The Misadventures of a fake leg named Kiki

I learned to take things in stride and laugh at myself pretty quickly after my amputation because the alternative was far less fun. Something else I learned is to expect lots of unexpected chaos and pack accordingly. There is nothing quite like nine beeps of death that a microprocessor leg sets off when the battery is drained. Not only does it panic a crowd, who tend to fear a bomb is strapped to your lower half, but it locks in the straight position and turns into little more than an expensive paperweight. A fifty-thousand-dollar paperweight, to be exact.

Kiki, like many other above the knee prosthetic legs, uses a suction seal. A small valve attaches to a tube that keeps the air out of my socket so that the leg can stay attached to my residual limb. The issue is that sometimes, the valve can leak air, or the plastic tube can get a pinhole in it. This means that at any given time while wearing the leg, the seal holding it on could loosen. That means I could be on vacation in Boston and not be able to keep the fake leg attached to my real leg making it impossible to walk. Ask me how I know. Now, I travel with several extra tubes in my purse and if all else fails, I will google local prosthetic clinics wherever in the world I happen to be because although Kiki likes to self sabatauge I won't let her to hold us back.

Then there was the time she led to my misstep on a brick-lined street in San Francisco and made me tumble and roll, landing next to a very stunned homeless man overlooking the bay, with all the contents of my purse scattered on the ground.

In Paris, the charger prongs were bent out of place just enough that they couldn't make contact to power the battery. It took two hours of tweezer work to get them fixed.

If I don't laugh, I'll cry. Actually, I did cry a little in Paris, but my point is, life is full of the fart noises Kiki makes as I'm trying to release air from the valve in a bathroom stall. She may throw tantrums in foreign countries, seize up on sidewalks, or make suspicious noises in silent spaces, but Kiki and I are a team. A slightly dysfunctional, high-maintenance, bionic team—but a team nonetheless

a high-tech robot limb that has all the drama of a Real Housewife and none of the chill. Kiki and I have had our ups and downs—literally—but through every beep, every fall, every weird malfunction, I've come out stronger (and with tighter glutes, honestly).