Colombia: Senator Reflects on Life with One Leg

The first thing I have to say about having to go forward in my life on just one leg is obvious: I used to have two. Then I provide some details about how these changes happened.

We were working toward peace negotiations with President Belisario Betancur in a Cali cafeteria when a grenade exploded. I was at the Valle University Hospital for 20 days, well attended but in a serious condition. Then, thanks to the support of some journalists and some well-known personalities, I was taken to Mexico for medical treatment which saved my life.

In June 1985, after one more week of additional suffering at Mocel Hospital, in México City, I got it all together and I told the trauma expert: "If you have to cut my leg, go ahead. Dr. Vicente Rojo, son of Basque immigrants from the Spanish Civil War, convened a doctors meeting and, with me present, discussed the options available. After two hours it was decided that the amputation was to be made at 2 o'clock that afternoon.

After the doctors left the room, panic struck me like a train. I imagined my self as incomplete, mutilated, the word "amputee" sounded tremendous, and scary. I was so scared that the operation was postponed until midnight. Since I had so much surgery in previous weeks, the medical team decided not to use general anesthesia, but local, and I was awake while they did the cutting. It seemed to me that this is more like carpentry than medicine. But the worst part is that they made a leg-like structure, which ended on a rubber tip. This was done this way to facilitate the recovery process, yet I felt like Blas de Leso with a wooden leg.

The use of an artificial limb requires all of your mind and best attitudes. When they finally made me a modern artificial leg, I went out to the street and I was so happy that I walked 40 blocks. To be able to have a leg again was like a dream. People passing by thought I was crazy, I was so happy, that I was singing my heart out, and I was jumping on every corner.

Though I do not walk as much as I used to, I have climbed the Galeras volcano on foot, and whenever there is a chance to do some climbing, you can count on me, aided by a horse just in case. In fact, I am discovering the joys of horse back riding.

The anecdotes involving children are the best. At the beginning I had to use the prosthesis or the crutches alternatively. One day while waiting in a corridor of a hotel, a young child questioned his mother: What happens here, the people of this hotel walk without a leg? The mother turned red like a tomato.

On another occasion, there was a spoiled child who seemed to like to kick people and run away laughing. He approached me and kicked me. Suddenly, instead of laughing the little boy started to cry. That was because he had struck the steel bar of my artificial leg. Then I became his hero, because I was the first bionic man he had met.

The other day I was resting on a hammock and my artificial leg was nearby. The youngest son of a friend came to me and asked me to teach him how to take his legs off as I did. I told him that he only had to rub his knees. He tried that for a few days, but he was not very convinced. He liked the way I did it, just by pulling it off.

When I was in Nicaragua, during the war between the Sandinistas and the opposition, I was invited to visit wounded and amputee soldiers, injured by landmines. They were surprised to seeing me jumping around on my wooden leg.

I am very proud of being able to dance, and like a good Colombian, I like salsa. And the leg operates wonderfully.

A short while ago, they told me that at a hospital where the paramilitary keep groups of wounded soldiers, my story is used to cheer them up. They are told they I walk very well, that my artificial leg cannot be noticed...that I am married to a very pretty wife and that they can do the same...

There are many good and bad jokes regarding people without legs. Particularly because when you have an artificial leg, your waist moves a lot when walking. My wife does not like this type of joke.

Whenever I get to a swimming pool, I become the center of attention. It is everybody wanting to see how "it" looks and comments about how good "he" swims with just one leg. My son likes my smallest leg, he calls it "la chuchita" because he finds it more soft than the larger leg.

Politicians who do not like me still curse me as that "legless SOB". I am convinced that living with only one leg is more exciting than having two legs. This is food for thought, there are many two legged humans living in boredom. Think about it.

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