As I sit here in the airport waiting for our flight, I am experiencing the one thing that can make a 4 hour flight next to impossible to handle. The fear that wells up inside, the pain that cuts like a knife at lightning speed, only to subside as fast as it attacks, is taking over my thoughts.

How will I handle sitting for that long, with this kind of pain?

To everyone I’m with and everyone around me I look like nothing is happening. It can be so easy for someone to judge how I’m handling being an amputee…if they only knew what was happening to my body right now!

If only they knew that a foot I no longer have, even 5 years later, is experiencing a knife-like stab that cannot be explained. 

We amputees deal with this. Maybe not everyone has them like this, and for most of us it only comes on this horrendously once in a blue moon….but when it does, it’s like nothing we’ve ever experienced. 

I grimace out of nowhere as my husband catches a glimpse of my face and gives me a sympathetic look. He can only imagine.

I try to ignore it but it catches me off guard and takes my breathe away.

Where did this come from, all of a sudden? What was I doing the day before, did I overextend myself? Did I sleep in a bad position? Who knows.

I usually use distraction to get through this, but to have to get on a plane knowing I’ll be sitting in one place, only to be caught in my own head, leaves me anxious about the flight.

I hope it goes quick.

Sleep? Nope, it won’t allow me to relax enough.

I will sit and try to be still, but I will wince and my knee will jerk out of control and out of the blue.

Only time will tell how this trip will go but I am not looking forward to this flight, and being away from home.

When this has happened before, it was 4-5 days of being in intense pain, not able to sit still and not being able to sleep. I can only hope that it doesn’t take that long this time as our trip is only 4 days.

What I do know is that as I get busy and lean into other activities and seeing family and having fun I tend to forget the pain, and then I realize it’s gone as fast as it came on.

I can only hope for that.

But what I am sure of, like all things in life, this will not last and good times are on the horizon. I must weather this storm, like so many others I have experienced since becoming an amputee.

I am stronger.

I am a warrior,

And I will break through this pain to the other side.

As an amputee I have no other choice and I refuse to be a victim. 

I choose to make the most of ALL situations and not let this determine my happiness.

Today, choose happiness.

Today, choose to fight.

Today, rise up to the challenges in front of you.

You and I are warriors!