'I did not give up': Triple amputee travels country, motivating others

He looks and sounds like the stereotype of a California surfer dude: athletic, disheveled blond hair, tan skin and a quick, easy laugh.

But Cameron Clapp, 23, of San Luis Obisbo, Calif., is far from typical.

Clapp, a triple amputee and motivational speaker, was at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Belleville on Monday afternoon to give a presentation to nurses, physical therapists, doctors and anyone else with an interest in physical disabilities.

When he was 15, Clapp was hit by a train near his home. He lost both his legs above the knee and his right arm just below the shoulder. He was drunk when he decided to cross the tracks to get to the beach near his home and never saw the train coming.

"Chug a lug a lug -- BOOM! Took me out," Clapp said. "I was very lucky. I survived. It was a miracle I survived, and it was my poor decisions that caused my accident. I had damaged my body, physically, beyond repair. I was 15 years old and a triple amputee, and I knew my life had changed forever."

Clapp arrived in the St. Louis area Sunday and will be here for the rest of the week. He is the keynote motivational speaker for the National Junior Disability Games in St. Peters, Mo., and will visit schools and hospitals to talk to students and other individuals with disabilities.

Before his accident, Clapp was an avid surfer and loved running. He played soccer, baseball, basketball and football.

"The doctor told my parents I would never walk again and to get a good wheelchair," he said. "You know what? We bailed on that guy."

He decided he would walk again and ditched the wheelchair.

"It was so hard. It was like walking on stilts," he said. "For two months, no progress. I failed. But failure does not mean defeat, and I did not give up."

Therapists recommended he start swimming to build the muscles he'd need to learn to walk again with prosthetics. He admitted he was skeptical about how swimming would help him walk again.

"My stepdad, the surfer, picked me up and tossed me in the pool and I thought, "Dude! I have one arm and no legs. I'm just going to swim around in circles!" he said. "But I did it, and I started building those muscles I needed to walk."

After years of conditioning and training, and using specialized prosthetic feet and an arm, Clapp now runs, surfs, swims, golfs, participates in triathlons, snow skis and travels the country motivating people and visiting wounded soldiers at veterans hospitals to inspire those with injuries similar to his.

"I went to Walter Reed (Army Medical Center, in Washington) and worked with several soldiers who had injuries similar to mine," he said. "That's what it's all about -- helping each other and being there for each other."

In 2006, Clapp was awarded the Shining Star Award by Just One Break Inc., a nonprofit organization founded by Eleanor Roosevelt. The award recognizes individuals whose "outlook and achievements provide inspiration and encouragement for people with disabilities."

Clapp joined other well-known individuals such as Christopher Reeve and Ray Charles as recipients of the award.

He has appeared in an episode of "My Name is Earl," featured on CNN, on the Discovery Channel, in People Magazine and in the New York Times, and most recently appears in the movie "Stop-Loss."

"My mission is to go around the country and talk to the youth of America and inspire them to make good choices," Clapp said. "I want to make an impact."

For more information about Clapp and his story, visit his Web site at www.cameronclapp.com.

Contact reporter Jennifer A. Bowen at jbowen@bnd.com or 239-2667.

Healing With Humor

Patients at Walter Reed, Who Have Lost Limbs but Not Their Ability to Laugh, Find That a Joke Can Be the Best Therapy

By Christian Davenport Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 27, 2009


Pat Murray, left, and Kevin Blanchard, each of whom lost a leg while serving in Iraq, have a drink at Martin's Tavern in Georgetown. (Photos By Bill O'leary -- The Washington Post)


Blanchard displays one of his tattoos: a purple heart with soldier's boots at the end of a rifle. (Bill O'leary - Twp)


Pat Murray feigns an injury to his prosthetic knee, observed by Ali Boneval and tavern owner Billy Martin. (By Bill O'leary -- The Washington Post)

He knows they're going to stare. They always stare.

As soon as Pat Murray steps in the elevator, they'll notice his prosthetic leg and maybe accurately surmise that, yes, he is an Iraq war veteran, and, yes, he got blown up. Then the sadness will sink in, the pity, and they'll give him that look, which he can sense even if he doesn't see, and it will be an uncomfortable few floors up.

So as Murray approaches the elevator and the woman thrusts her hand between the closing doors for him, he says, "Careful, you can lose a limb that way."

"Oooh," the woman says, noticing Murray's metal leg. She's obviously shocked, unsure of what to say or how to act. Murray flashes a smile, lets loose an "it's okay" chuckle, and suddenly the ride up isn't nearly so awkward after all.

It's that type of humor -- spontaneous (he once asked his doctor when his leg would grow back), cunning (he tells children who ask about his "robot" leg that he didn't eat his vegetables) and, at times, gruesome (there are stump jokes that can't be printed here) -- that helped him come to terms with the fact that his right leg is no more.

It was at Walter Reed Army Medical Center that Murray, who was a corporal in the Marine Corps, not only learned to walk again, but to laugh. Although doctors and therapists can patch up the physical wounds of war, it is often the humor -- soldier to soldier, Marine to Marine, patient to patient -- that in the space of a punch line can heal as well as the best medicine.

"What's an amputee's favorite restaurant?" asked Staff Sgt. Brian Schar, who lost both legs in Iraq. "IHOP."

Yes, the humor can be offensive and galling -- burn victims sometimes call each other "crispy," for example. The sphere of people who can get away with telling amputee jokes is tightly defined, and not every wounded warrior is able to crack jokes about the fact that he has a hard time going up stairs or holding a coffee cup. But for others, it's the ultimate palliative as they move from denial to anger to acceptance.

"You have to have fun with it," said Kevin Blanchard, who lost his left leg while on patrol in Iraq in 2005. "And you can get away with murder, because who's going to yell at an amputee?"

Wounds heal faster when they become not a wound but a practical joke, a gag. At a restaurant with a friend, Blanchard, now a student at George Washington University, stabbed his prosthetic foot with a steak knife and pretended to howl in pain. At Kings Dominion amusement park, he removed his leg before getting on a suspended roller coaster where riders' feet dangle freely. As the ride coasted to a stop, he started screaming loud enough for those in line to hear: "Do not get on that ride! It'll rip your legs off!"

Murray says laughter helped him keep his "mind off the fact of what an absolutely horrible situation you are in -- how you went from being a big, bad-ass terrorist fighter to having your mother pushing you around in a wheelchair."

It helped that his fellow Marines dished it out in the physical therapy room as if they had never left the front lines. He loved how the sad, tragic place could give way so easily to hilarity. How service members called each other "Gimpy" and "Peg-leg" and "one-legged bastard." Those with one arm were known as "Five" for the number of fingers they had left.

Continue story here:

Pilates Rehabilitation : EP13 : Working with Amputees in Pilates

Brent demonstrates some rehabilitation exercises that you can use for clients who have suffered from an amputation.

Amputee hang glider amazes, inspires those around him

To Watch Video click here!

When Mickey Sarraille glides along a warm, mid-afternoon breeze thousands of feet above Lake Elsinore, he is free. Soaring over the Ortega Mountains on his hang glider, he is whole.

"When I'm up there, I lose my disability," said Sarraille, 49, a 27-year hang gliding veteran. "To climb 10,000 feet and fly across the valley, there is nothing like the freedom of flying."

His disability becomes apparent on landings, as he hops on his right leg to disassemble his glider. His left leg was amputated when he was 17, the result of a motorcycle accident.



Sarraille has logged more than 3,000 flight hours and competes nationally. This week, the former president of the Lake Elsinore Hang Gliders Association is a participant in the King Mountain 2009 National Hang Gliding Championships.

As of Thursday, Sarraille said he was in 30th place after his first two flights.

"I'm not doing too good," Sarraille admits. "I just want to go out today and finish strong."

To colleagues, he is no longer a novelty, but an equal. "From many hang gliders' perspective, they have a hard time even understanding how he does it," said Joe Greblo, a 37-year hang gliding instructor from Los Angeles who has seen Sarraille in action. "He's definitely an inspiration to us all."

As a teen growing up in Lake Elsinore in southwestern Riverside County, he said he was good at baseball and tennis.

That all changed in 1977, when a motorist broadsided Sarraille's motorcycle and drove off, leaving him unconscious.

When he woke up, his left leg was gone.

"I didn't have to make any decisions," Sarraille said about the amputation. "Those decisions were made for me."

Sarraille said he didn't fade into a deep depression as many around him thought he would, but everyday life became difficult.


"Just going to the grocery store became difficult," Sarraille said. "I didn't play much tennis or baseball after that."

It wasn't until 1982 when he got his first exposure to the sport, when he would regularly watch his friends perform loop after loop in the Elsinore skies.

Friends David Gibson, John Heiney and Vince Collins were some of the world's best hang gliders. Heiney is a four-time aerobatic hang gliding champion and holds the world record for most consecutive loops.

"I watched them and said, "I have to do that," Sarraille said.

Taking off and landing the 75-pound glider typically takes the use of both legs. He takes several hops before launching himself into the breeze, and he uses his powerful right foot as a brake during landings.

Gibson, who is also in Idaho this week, said Sarraille has a combination of "tremendous strength, superlative balance and tireless work ethic."

"He's got true grit and determination, which are two things that most people who try to hang glide lack," Gibson said.

Sarraille said he learned his technique through years of trial and error.

"You can learn from your mistakes or you can learn from others' mistakes," Sarraille said.

Sarraille, for all of his accomplishments, still believes he has a long way to go in the sport but said he finds camaraderie and support from his competitors.

"Everyone is really supportive," Sarraille said. "I think everyone is more afraid than I am."

Reach Aaron Burgin at 951-375-3733 or aburgin@PE.com

Mirrors effective in alleviating 'phantom limb pain'

by J.H. Freemanand Walter Morris
July 21, 2009

J.H. Freeman/MNS

CNN article on how mirror therapy came to Walter ReedWASHINGTON - When Army Spc. Bryan Wagner is driving, he pushes the gas pedal with his right foot in spite of the fact that he doesn’t have a right foot.

“I drive with it,” the 23-year-old said, referring to the prosthetic limb that replaced the real one he lost in Baghdad on Dec. 17, 2007, when the Humvee he was a gunner on ran over an improvised explosive device.

But Wagner, an Exeter, Calif. native with a military buzz and the burly build of an offensive lineman, says vehicular matters aren’t high on his to-do list. Neither is running a marathon, which he has somehow done, and snowboarding, which he still enjoys.

What dogs him is the “phantom pain” he feels in the limb he lost, a common complaint among amputees dating back to previous wars and even showing up in literature.

In David Guterson’s famous novel “Snow Falling on Cedars”, about the Japanese-American experience during and after World War II, the protagonist Ishmael Chambers complains of pain from his missing left arm.



As of July 1, a total of 904 service members have undergone amputations resulting from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Therapy helps limbs “see”


A total of 904 service members have undergone amputations as a result of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This shows the breakdown among the different branches

But a new technique called “mirror image therapy” is using the reflection of the intact limb to trick Wagner’s brain—in a good way.

Wearing black shorts and sweating though a tan cut-off T-shirt, Wagner demonstrated the technique Thursday at a physical therapy hub for wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Dr. Jack Tsao, a staff neurologist at Walter Reed, oversaw the exercises.

Removing his prosthetic limb and sitting up, Wagner places a mirror on its side facing his outstretched left leg. He then performs a number of exercises with his left foot, like rolling it in circles and imitating pushing the gas pedal.

All the while he is looking at the left foot’s reflection, which engenders a feeling of movement in his invisible right foot.

“It’s very weird,” Wagner conceded.

Patients will typically do activities like these 15 minutes a day, five days a week for a total of eight weeks. If the pain persists, which according to Tsao it can even after two years without the therapy, they start the cycle again.

The Army medical center has treated 652 of the total 904 service members who have lost arms, legs, arms and hands. It doesn’t count lost fingers or toes.

The hand isn’t quicker than the eye

There are two theories as to what causes phantom pain.

The first deals with mismatched signals between a person’s vision and the intact neurons that dictated the movement of the missing limb. Eyes see one thing, neurons another.

Another theory posits that proprioceptive—or muscle—memory retains certain positions of limbs, some of which are painfully distressing.

Before working out with the mirror, Wagner said he often had the sensation that one toe was crossed over another or he felt like someone was stabbing him between his toes.

Dr. Tsao suggests the mirror therapy is “like a computer wiping your memory buffer.”

Starting in 2006, “mirror image therapy” has since grown into wide usage. Though it has had mixed results among amputees and hasn’t been very successful yet with arm or hand phantom pain, Wagner is a testament to its alleviatory power.

Channeling the theories behind the therapy, Wagner has turned it into his own motivational mantra.

“Disability is only a state of mind.”

Click here for Video.

Skiers host clinic at Creve Coeur Lake

The water was cold and choppy, but that couldn't stop a group of dedicated water skiers at Creve Coeur Lake. The Missouri Disabled Water Ski Association on Saturday hosted its annual water ski clinic. Some of the participants included amputees and others with cerebral palsy or spinal cord injuries. They are part of a growing number of people taking part in adaptive sports.

Inspiration bikes into York

Amputees Across America participants ride into York on their way across the country to raise awareness about amputees. They stopped at Healthsouth Rehabilitation Hospital.

Gutsy local athletes up for grueling ocean challenge

By Anthony Gentile, La Jolla Village News

Saturday, July 11, 2009 one comment | read comments | post a comment
Racing a Jet Ski at 60 miles per hour in 58 miles of open ocean is not easy for any athlete of any skill level. That’s what makes the task ahead even more daunting for La Jollan Warren Frank and Point Loman Ryan Levinson, who plan to race July 12 in the Long Beach to Catalina and Back Offshore National Championship.

La Jollan Warren Frank, who has a prosthetic leg as the result of a dirt bike accident, will compete in a July 12 offshore race with Ryan Levinson.
Their participation is especially impressive because Frank and Levinson are physically compromised athletes. Frank’s left leg is amputated above the knee, and Levinson was diagnosed with facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHMD), a genetic disorder that results in muscle loss.

Frank and Levinson are the first compromised athletes to compete in the annual personal watercraft race and will participate in the challenged athletes division. Both athletes will face unique challenges during the race.

For Frank, the challenges of the race are straightforward - but made more complicated by his prosthetic leg.

“If everything is meant to be the way it’s supposed to be, I don’t really see it as a disability,” Frank said. “Sometimes I get the craziest cramp in my calf muscle and I have to take my prosthetic off. Hopefully that doesn’t happen during the race.”

Being a single-leg amputee, Frank might be considered among the more able-bodied of the compromised athletes. He said he doesn’t consider himself limited in the least.

“(It’s difficult) only when I have to go to the bathroom when I’m sleeping (because) I have to use crutches,” Frank said.

Twelve years ago, Frank was riding a dirt bike in Ocotillo Wells when he crashed into a dune buggy. Surgery was required to mend the injury, which was so severe that a metal tube was inserted into his fibula and metal bolts were inserted in his leg from his knee to his foot to prevent the bones from moving.

“I’ve always been active and kind of hyper, and those nine, ten months I was in a wheelchair or on crutches, I was going insane not knowing whether I was going to get better or not,” Frank said.

After six months passed without bone union, doctors cut a hole in Frank’s hip and put that bone in his ankle. The transplant resulted in a bone infection that was treated intravenously - to no avail. About a year after the dirt bike accident, Frank faced a decision: amputate his left leg above the knee or keep it in a compromised state. Frank decided to proceed with the amputation.

Point Loman Ryan Levinson, who suffers from a specific form of muscular dystrophy, will participate in the 58-mile Long Beach to Catalina and Back Offshore National Championship on July 12.
“My whole surgery was planned,” Frank said. “It wasn’t like a crazy, gnarly car accident where you woke up missing your leg. I had time to make the decision.”

Two months after his amputation and being fitted with a prosthesis, Frank participated in a bike race and never looked back. Frank’s main activity is the triathlon, and his next one is the Pacific Coast Triathlon on July 26 in Newport Beach.



Frank, 42, has lived in La Jolla since moving to California from South Africa in 1984. Aside from the constant care, Frank doesn’t see his amputation as a huge challenge from day to day.

“In the morning, I put on my leg and it’s a certain size. Throughout the day, the prosthesis is on pretty tight and squeezes fluid out of my limb and I have to take it off and add a sock,” Frank said. “I start off with nothing and I end up with two socks on it.”

Levinson has no abdominals as a result of his muscular dystrophy, which means he has a core imbalance. This requires him to wear a back brace during the race, in addition to a full-face helmet and kneepads.

“I don’t have any core stability anymore, so when I take a hard hit, I can’t always brace against it and a lot of time I get slammed into the ski,” Levinson said. “So it’s being able to ride with enough technique and guts that I can take these hits over and over and still maintain speed.”

FSHMD is a genetic disorder that Levinson knew ran in his family, but he didn’t know he had it until being diagnosed definitively 10 years ago. The 37-year-old emergency medical technician is losing muscles at a steady rate, which makes daily tasks like brushing his teeth, washing his hair, putting on a shirt and walking up stairs very difficult.

“Usually, first I’ll notice a change in function, and then within a few weeks I’d see a muscle group atrophy. It goes from kind of toned in a certain area to nothing - it vaporizes,” Levinson said. “You look at me and there’s whole muscle groups that are gone. You can see the bone through the skin. In other areas, the muscles are extra big - they’ve hypertrophied to compensate as much as they can.”

Levinson said about 90 percent of his strength comes from his deltoid muscles. He said he has no chest muscles, no abdominals and no muscles on the inside of one of his thighs, adding that about half his calf muscles are gone.

“My life is loss, but at a much more accelerated rate than a lot of other people. Instead of focusing on the loss, I focus on what hasn’t been lost yet,” Levinson said.

Levinson now lives in Point Loma but has also lived in Pacific Beach. He used to work at Harry’s Surf Shop in PB, proposed to his wife on the stairs at Tourmaline Beach and got married on the sand at Mission Beach. His favorite spots to surf are the Sunset Cliffs breaks south of Garbage Beach and the reefs near Pacific Beach Point.

“I can’t carry those boards down to the cliffs anymore,” Levinson said. “So these spots that I’ve been surfing for a long time that mean so much to me were off the list for a while until I got a personal watercraft, and now I can access some of these spots again. It got me back in the game. For me, it’s just as much of an accessible tool as a wheelchair would be for someone who can’t walk down the street.”

Levinson and Frank have been training for the Long Beach to Catalina and Back Offshore National Championship for the last couple of months, combining regular exercise with intensive training sessions on Camp Pendleton with Shawn Alladio, the owner of K38 water safety. Both agree that training for the race has been tough.

“The biggest challenge is the amount of pain it takes, especially on your legs and your back because you’re kind of in a squat (position) the whole time,” Levinson said. “It’s like doing squats for an hour while people are slamming you with a bat.”

Frank, who also makes training runs from Shelter Island to Scripps Pier, admitted that after one session with Alladio he almost backed out.

“Our first training ride, I was almost going to back out just seeing how difficult it was,” Frank said. “I passed the point of no return, so I figured I might as well just give it a shot. I’m feeling pretty confident now.”

The confidence and grit both men carry into the race should serve as a source of inspiration to others - no matter where Levinson and Frank might finish.

Anthony Gentile is a reporter for our media partner, La Jolla Village News, where this story was originally published.

Read more: http://www.sdnn.com/sandiego/2009-07-11/sports/gutsy-local-athletes-up-for-grueling-ocean-challenge#ixzz0LFd3iSCu&C

Physical therapist uses music in his practice

By PAM BORDELON
Advocate staff writer
Published: Jul 7, 2009 - Page: 1D
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Danny Lewy and wife Shannon were having a nice relaxing dinner at Mansurs on the Boulevard right after the first of the year when he had a epiphany. Why wouldn’t the lovely piano music that added so much to the ambience of the restaurant do the same for his physical therapy practice?

As he explained, physical therapy is often times a painful process. Music is relaxing, and relaxed patients tend to do better quicker.

“Pain is mental as much as physical, and music is great therapy,” said Lewy, owner of Lewy Physical Therapy. “It also helps break up the monotony of physical therapy.”

So, he approached the piano player from Mansurs with a proposition — how would she like to play for his patients once a week? Susan Stringer quickly said yes.

“I was very pleasantly surprised,” confessed Stringer of Lewy’s plan. “For years I’ve done pet therapy. I always knew it was wonderful, and I knew music therapy was wonderful from playing at nursing homes. I always wanted to do music therapy, but I didn’t know of an outlet.”

Stringer, who has been playing piano since fourth grade, was actually subbing for Mansurs’ regular piano player. It’s something she frequently does for her peers. Her steady music gigs are at Trinity Lutheran Church and teaching piano to an age-diverse group of students. But music is an avocation; her “day job” is as a pharmacist working in pharmaceutical sales and with Odyssey and Trinity Hospice.

Physical therapy typically lasts three to four weeks and many of the patients are in chronic pain. From the first Friday that Stringer played six months ago, Lewy knew he’d hit on something special. The tunes that waft through Lewy Physical Therapy on Siegen Lane every Friday morning make it a little easier to bear and mean patients will come for as long as necessary. Patients started requesting songs and, if Stringer didn’t already have the sheet music, she went out and got it.

Stringer plays to her audience. Because most patients tend to be older, she tailors her repertoire to that generation. Rarely does she play a WWII song that someone doesn’t share their memories, adding that they haven’t heard that particular song in a long time. She also has 300 pounds of Broadway tunes, especially musicals from the 1920s, ’30s, ’40s and selections from “Phantom of the Opera,” “Les Miserables” and “The Sound of Music”; and a long list of tunes from the 1950s. But when someone younger, say 40- or 50-something, is there she might throw in “Stairway to Heaven” or something by Journey.

“Always” is a biggie among the requests as are “As Time Goes By” and “Stardust.” Stringer’s favorites are the Etta James standard “At Last,” Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” and a “cool arrangement” of “Danny Boy.”

“Music brings people out of themselves into another realm. They don’t dwell on the therapy — the pain,” Stringer said.

Musical Fridays have also been good for the staff, breaking up the monotony. In fact, the very talented Megan Stagg, patient care coordinator, often joins in the fun by singing. Like Stringer, she takes requests. “They love the music and they ask for me if I’m not here,” Stagg added.

The ability of music to heal both mentally as well as physically is backed up by a wealth of anecdotes Stringer loves to share almost as much as she loves playing the piano. Like the woman for whom aqua therapy was very painful. The staff would leave the door open so she could hear Stringer play and each week she’d give Stringer a list of four different songs to play.

“When she was through, she came by the piano with tears in her eyes and said, ‘You don’t know how much this meant to me; it not only got me through therapy but added to my life. I have no way of hearing those special songs now, no one plays them anymore,’” Stringer said.

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