By Leslie Barker
The Dallas Morning News
WWR Article Summary (tl;dr) Amberly Lago was hit by an SUV while riding her motorcycle home after running 11 miles with a friend. Her book “True Grit and Grace: Turning Tragedy Into Triumph” embodies the word “resilient.”
The Dallas Morning News
After more than 30 surgeries on her leg, which has led to a fused ankle, metal in her toes, chronic pain and an off-and-on limp, it would be perfectly understandable for Amberly Lago to get all wistful talking about the days when she could run a mile in five minutes. Or when she made her living as a jazz, hip-hop and tap dancer and worked as a personal trainer.
Instead, she’s more about the present than the past. She revels in short beach runs, in belly dancing lessons, in time spent with her husband and two daughters, and in encouraging others. She embodies the word “resilient.”
The pivot separating the two parts of her life is a terrible accident that happened in 2010.
Lago, a Greenville native who now lives in California, was hit by an SUV while riding her motorcycle home after running 11 miles with a friend.
In this excerpt from her book, “True Grit and Grace: Turning Tragedy Into Triumph” (Morgan James Publishing; $16.95), which she’ll discuss Saturday in Dallas _ she describes what she saw:
“Every beat of my heart issued a geyser of blood from what was a ruptured femoral artery in the middle of tissue damage that looked like a mangled mess of tissue. I grabbed for what was left of my leg and tried to keep the pieces from falling off and the blood from gushing.”
Doctors wanted to amputate her leg. Not surprisingly, the pain, for which she minces no words, was horrific. As if months in the hospital and almost losing her leg weren’t enough, she was also diagnosed with a nerve disease, complex regional pain syndrome, and told she’d spend her life in a wheelchair.
Lago planned to do nothing of the sort.
“You keep going,” says Lago, 46. That’s not to say she hasn’t had doubts or frustrations.
“I hated my leg,” she says. “I hated it was deformed. I hated it didn’t work the way it was supposed to. I hated that it gave me so much pain. Not until one of my doctors, the one who saved my leg, put it in his lap and looked at it like it was a masterpiece, a work of art, did it shift. I thought, ‘If he can look at my leg that way, I can learn to love it.’
She focuses on what she can do, lift weights, climb stairs, ride a bike.
“I have tried every kind of treatment” for pain, she says; currently, all she takes is a non-opioid prescription, which slows the nerve pathway. “The only thing that seems to work for me is a practice of mindfulness. I start every day before my feet hit the floor. I pray. ‘Thank you, Lord, I am so grateful. Thank you, Lord, I am able to get out of bed and walk to the bathroom.’ It’s not a fancy prayer.”
She also writes in her journal every day. Whether two sentences or two pages, “It keeps me centered and focused on what’s important,” she says. “I think of what I’m grateful for and it sets the tone for the entire day.”
Her resilience isn’t unique to her, she says. “We all have it inside of us. The only thing you need to claim your resilience is to be willing. That light is inside all of us. Surround yourself with people who will fan your flame.
“Get grateful and focus on what you can do instead of what you can’t.”
