Jenni Urivez

This all came on so fast that nobody knew where it even came from. We thought I was healthy.

The blood clots were literally killing me. They had to do nine procedures to take four more out to get the blood flowing into my brain again. We tried for three years to fix the blood clotting issues. But we couldn’t.

We ended up having to schedule amputation.

When I learned I had to have my leg amputated, it was an OH MY GOD moment. I knew it had to be done, because there was nothing left we could do.

Two choices

So I had two choices in my head. One is that I could sit in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. Or I could walk. So I said to my prosthetist, “give me a leg – I’m gonna walk!” And that’s exactly what we did. We did it in like record time. I didn’t want to be slow. I wanted and needed to move.

He kept giving me the tools to move better and faster and then BOOM, here we are.

And now, this Össur Power leg is my final graduation present. It’s awesome. It reads my body and my movements. It doesn’t let me fall. And if I were to have a fall, I know it will pick me up. It’s amazing. 

One million steps

I like to walk. I walk a lot. I go out walking to stay healthy and just, you know, see the surroundings and breathe the air.

I walk a lot at work as well. I work 5 x 8 hour night shifts at a casino resort. My team and I pull up to 400 pounds of laundry at a time across 7 machines. We get 551 rooms worth of ironing done. It’s very physical work and fast paced. I like it like that. I was just telling a friend the other night, I could never do a slow job ever. So I'm constantly walking. I made more than a million steps with my Power leg over the past year.

Little challenges, every day

I challenge myself every single day to do something different. Like trying to pull the laundry out a different way. And my legs have to go with what I decide. And I change in a quick minute. One time I’ll step forward. Then the next I’ll back up and do it a different way. I’m always trying more and more. That’s me. Been a competitive person my whole life.

I’ve even inspired others…

You wouldn’t believe what happened to me the other day. I was at the hospital getting blood work done. This lady comes in in a wheelchair. And she’s got a leg missing. She moseys on down to where I’m sitting. She looks at me and asks if I used to work at Sam’s Club, a warehouse. And yes I did!

She told me that she remembers me. She used to come into work with a leg that was always getting infected. It went septic. She told me that we had talked about her leg and how much trouble it was giving her. That I had shown her how much is possible with a prosthetic leg. That seeing me gave her the strength she needed when going through her amputation. She said I was her inspiration.

And here she was all this time later. With her leg cut off. Getting a new one made. So she can be active again. She got the courage to do this from seeing me and how I have been able to come so far.  Can you believe that?

 Ah, we both busted out crying that day. When we realized. It was an amazing moment.

 Soon, she’ll be walking too.

 No boundaries

My kids are really, really proud of me. But it's I guess, you know, they know me. They know how I roll. I’m like “yeah, let's go. We got stuff to do.”

This is how I look at it. Something that happened. It's fixable. We're fixing it. I'm still going about my everyday life. My prosthetist is so good at what he does. And he makes it so I don't even know that I have a prosthetic leg on, because that prosthetic leg is doing the exact same thing as my good leg. And it's, it's perfect. With this Össur Power leg, I zip!

Don't ever put boundaries or limitations. Because then you're not going to be able to do what you really wanted to do. Sometimes I walk for miles and I don't even know I'm walking for miles. I can walk four miles and not even notice it.

If it's a beautiful day and my leg is good, I'm walking.