Welcome back to work, Chuck
Six-and-a-half months after losing his leg in a freak accident on the way to get a cup of coffee, the Deseret Morning News photographer is back at work this week, as cheerful and steady as always.
Wing was injured Feb. 24 as he sauntered down Regent Street on his way to Starbucks with three other colleagues. The four friends were about two-thirds of the way down the block that morning when a Jeep Grand Cherokee trying to parallel park suddenly accelerated, pinning Wing and Gary McKellar against a wall. Seconds later, photographer Keith Johnson was dragged by the Jeep when he put it into reverse in an attempt to free his friends. A fourth News staffer, Mark Reece, was uninjured.
The road back from Regent Street for Wing has included an amputation and six additional surgeries, plus months of rehab and strength training as he gets used to walking with a prosthetic leg. He's been walking on the leg since the end of July, and by now, even though he's still getting used to the mechanics of putting one foot in front of the other, the leg has become such a natural part of him that he's sometimes startled it's there.
Wing thinks of the accident "not as a setback at all, just a little pause." It's an attitude he learned from his parents, he says. His father has suffered from Parkinson's disease, and his mother had a radical mastectomy, and neither of them has ever complained, he says. And, too, there has been the constant support of his wife, Julie, his co-workers, neighbors, friends and strangers. Complaints, bitterness, regrets — "I don't think it was ever an option for me," he says.
Instead, he has plans. He'll do a running clinic in September, and he and Julie will go scuba diving in the Cayman Islands in October. He hopes to be riding his mountain bike in St. George this winter. All this activity is possible because he has a high-tech hydraulic leg and a "swimming leg," and soon he hopes to have a "bicycle leg." The swimming leg is a fin that attaches to the socket that covers the stump of his thigh. The bike leg will be less high-tech than his regular prosthesis but more able to withstand mud and vibration.
"People with above-knee amputations generally work twice as hard; they expend twice the amount of energy as able-bodied people in order to walk," says Joe Mahon of Ability Prosthetic Systems, who fit Wing for his new leg.
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