On Wednesday, Eddie Garcia walked between guard rails at the Hanger Clinic in Dallas as a prosthetic team analyzed each step to fine-tune his new microprocessor-controlled legs.
"You learn to walk again," Garcia said. "How can you be pinned like that, crushed for so many hours?"
Garcia was in a workplace accident in Oklahoma last year. The 49-year-old veteran crane operator from Mansfield was trapped under his crane. Efforts to move the crane to free him failed, so a surgical extraction team that was called in took over.
"You don't go to a scene expecting to amputate two legs," Dr. Lindsay Davault said. "She's the one who saved my life. She's the one who amputated my legs to get me out of the crane."
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Davault said she was just doing her job as a surgeon, as unusual as the job was that day.
"We should all be more like Eddie," Davault said. "He's the most amazing, inspirational person. So driven and determined."
Garcia is determined to operate a crane again. He's already back to doing many of the things he says he was told he'd never do again, with the help of his new computerized limbs.
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"We want to help people get back to the best version of their life," said Danica Nordstrom, manager of the Hanger Clinic. "No one ever wants to be our patient."
"I got no legs, but I'm not going to give up," Garcia said. "When people say I can't be an operator again, no, I'm going to be an operator again. You can't go fishing again? I went fishing already. You can't cut your grass? Hey, I'm pushing my lawnmower!"
Nordstrom said Garcia is ahead of schedule, moving to the more advanced microprocessor limbs less than a year after he started walking on his starter "stubbies" prosthetics.
"I'm gonna be that person standing tall," Garcia said. "I'm just so happy to be alive!"
