Amputee triathlete has no hands and no limits on life
Hector Picard
It ’ s 10 p . m ., and as I am running down the George Washington Bridge in New York City , I noticed my wife Wendy . She asked me how I was feeling , and I told her that I was tired , in pain and that I did not think I would ever do this again . This was my first Ironman triathlon , an athletic event that pushes the mind and body to its limits and encompasses a 2.4-mile swim , 112-mile bicycle race and 26.2-mile run within a time limit of 17 hours .
I had 10 miles to go and just two hours to complete it . During this time all I did was think about all the ups and downs I had gone through in the last 20 years that led up to this moment –– raising my two daughters , several career changes , a tumultuous divorce , fighting depression , tackling the dating scene , meeting and marrying a wonderful woman with two kids and becoming a grandfather . I never saw myself competing in an Ironman triathlon , especially after the accident that occurred on March 31 , 1992 .
As a motivational speaker , my accident is an important part of my presentation and story . I discuss how the 13,000 volts that hit me twice from the substation transformer took my entire right arm and half of my left arm and that it burned 40 % of my body and put me in a coma for 30 days . I also talk about how it did not take my life and my will to live it to the fullest .
Yes , it has made my life extremely difficult , but also a lot more interesting . Every day is full of obstacles , but the highs that I get from overcoming them , whether small or large , keep me going . In the beginning , the obstacles were simple things such as eating , dressing or using the bathroom . I say simple , but for me it was the complete opposite . I had a great deal of help from a team of professionals at HealthSouth Sunrise Rehabilitation Hospital in Florida , which included occupational and physical therapists , doctors , nurses , psychologists and peer counselors , all of whom helped me heal and regain independence . In the first month of my three-month inpatient program , I learned to complete many tasks without hands , but I was most excited about the possibility of being fitted with a state-of-the-art prosthetic limb . I envisioned something like the one Steve Austin had in the television show The Six Million Dollar Man or what Luke Skywalker had in Return of the Jedi , but reality hit me in the face when meeting a veteran prosthetist for an evaluation who told me that because of the level of my amputations that I should not expect to do much . I was so upset ! I must admit that I temporarily was discouraged , but I was not going to let the opinion of one man keep my spirits down for long . With it being 1992 , I was not able to pick up my iPhone or iPad and research the Internet for the latest prosthetic technology , so I relied on the professionals from the
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32 DALLAS COUNTY Living Well Magazine | JULY / AUGUST 2016