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In the Loop: Patient finds his ‘new normal’ after amputation
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Randy Herlein was 51 when he traveled from his home in western Michigan to Rochester to receive treatment for a rare form of bone cancer. That treatment ultimately involved having his right leg amputated. And as he lay in a hospital bed at Mayo Clinic Hospital's Saint Marys campus one day after surgery, Randy struggled with where to go from there. "I started thinking, 'Now what am I going to do?'" Randy tells us. "'Everything that I do, everything that I want to do, requires two good legs. How is this going to work out?'"
A few days later, as he began his rehabilitation program, physical therapist Marlene Einertson helped Randy put his life into perspective. "She told me, 'Randy, you're going to find your new normal,'" he says. Before his cancer diagnosis in 2009, Randy's "normal" life was that of an outdoorsman. He hunted. He fished. He hiked. He wondered if any of that would be possible again. Read the rest of Randy's story.
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This story originally appeared on the In the Loop blog.
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