A year and a half ago, we told you about Lewiston Army veteran Christy Gardner, just days before she was to get one of her legs amputated below the knee. Gardner was injured in 2006 in the line of duty, and ever since, she had been in constant pain, which often relegated her to a wheelchair.
When we first met Gardner, she explained that she made the decision to voluntarily amputate both legs after seeing how much disabled veterans were able to do with prosthetic legs.
“When I see them doing stairs or hills or walking around like it’s no big deal, I want to be able to do that,” she says.
On a Sunday morning in the parking lot of Cape Elizabeth Middle School, Gardner prepares for a Turkey Trot 5K race.
“This is my first 5K since getting the running blades. This’ll be my first attempt at running. And stupidly, I’ve only been doing running training for about five days,” she says.
Gardner just got her running legs about a week ago. The hardest part, she says, has been to to trust them. They are tough to balance on, because instead of ending in a flat shoe, each leg ends in a curved blade.
“Nervous, naturally,” she says of how she feels. “The fact that it’s my first race, the fact that I’ve barely trained. The fact that it’s raining doesn’t help.”
The steady rain and strong wind isn’t the most welcoming weather for Gardner’s first race. But she has her brother Jake, who will run alongside her.
“She’s been training for about five days longer for running than I have,” says Jake, Gardner’s pit crew. He stuffs a backpack with a spare set of legs along with a couple wrenches in case her running blades need adjusting.
“I’m here to support her, because it’s nice to see that everything that was originally taken away, and now she’s getting back and getting her life back together and getting to do fun things and get out and be adventurous again. And anything I can do to help is what I’m going to do,” he says.
Gardner has two goals for this 5K: first, to finish. And second, to cross the line in under an hour.
She joins the pack of soggy runners waiting for the signal to start.
The beginning is the most nerve-wracking part of the race. It’s crowded. As the race starts and runners jockey for position, they stop and swerve. It’s hard for Gardner to react in time. But within a few minutes, the pack thins out and Gardner settles into a steady pace, her golden retriever service dog Moxie panting alongside her.
It has been a year and a half since Gardner started the process of having each leg amputated, one at a time. Her decision to voluntarily remove them was not met with universal support.
She had to travel to a surgeon in California for the procedures after she couldn’t find doctors in Veterans Affairs willing to do the surgery. Her mom, Norma Heidrich-Crowell, was devastated at the prospect of her daughter losing her legs.
“In the beginning, I just couldn’t wrap my mind around it. Those were her legs,” she says. “This was my baby.”
Amputations can cause nerve pain and excess bone growth. Heidrich-Crowell worried her daughter was making a gamble that wouldn’t leave her any better off.
But Gardner hasn’t experienced any of those complications. Her mom says she now realizes that amputation was the best decision her daughter ever made.
“She was in probably in her lowest mental state at that time. A lot of pain. Stuff that we can’t even imagine. And to be told, you know, ‘Your life is over the way it is,’ and ‘Oh just be happy, sit in a wheelchair and deal with it.’ I really worried about her, whether we were going to have her. Because her mental state was really bad,” Heidrich-Crowell says.
But since her daughter has been fitted with prosthetic legs, Heidrich-Crowell says, she’s come alive again.
“Oh my God, I can’t breathe. My legs are holding up decent, though,” Gardner says, nearing the end of the race.
“C’mon, stumpy,” Jake says.
As she approaches the finish line, the crowd roars. Gardner finishes in 41 minutes, well within her goal of finishing in an under an hour.
Gardner was also joined by friends in the race, including fellow combat veteran Crystal Audette, who says dealing with the aftermath of combat can be tough, but Gardner has shown that a bad situation can be turned into a positive one.
“I mean, she has every right to sit in her house and drink herself to death, because of everything that happened to her. And she chooses not to,” she says.
Gardner says people often ask if she feels handicapped after amputating her legs. But she says she feels better.
“I ran a 5K. I ran the whole thing. This was clearly in my best interest. So, it’s worked out for the better,” she says.
And Gardner isn’t going to stop at running. Next spring, she’s due to get a pair of cycling legs.
