for one, not to feel sorry for myself. If I saw her crying, I probably would have lost it.”

That moment would eventually come, too, about three weeks later as Kim was pushing him in his wheelchair on his way to physical therapy.

“I finally realized this is me for the rest of my life,” he said. “I busted out. I was shaking. I didn’t know what to do. I was hysterical. I was crying, and they had every religious person they could get - Jewish, Catholic, everyone was coming over to see if I was OK.

“I think I cried for about three hours, and that was it. I was done. That was just me saying, ‘This is me’ - get it out of my system, and it’s time to work.”

Part of that work would involve McNaughton’s desire to run again, and he received some uncommon inspiration.

Some very special visitors

On Jan. 17, a day after one of the two dozen or so surgeries he’s undergone, McNaughton met President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, who had come to visit the wounded.

“He came to me and said, ‘Sergeant, what are you going to do?’ I said, ‘I’ll probably outrun you pretty soon because I’m going to run again.’ He kind of fell back because here’s a guy who got hurt 10 days before, his leg blown up; I looked horrible. He said, ‘You know, sergeant, when you get ready to run, you give me a call, and we’ll go run.’

“The first thing that came to mind was how do you call the President? He talked to some other soldiers, and he came back - he usually doesn’t do that - he came back and talked for another 10 minutes. He was really serious about me running with him. He wanted to make sure it wasn’t the drugs talking, I guess. That was one of my goals.”

In April 2004 the White House called: Did he still want to run with the President? He did. The family was flown to Washington, and they met at a track on the White House grounds. McNaughton had only been running for about a month on his prosthetic leg.

“They told me, ‘The President is going to feel really bad if you fall in front of him,’ ” McNaughton said, and laughed. “I’m an amputee. What do you want? He’s going to feel bad? I told them, ‘If he feels bad, if I fall I’ll grab him, and we can both fall together.’ ”

They got around the track unscathed. McNaughton said he doesn’t agree with all of Bush’s policies but considers it an honor to have run with him.

And he’s still running

He now runs in road races. He ran in a half-marathon last year in San Diego, a race made more difficult by hills that put particular stress on his left calf, a chunk of which he lost to the mine. He ran a marathon in 2005 honoring those in World War II who were subjected to the Bataan Death March.

To prepare, McNaughton used to run on Sunday mornings along La. 16 between Denham Springs and Watson. But so many motorists stopped to talk to him that he now runs at times and locations where he’s able to run uninterrupted.

“I’d feel bad, because people, they appreciate me,” he said. “I even had a family pull over and we all held hands and prayed for about 10 minutes. It got to a point where I had to train. I love talking to people, and I understand how people feel, because when they see me, they have different feelings about a loved one overseas, or they have an amputee or what I’ve been through. I don’t want them to feel like I’m blowing them off.”

Although he has a high-tech prosthesis, running abuses his body. He has had an operation on his stump to remove bone spurs. Pain after the San Diego run forced him off his prosthesis for several days.

“When you put all the pressure on your prosthesis, it’s not really aligned like your other leg would be, so you’ve really got to work on your back muscles, especially when you go 13 or 26 miles,” he said. “It’s going to put a lot of stress on your back. I’ve gotten my stump to where it’s pretty strong. I’ve done different things like put in gel liners to protect my stump so for a long period of time I’m not bottoming out to where the skin is hitting the plastic.”

So, why do it?

“I ask him that all the time, ‘Why do you have to do that one? Let’s just hold off on that and do something else,’” Kim said. “He says, ‘Yeah, I know,’ but it goes in one ear and out the other.’ He’s very determined.”

“I get that all the time,” McNaughton said. “Just because I enjoy it. Because I’m an amputee and I can do it, I want to do more of it. It’s not like every day you can see an amputee running. A lot of times I do these runs for causes, for charities, so I’m not doing it just for me. I’m doing it for other people.”

Taking a new journey

The symmetry of his journey is not lost on McNaughton. He joined the National Guard after the 9-11 attacks. He left the Guard to work in Homeland Security. An operations specialist, he handles day-to- day operations, disseminating information to Guard personnel.

“That’s one reason why I wanted this job,” he said. “I can’t go overseas anymore, and that kills me, but at least I can get involved helping the state - in some way, a little part - stay safe.

“I had to leave the Army not on my terms, and that to this day bothers me. It doesn’t help that the 769th is probably going overseas, and that is the unit I deployed with to Afghanistan, so a lot of my buddies are probably going to Iraq or Afghanistan or wherever they’re going. That does not sit well with me.

“If I really wanted to and I really pushed the issue, I probably could go back in the Army if I really made a big deal of it. But the bottom line is I’ve got to think of my family. They went through enough. They don’t need me going back there again. I don’t want to put my wife through that again.”

Resuming family life

His family has grown since his return from Afghanistan. They have another son, Jordan, 15 months old. Tristan was 5 when McNaughton lost his leg, and his first concern was whether Mike could still play with him. (He can.) Makayla, now 5, is still coming to grips with her father’s situation.

“She still asks me questions to this day,” McNaughton said. “But she’s pretty good. My leg is electronic, so as long as she can plug it in at night or take my leg off, kind of help me out, she’s pretty good with it.

“She thought all daddies had one leg, so you had to explain to her. She went to a friend’s house and stayed the night and said, ‘Your daddy has two legs.’ We had to explain what happened to me, and not all other daddies have one leg. You know how kids are: Out of the blue she’ll ask a question.”

Since it’s not just children who have questions, the McNaughtons started a monthly amputee support group for Louisiana called Limbs Up (e-mail address: dolphin812@cox. net). Like the running and public speaking, McNaughton says this activity helps him as much as others.

“I still have problems with sleep, and I’m always going to have memories of what happened to me there, and I think when I keep busy I don’t think about it as much,” he said. “But with me, I remember it every day of my life for the fact that I put this leg on every day. Every day, the first thing I do is I put this on. The last thing I do is I take it off. It’s a part of me no matter what.”

(c) 2007 Advocate; Baton Rouge, La.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.

Apr. 10–Getting more than 30 artificial legs to long-waiting amputees in the Dominican Republic took a lot of planning and hard work.

After weeks of pre-trip logistical complications, unexpected expenses and fears that the trip might fall through — as one to Mexico had a year before — five prosthetics experts made their journey to the Caribbean nation.

They got what they expected, more hard work, and then some on the March 1-11 trip that they called Operation Compassion.

“In my whole life, this is probably the best thing I’ve ever seen,” Dr. Saul Morris of Warren said of the trip.

Morris coordinated the trip and is founder of M-STAR (Michigan Society to Advance Rehabilitation), an organization that serves amputees.

“We got 30 people walking, and in a short time. We had children who had never walked. We had people who hadn’t walked in 20 years,” Morris said.

M-STAR collected many of the artificial legs that would go to people in the Dominican Republic, and it located the would-be recipients who often wait years to get prosthetic limbs.

The legs, which range in price from $2,000 to $8,000, were donated to M-STAR.

The organization accepts artificial arms and legs that cannot, by law, be reused or resold in the United States. The donations then go to patients in other countries. Before they could be donated, many of the prosthetics had to be repaired and others were made from parts of other prosthetics.

The mission to the Dominican Republic was the epitome of what Morris hoped to accomplish when he formed M-STAR in 2002.

Morris made the trip with Dr. Robert Maniere, who lives in St. Clair Shores and is president and co-owner of Comfort Prosthetics and Orthotics in Clinton Township. Maniere is certified in prosthetics and orthotics.

Both use prosthetic legs. Morris’ leg was amputated in 2000 because of a condition called peripheral vascular disease. Maniere lost a leg as a teenager after he attempted to jump onto a moving train.

Also making the trip was Jim Williamson, a registered prosthetics and orthotics assistant from Clinton Township, David Ballantyne, a certified prosthetist from Harper Woods, and Dr. John Sealey, vice chief of staff and a vascular surgeon at St. John Detroit Riverview Hospital.

Maniere, Ballantyne and Williamson did weeks worth of work, much of it on their own time, getting the legs ready for re-use and packed for shipping. In the Dominican Republic, they did more hard work but also encountered many appreciative patients.

“One man was so excited, he went off and left his wheelchair,” Morris said. He came back for it later “with a big smile on his face.”

Comfort Prosthetics and Orthotics provided about $15,000 to pay for the trip.

The team worked in a prosthetics clinic at a rehabilitation hospital in Santo Domingo. Sealey was on hand in case surgeries were needed to correct vascular problems common in amputees. No surgeries were necessary, Morris said.

In addition to custom-fitting patients for legs, the team showed their local counterparts how to do the work so that they can do more for their patients.

Planning for the next mission has already begun.

“We would like to make this an annual thing,” Morris said. “I’m still 10 feet tall. It touched my heart so much. It touched all of us so much.”

Contact KIM NORTH SHINE at kshine@freepress.com.

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Copyright (c) 2007, Detroit Free Press

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

My question will he ever be able to use two prostheses and walk with help of a walker?

A.: It is certainly possible for a person who has had both legs amputated to walk with prostheses. A person’s overall medical status will determine the likelihood of success.

Of most importance is the condition of the person’s heart and lungs: Someone with vascular disease severe enough to result in amputation of one or both legs will also have vascular disease affecting the coronary arteries to their heart. A cardiac stress test is sometimes useful — but not always necessary — to determine if the heart will be capable of handling the significantly increased physical demands of walking with one or two prostheses (a stress test in such situations can be done using an upper body ergometer vs. a chemical stress test).

Alternatively, or in addition, following above knee amputation on both sides, “stubby” prostheses — each of which consists of a prosthetic socket and foot but no knee unit — are usually provided initially to gauge how likely it will be for this person to eventually walk with “articulated” (meaning having a knee joint) prostheses.

If your father ends up having a below knee amputation on the other side, this would reduce the amount of energy required to walk with prostheses (an above-knee prosthesis on one side and a below- knee prosthesis on the other). In this case, however, a trial with stubby prostheses wouldn’t be an option.

There are several levels of ambulatory ability, which include “exercise level,” household, limited community ambulation, and unlimited community ambulation. Whether a person will require a walker — vs. one or two crutches or canes — depends on their balance, quality of prosthetic fit/function, and overall upper body strength and function.

The sooner a person can resume attempting to walk, the more likely they will be successful.

Input from your father’s surgeon, his primary care physician, a physical therapist, a prosthetist, and if available, a PM&R (physical medicine and rehabilitation) physician, will all be useful to maximize his functional recovery following his upcoming surgery.

Today’s answer is from Brian L. Bowyer, M.D., Associate Professor of Clinical PM&ROSU, Sports Medicine and Family Health Center, Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, College of Medicine, The Ohio State University.

NetWellness, a collaboration of the University of Cincinnati, Ohio State University and Case Western Reserve University, is a consumer health information Web site. You can ask your questions through the site, www.netwellness.org.

(c) 2007 Cincinnati Post. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Illinois said such flexible structures could find applications as sensors and as electronic devices that can be integrated into artificial muscles or biological tissues.

In addition to a biomedical impact, flexible electronics are important for energy technology as flexible and accurate sensors for hydrogen.

The structures are being developed from a concept created by Argonne scientist Yugang Sun and a team of University of Illinois researchers led by John Rogers.

The objective of our work was to generate a concept along with subsequent technology that would allow for electronic wires and circuits to stretch like rubber bands and accordions leading to sensor-embedded covers for aircraft and robots, and even prosthetic skin for humans, said Sun. We are presently developing stretchable electronics and sensors for smart surgical gloves and hemispherical electronic eye imagers.

The team has fabricated ribbons of silicon, designing them to bend, stretch and compress without losing functionality. That research appeared in the Journal of Materials Chemistry and is available at rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/JM/article.asp?doi=b614793c.

Apr. 4–A train couldn’t stop Cameron Clapp from attaining his goals, not even one that ran over him five years ago, cutting off both legs and an arm.

“It’s a miracle I survived,” the Californian, now 21, told a group of amputees and therapists at Lehigh Valley Hospital-Cedar Crest on Tuesday. “I could easily have bled to death.”

The accident occurred three days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, following a night of drinking and lighting candles at his Pismo Beach home in memory of those who died. Clapp stepped back, across the street, to sit on the tracks and fully appreciate the display. He passed out with the train a mile down the track.

But Clapp didn’t let the loss of three limbs end his life. Setting one goal after another, he first learned to walk, then run, then drive. Before long, he was competing in 100-meter dashes, swimming miles in a triathlon, surfing, skiing and golfing.

“It’s not what happens to you that matters most,” he told those at the hospital and every other place he’s shared his story, including Japan and Italy. “It’s what you do about it.”

Clapp turned his tragedy into triumph, he said, with the help of his family and microprocessor-controlled prosthetic legs made by Hanger Orthopedic Group, a Bethesda, Md.-based company with local offices that pays for his talks.

His achievements have landed him parts in two episodes of the TV show “My Name is Earl,” a role in an upcoming movie and the 2005 Shining Star Award, previously given to role models such as Ray Charles and Christopher Reeves.

“If I sat and felt sorry for myself, I wouldn’t have had all these opportunities, these doors open to me,” Clapp said. “But I run, compete, travel the world and have a beautiful Italian girlfriend.”

Wearing greenish-gray shorts and a white polo shirt with the Hanger logo, Clapp openly displayed the prosthetic arm with pinchers that can hold a water bottle or fork, and the $50,000 legs that give him enough balance to climb and descend stairs without holding onto a rail.

He had to start with shorter prosthetic legs to gain experience and strength, but he was driven by the desire to move without a wheelchair and to once again feel an athlete’s rush.

What also compelled Clapp, he said, were a doctor who told his parents he’d never walk again, and a father who tossed him into a pool and told him to swim.

“How?” the one-armed Clapp remembers asking his Dad. “Won’t I just go round in circles?”

With stories like that and a slide show of his progress, the self-professed “totally gnarly dude” entertained and awed fellow amputees, doctors and nurses, first at the Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Network’s Allentown clinic, then at LVH.

“That guy is inspiring,” George Wirth of Whitehall said after Clapp’s afternoon talk. “What he is doing is amazing, especially for someone who lost their legs above the knees.”

Wirth, 72, has been a member of LVH’s amputee support group since its inception three years ago. He lost one leg to a vascular condition in 1989 and could lose the other as well.

“In my case, I was very depressed,” Wirth said. But like Clapp’s words of encouragement, Wirth said, “a psychologist told me I’d be OK, and I’m OK.”

Sharon Clark, co-chairwoman of the group’s monthly meetings, told Clapp, “Your resilience is amazing.”

ann.wlazelek@mcall.com

610-820-6745

Watch a video of the speech at the amputee support group online.

mcall.com/extra

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Morning Call, Allentown, Pa.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.

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