Amy Purdy on Rewriting her Life

In this video, 2018 Paralympic Silver Medalist, Amy Purdy, shares how she challenged herself to move on with her life after losing both legs to meningitis and attain goals that even those who have both legs struggle to achieve. Just three months after her kidney transplant, she entered the USASA National Snowboarding Championship, where she won medals in three events. Today, she is one of the top-ranked adaptive snowboarders in the world and was the 2014 Paralympic Bronze Medalist.

At 19, after experiencing flu-like symptoms, Amy was rushed to the hospital in a state of septic shock. En route, she experienced respiratory and multiple organ failure which caused her to lose circulation to her extremities. When she entered into the hospital she was given less than a 2% chance of survival, put on life support and placed into a coma. After multiple blood transfusions, and the removal of her ruptured spleen, doctors diagnosed Amy with Meningococcal Meningitis, a vaccine preventable bacterial infection. Due to the lack of circulation she had suffered doctors had to amputate her legs below the knee. She later received a donated kidney from her father a week before her 21st birthday.