When Jordan Beckwith was just 13 years old, she was in a terrible horse-riding accident in Colorado Springs. The horse threw her and she was tossed over its shoulder. She was knocked out. But when she landed, she shattered her right ankle.
Says Jordan: “When I came to, my ankle was bad, I was in pain. I tried to stand up but I blacked out again.”
She was quickly taken to the hospital, and doctors found out that she had broken her tibia.
Says Jordan: “The bottom chunk of the bone had broken. An inch of it had snapped off and was shoved up into my leg. It was a very, very odd injury.”
Her Doctors were quite baffled by it; they had never seen anything quite like it. And because of that and the immense swelling, she was forced to wait a painful three days before her ankle could be operated on. A few months later, an X-ray showed that the surgery to repair it had been unsuccessful. It just did not line up right. There were more surgeries after that, but they too, did little to fix the problem. And ever since, Jordan has been living in tremendous pain.
Says Jordan: ‘It never felt right. All through high school, I was in pain, For the last 14 years, I’ve always been on some kind of pain medication. I have been active but I’m always limping. About 18 months ago, I got to the point that it never got better. There were only bad days. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t do my job, I couldn’t even take my dogs for a two-minute walk. I couldn’t do jiu jitsu. I was icing my ankle every night. I didn’t want to live like that anymore.”
Jordan works as a realtor, and her constant pain was really starting to affect her doing her job. So, after all this time and after all those surgeries, she realized there was only one way she was going to get some much-needed relief. She would have to have her foot amputated. Obviously, a decision like that came with a lot of thought. She certainly didn’t want to do it, but she knew the time had come to make such a drastic move. It certainly wasn’t easy, even though she knew the pain would be gone. It was an important part of her body and, even before the surgery to remove it, she was having pangs of separation. So, like an old boyfriend, she wanted to say goodbye to it in the only way she knew how. She wrote a note to it on it.
She wrote: “It’s not me, it’s you. I’m sure we’ve had some good times together, but it’s time we parted ways. I wish you all the best.”
She even had her friends and family write on it to say goodbye. Jordan figured it was the least she could do for something that had been with her from the very beginning. So on Oct. 11 of 2018, Jordan’s right leg was amputated just below the knee at the University of Colorado Hospital.
Says Jordan: “I looked up every YouTube video and every article I could about being a below-the-knee amputee. I walked into surgery with two legs and I knew I wasn’t going to come out with two legs. It was terrifying.”
And when she awoke from the surgery, she, again, was in terrible pain because a pain block did not take. But after a few miserable hours, the pain was gone. And now Jordan believes she made the best possible decision.
She now has a prosthetic leg and is still trying to get used to it. The only problem now are the stares she gets from other people when she’s out and about. But she shares her concerns with others on her own YouTube channel called Footless Jo. And that, she says, has given her the strength to always take the next step.
