Girl Thrives as Amputee Gymnast | Documentary

hey [Music] my goal in gymnastics is to be a olympic gymnast [Applause] my family owned a lake house in east texas that we used to go to all the time and my dad had a riding lawnmower that all the grandkids would kind of take turns riding on with him when he mowed the lawn it was a pretty big property so we were there visiting and we pulled into the lake house driveway my dad drove by the car on the lawn mower and aspen immediately wanted to jump in and get on the lawnmower with him and aspen ran towards the lawnmower and by the time i looked up to see where she was she was right behind my dad and he ran over her and she not she fell down she lost her her whole foot immediately and so she had two surgeries in children's hospital where she they basically were just cleaning her up and then we got transferred to scottish rite right before we went into the third surgery we were watching videos of children who had thrived after traumas like this and i remember watching a girl who was a college cheerleader and she was so beautiful and could flip and tumble and looked like everybody else and [Music] it really inspired me and it made me feel like there was hope and that even though she had lost her foot she could still be the same kid and do the same kind of things that she'd done before and so she went into surgery and she came out and within a couple of days we were able to go home i remember it being kind of hard doing physical therapy and me not wanting to try thanks to my mom my dad they motivated me to keep going and then she got her foot and went to gymnastics and just started doing everything that she did before and i remember sitting in the parent room parent observation room watching her and seeing her running towards the door one time crying and i thought maybe she hurt herself or was afraid that or couldn't get a skill that she wanted to do but she had actually broken her prosthetic foot and she thought she was going to get in trouble because she broke her foot i actually congratulated her and told her that i wanted her to break all of her feet and it was good that she broke it because it meant that she's not being held back and she's just going full speed ahead i mean she acts just like every other kid about it you know and the other kids really good about treating her the same as every other kid too it continued to happen she broke every single foot that she had and i started to realize that i have to find a better solution so i started googling and i found amputee blade runners and i reached out to them and they asked me a series of questions and determined that she was a prime candidate for them and that they really felt like they could really help her out they also train other clinics and other prosthetists how to make this type of foot so they were they happened to be traveling to scottish rite and knew that aspen was a previous patient of scottish rite so since they were coming here we were able just to meet their team at scottish rite for them to create to make aspen's feet and there were a couple other kids that were chosen and they were all in the lab they from start to finish got to see how how these feet were made they were a part of the process it was really fun they would like put plaster on my foot so then it would be like sized and that's what it needed to be and then after that we got to see them put like more plastered side of it we got to go into like the lab thing where they made it which was really cool it was really important to them that they educate us as parents but also the children so that they knew from at nine years old up what what's involved in making this foot how can i how can i modify it myself how can i ask my prosthetist to make changes when i need it learning different terminology that is important whenever you're communicating with someone about it and it really empowered them to own their foot in a different way it was just like nothing i've we've ever seen before when i tried the athletic foot on it felt really cool oh my gosh and aspen put her first foot on and said that it felt like she was walking on a trampoline and that was just like all that's all i wanted was for her to be able to feel like she could actually walk and take a normal step and jump if she wanted to and i knew how that was going to be able to enhance her life not just in gymnastics but just normal every day playing on the playground walking upstairs and they asked her to skip and she skipped and she we were both just like in awe that immediately after having this foot there were already changes there was already improvements we took the foot to a gymnastics gym nearby to see how it was gonna help her with tumbling and if it felt different and she tried to do an aerial which is a no-handed cartwheel that was a that was a skill she'd been working on with her coach in private lessons for a while leading up to this and she did it on the first try she's really surprised me and she's really learned a lot more than i ever thought that she would do and it's phenomenal i have more power in my jumps and leaps and tumbling she is very determined to be the best that she can be and she approaches every day that she's in the gym with a great spirit and now she's on excel gold a competitive gymnastics team where she gets to come up with her own routines and she's able to add these things in now that she she wouldn't be able to have included in her routines prior to having this foot the work ethic that she has and the determination that she has blows my mind and now to actually see that she has a tool or something that is going to make her almost level with the other gymnasts on her team is just makes me very proud of her and very thankful to be a part of the amputee blade runners team the community that has that was created is really important to them too and something that they encourage and they link you up with people who they think will be a good match for you and i've met a lot of friends and a lot of have a big support group now of people who i know i can lean on and then also people who are new who have just been involved in situations like this that we will go visit and you know let them know that don't don't fret look at what can happen look at how far she's come [Music] you

Channel: Flying Jackalope

Views: 2,926,020

Keywords: Amputee, Bladerunner, Gymnastics, Sigma Art, GH5, Blackmagic, Pocket 4k, Rhino Arc 2, Soundstripe, Flying Jackalope, Rode Wireless Go, Aupture 300D, BMPCC4K, Tiffen, lawnmower, accident, hope

Id: 28rLl7OnoWU

Length: 8min 33sec (513 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 19 2020