Real Life Stories
Dave's C-Leg 4 Story.
Climbing the O2 to mark his 8-year ampuversary is just one of many outdoor challenges Dave has accomplished with his C-Leg.
Dave — back outdoors, on his own terms.
Dave, 33, from Birmingham, has always loved the outdoors — hiking, motorbiking, raising money for charity through new challenges. At 25, on a motorbike trip across northern Spain, a sudden storm led to a crash that resulted in an above-knee amputation of his right leg.
Dave spent 2 months recovering in hospital in Barcelona and a further two weeks in Birmingham. He received his first prosthetic leg 16 weeks after discharge. He had pelvic damage that affected his balance — he had to slow down from his crutch sprints in the hospital halls and rebuild his lower-body strength from scratch.
A few months later he proposed to his girlfriend. Determined to walk down the aisle without a stick, Dave set himself small daily and weekly goals — and got rid of the last walking stick two weeks before the wedding. But his mechanical knee limited what he could do; after his daughter was born, he refused to carry her up and down stairs because he didn't trust the knee.
When he switched to the C-Leg microprocessor knee, everything changed. He read the manual ten times the day he heard. Today, climbing the O2 is just one of many challenges Dave has accomplished — the kind of life his mechanical knee could never have supported.