Physical therapist Ashley Carter helped Diego take the first, tentative steps of his post-hospital rehabilitation in the basement clinic two floors below John Schwappach’s medical office.
A weight machine sat in the middle of the room, surrounded by treadmills, stationary bikes, padded stretching tables and other no-nonsense workout gear. No Wii, no basketball hoop, no games that had made his earlier therapy at Children’s so unexpectedly fun — nothing to distract from the strenuous, sometimes painful work of rehab.
The aim of the twice-weekly sessions was to help Diego walk comfortably in his prosthesis and negotiate stairs and other basic maneuvers required for daily living. Carter selected the exercises to strengthen key muscles — the “quads” and “glutes” — that would permit Diego to move smoothly with his new limb.
Diego threw himself into his routine.
He made his way through a dumbbell obstacle course, stepping over the weights while moving forward and then sideways. They moved to an apparatus designed for squats, which work the larger leg muscles.
“Push up evenly as best you can,” Carter urged. “Push your heels into the platform, and tighten this muscle” — and here she pressed her finger against his quadriceps, the large muscle in the front of the thigh. “Do you feel pain?”
“It just feels like it’s getting worked out,” Diego replied, locking his fingers behind his head and cranking out the reps.
“Getting tired?”
“Yeah,” Diego exhaled.
“Need a rest?”
“No.”
Next came a weight machine with cables and pulleys attached to a 10-pound plate, which Diego’s left leg lifted in two sets of 15 repetitions.
“Can we try three?” he asked.
“Of 15?” Carter replied. “I’d like you to be tired, but I don’t want it to be painful.”
Diego churned out another 15 reps, exhaled hard, and then launched into one more extra set.
They moved to the treadmill, where Carter worked with Diego on smoothing out his heel-to-toe stride. Then she put him through a series of standing squats — three sets of 10 reps.
Diego wiped his brow.
Afterward, as he passed through the automatic doors of the medical offices, Diego paused to watch his image in the glass.
“I want to see myself walking,” he said.
On a late July evening, Diego settled in at Camp Joy, a 314- acre expanse of lush, south Ohio woods that cradles playing fields, recreation buildings and mercifully air-conditioned cabins.
He’d spent a good portion of the day journeying here with a few other Colorado kids for the Paddy Rossbach Youth Camp. The Amputee Coalition of America sponsors 100 kids ages 10 to 17 who have either lost limbs or were born with “limb differences” for a few days of activity geared to challenge, entertain and enlighten.
The camp doesn’t allow parents. And for Diego, the trip marked his first time on a commercial airliner as he caught an early-morning flight in Denver, changed planes in Minneapolis and finally landed in Cincinnati, where a tour bus drove him about an hour to the rural site.
He arrived with a new, untested prosthesis. It was emblazoned with “LEMOS” next to a pair of boxing gloves. Kenny had sacrificed an old warm-up jacket to provide the logo.
Diego shared a cabin with eight 12- to 14-year-old boys, who basically dumped their stuff on their bunks, where it remained in a heap — except for Diego’s lower berth at the back of the room. He’d tucked his sheets around the mattress and laid his Denver Broncos blanket ever-so-neatly on top.
On a small counter attached to the wall by his headboard, he hung his white baseball cap atop the lamp. Lotion, bug repellent and various toiletries were arranged in a row. Two rosaries hung on a hook.
Ronnie Dickson, the cabin’s lead counselor, suggested they go around the room taking turns telling their stories. The accounts were brief.
Kory’s biological mother abused drugs and left him with four partial limbs before he was adopted by an Idaho family out of a Polish orphanage. Caleb, from Minnesota, was 3 when he contracted a form of meningitis that led doctors to amputate his legs at the knees, his arms at the elbows. Reed, from Missouri, suffered the loss of a leg in a lawn-mower accident — a startlingly common theme among young amputees.
Diego shared his story in one succinct sentence.
“I got run over by a bus.”
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