Amy Purdy, double amputee, conquers Paralympics, 'Dancing With the Stars' and going naked: memoir

Amy Purdy was only 19 when she was left legless below the knees.

The double amputation was devastating, but Purdy wouldn’t be stopped. Last year, she cha-chaed her way to the finale of “Dancing With the Stars” just weeks after snowboarding to a bronze medal at the Sochi Paralympics.

 

Purdy’s got game. And brings it every time.

In her new memoir, “On My Own Two Feet: From Losing My Legs to Learning the Dance of Life,” written with Michelle Burford, the beautiful 35-year-old achingly details her journey from trauma to triumph.

It was the summer of 1999 when Purdy came down with a fever. She was an avid amateur snowboarder who loved her job as a masseuse at the Canyon Ranch spa in her hometown of Las Vegas. Nights were spent partying at the Bellagio.

Purdy had Neisseria meningitidis, a bacterial disease that affects circulation. Its onset was quickly followed by advanced septic shock. At the hospital, Purdy was given a 2% chance of survival.

A nurse made a panicked call to her parents.

“Her entire body is crashing and at this rate she has maybe two hours left to live,” the RN frantically alerted them.

Placed in a coma, Purdy underwent surgery to remove her swollen spleen. She coded on the operating table and came close to dying. During those critical moments, Purdy says, she sensed ethereal beings summoning her, but that she revolted, yelling, “I’m not going anywhere!”

Purdy survived but her legs were horribly swollen and distended. One of her first questions after being told she would undergo a double amputation was, “Will I be able to snowboard?”

“My goals and passions hadn’t shifted, but the ground beneath me had,” she writes.

Incredibly, within seven months Purdy was on a slope — though she hit a bump and catapulted into the air, sending her prosthetic legs, still attached to the snowboard, flying down the mountainside.

Starting over was going to have its challenges.

The first time she had sex with an old flame, Purdy was somewhat unnerved.

“Taking off your clothes is one thing. Taking off your clothes and your legs is an entirely different matter. . . . I felt so vulnerable and exposed, more naked than you could ever feel.

 

“Still, it was amazing.”

Two years after her first hospitalization, Purdy was told her kidneys were shot. Finally, she was truly shaken, then grateful and relieved when a kidney was readily found. It was her father who donated the organ.

Meanwhile, she had made a life-changing discovery in the form of an athletic leg equipped with shocks and springs. Not long after, she took her determination to become the first snowboarder with two prosthetic legs to Crested Butte, Colo., to make some runs.

There she met Daniel Gale, an athlete studying resort management, who would become her life partner. Together, they founded Adaptive Action Sports, a nonprofit that provides training and opportunities for disabled snowboarders, skateboarders, rock climbers, motocrossers and racecar drivers.

The actor Jason Lee, star of “My Name Is Earl” and a skateboarder, threw the early fundraisers. He was Purdy’s second brush with celebrity. The first came with a call asking her if she wanted to appear as a runway model with Madonna in the video for “American Life.”

It was 2003, and the big M had specified she wanted a woman with prosthetic legs. When Purdy showed up, a stylist put her in a long, modest dress — but during rehearsal, Purdy thought to lift her skirt and pulled off a sassy little dance move as she passed Madonna.

The star was at her side in a moment. “You are absolutely beautiful,” she exclaimed before asking, “Do you mind if I sex you up?”

Soon, duct tape in X’s dressed both her breasts and she was body-bronzed. Madonna told her to “give it everything you’ve got” before sending her out strutting in black wedges.

The “American Life” video was judged too incendiary to air when the Iraq War was declared, but the experience planted the seeds for Purdy’s new direction. In 2005, she auditioned for and got a lead role in the indie movie “What’s Bugging Seth,” about a young deaf man looking for love.

The movie and Purdy’s acting career hit the roughs. So did she and Gale. They separated for a time, but came back together in 2011 when things started to really happen for Purdy.

That year adaptive snowboarding was finally accepted into ESPN’s Winter X Games. It was a major victory for the couple and their organization, Adaptive Action Sports. Meanwhile, a speech Purdy made was posted and garnered big numbers.

The couple eagerly accepted the offer to join season 21 of CBS’ “The Amazing Race.” While they only made it as far as the second leg of the trip — a taxi driver in Indonesia got lost and cost them several hours — it was more exposure for Purdy’s athletic prowess as she was shown rappelling from a bridge.

When they returned to the United States, Purdy got word that finally — after several refusals — adaptive snowboarding had been accepted into the 2014 Sochi Paralympics.

Still, she had to compete for her spot on the U.S. team. 

These days, Purdy is reaping the endorsement benefits of a professional athlete (Toyota, Coca-Cola), but she says that she most values her opportunities to inspire.

Echoing words that she spoke alongside Oprah Winfrey on last year’s Life You Want Tour, Purdy writes, “My legs haven’t disabled me. If anything, they’ve enabled me.”