I’m a partial hand amputee and adaptive athlete. I aspire to inspire.

Once upon a time, I was an elite cyclist and triathlete. I even got to race for Team USA at the ITU World Triathlon Championships. Then one day the door of fate opened. Actually, it was the door of a limousine that opened as I was riding by in the bike lane, and it nearly tore my hand in half. Fast forward through years of chronic, debilitating pain, therapies, and surgeries to June of 2017 when I gave my surgeon the finger one last time an he took it, all the way down to the base of the metacarpal for a middle ray amputation.

Becoming a partial hand amputee changed my life, but not in any way I had expected. I suddenly went from being a world class athlete to having a physical disability. As hard as I strove to get back to my old life, there was no way I could do things the way I was used to doing them with all the damage my palm had sustained.

I researched prosthetic fingers and devices for partial hand amputees, but there weren’t any that would fit my new hand, so I started to make my own devices instead. I realized that the only thing holding me back from any activity was a lack of imagination. There was nothing I couldn’t do, I just had to find a new way to do it. And along the way, I discovered that I was not alone in having a hand configuration that was difficult to treat with prosthetic intervention.

I’m posting my adaptive devices here in the hopes that they will inspire other partial hand amputees to imagine new ways to do things and let them know that we don’t have to accept things the way they are if we just have a little imagination.