“I can't help you.”
“Sorry.”
Stares, whispers, looks of embarrassment, backs turned.
That's the type of reaction Adonis Brown got when he asked for help going to the bathroom one day while traveling to Appalachian State University from his home in New Bern, North Carolina. The humiliation of asking for help and the disappointing reactions were nothing new to the young man. But this time, it was harder. He desperately needed to use the restroom - and he desperately needed help.
“There was no one who would volunteer to assist me,” he says. “I even stopped a police officer and explained my situation to him. He just looked at me like I was crazy.”
And then Brown explains the humiliating result. “I know the embarrassment firsthand that comes from soiling one's clothing because no one is willing to assist you in using the restroom, not even a police officer.”
“Throw it to first! Throw it to first!”
As the neighborhood kids swung the bat, slid onto base, and cheered their teammates, the sounds of fun were hard on the ears of the young boy standing on the sidelines watching the game. In dirty clothes and baseball caps, they seemed to be having the time of their lives. John Foppe wished he were one of them.
Standing on the sidelines was nothing new for the young boy, but he never got used to it - especially growing up in a sports town like Breese, Illinois.
“It was very isolating and lonely,” Foppe says. “I was jealous, angry, and frustrated. ‘Why am I different?' I wondered.”
Born without arms, 46-year-old Adonis Brown and 30-year-old John Foppe both had to deal with the isolation, helplessness, limitations, dependency, frustration, and humiliation of living in a world that is set up for two-handed people.
Neither knows why he was born without arms. Doctors called Brown's condition “a fluke” and speculated that Foppe's condition had something to do with his pregnant mother's bout with the Hong Kong flu. The important thing, however, is not where Brown and Foppe began, but rather how, through all the hardships, they ultimately found freedom, independence, and success.
Today, Brown is a motivational speaker, independent-living consultant, and trainer for people with disabilities. Using voice-activated software and a mouth stick to type, he maintains his own Web site for his business. His dream is to teach as many upper-extremity amputees as he can how to survive in a two-handed world, and he's considering writing a book on the subject.
Foppe has also excelled. He has a Master's Degree in Social Work and is a much-sought- after motivational speaker. He drives, paints watercolors, talks on the telephone, and has even been spotted sitting at tables eating bratwurst and big, greasy cheeseburgers - all with his toes. Neither his house nor his car is adapted for his disability. Watching him cracking an egg in a frying pan with his feet, opening a door with his chin, typing with his toes (he types about 48 words a minute), or getting money from an ATM machine by punching the keys with his foot is strong evidence for one of his favorite sayings: “Our only real handicaps are those mental and emotional ones that keep us from living a full life.”
Today, neither Foppe nor Brown stands on the sidelines of life.
Growing up without arms
It took years of failure, trial and error, and perseverance, however, for both of these men to reach this point in their lives.
Although both were fitted with hook prostheses as children (Brown when he was 5 and Foppe before he was 3), neither uses them today. Foppe mostly uses his feet, chin, mouth, and a few simple assistive devices to perform his daily tasks. He wears special “tabi” socks (Japanese-style socks in which the big toe is separated from the other toes), and he only wears slip-on shoes or shoes with Velcro so that he can slip in and out of them when he needs his feet. Brown has a small two-digit nub on his left shoulder and by manipulating his body, chin, and mouth, he can do anything he needs to do using simple assistive devices. Unlike Foppe, Brown never developed the use of his feet much, probably because he was able to depend on his left nub for many tasks.
“My prostheses never served any purpose but to fill out a shirt sleeve,” Brown says. “They were hot, heavy, cumbersome, and just in the way.”
Although Foppe changed from hooks to myoelectic hands in the second grade, he also hated his prostheses and found them more of hindrance than a help. “There were times I'd be wearing those artificial arms and I'd pick up something with my feet and stick it in the hand,” he explains.
In elementary school, both boys relied on others to help them get through the day. Fortunately, both found friends who helped them with everything including going to the bathroom. “They were my hands,” Brown says.
The hooks Brown wore on the end of his prosthesis sometimes provoked teasing, and, as he grew older, the stares and the snickering became harder to face. “Most of my friends were going to parties and had girlfriends,” he says, “but I was very sure that no girl would want me for a boyfriend. It did not help matters much when in the tenth grade, I was used by a female classmate to get to the prom. She ducked out on me early in the evening to be with some other guy. I felt very hurt and blamed myself because I did not have arms like everyone else.”
Foppe's turning point
Though Foppe had numerous disappointments as a child because of his condition, he wasn't motivated to seek independence. Things changed, however, when he was in the fifth grade. That year, his mother, Carole, refused to let him go to summer camp because she didn't feel that he was willing or able to take care of himself. He was dependent on his brothers to help him get dressed and his friends to help him use the bathroom.
At this time, his mother also told his brothers not to help him anymore so that he would learn to do things for himself. “I told the boys, ‘If John wants a plate from the cupboard, let him get it himself, even if he breaks every plate in the house,'” says Carole. The pampering was over.
Foppe recalls lying on the floor struggling to put on his pants with no arms. “It was the first turning point in my life,” he says.
By the time Foppe reached high school, he was amazingly adept at using his feet. They had in fact become his hands. Before it was cool, Foppe wore his class ring on one of his toes. He considers it natural that he turned to his feet to replace his hands. “It's one of those miracles or wonders of the human body and how it adapts,” he says, “like when people become blind and their hearing becomes more sensitive.”
He had actually begun using his feet to grasp things before he was 2. Says Carole, “He was sitting in the middle of a table with aunts and uncles all around him - it may've been a birthday party - but he picked up a toothpick with his toes for the first time. We were absolutely astonished. After that, we made a game out of it, and he picked up pennies and put them in his piggybank.”
After his junior prom, Foppe took his date out to eat. Carole recalls the event: “They were in a booth, and he couldn't use his arms to eat in a spot like that. It was like trying to eat with football equipment on. So he had to use his feet. After that, he decided, ‘They're going to have to accept me the way I am.'”
Brown's turning point
After completing high school in 1973, Brown went to Appalachian State University to study commercial art. He drew and painted using his mouth and the small nub on his left shoulder. He had already stopped
using his prosthesis.
“I was doing great in school,” he says, but for the first time in my life, I was apart from my family and friends. I was out in the world and had no idea how I would be able to take care of myself.”
Amazingly, Brown met an upperclassman who empathized with his situation and volunteered to become his roommate and assist him.
“He helped me with going to the bathroom, getting a bath in the morning, getting dressed, taking my clothes off at night, and putting on my night clothes,” Brown recalls. “But he couldn't be there all the time.
There came times when I needed assistance but he wasn't around. I could not expect him to stop his life just to be at my beckoning call.”
Then, Brown took that fateful trip back to college after visiting his family and was slapped in the face with his dependency. After that humiliating incident, Brown dropped out of college - broken, beaten and discouraged. “After that, I felt embarrassed to even have to approach someone and explain my situation to them, to even ask for assistance,” he recalls. For a long time, he didn't venture far from home for fear of additional humiliation. “Now, knowing what I was truly up against, I had a burning desire to learn to be totally, fully and completely independent of the need for assistance from others.”
Learning independence, achieving freedom
Growing up, Brown had never met anyone like himself who could teach him how to be independent. He had been to several occupational rehabilitation centers, but all of them were unsuccessful. “It was not that the therapists did not know what they were doing,” he explains. “It was and is that my needs are beyond today's training. They all felt that dressing and bathing and things like that were going to be something that I would always need assistance with.”
Over the next years, he says he grew closer to God and started trusting Him to teach him how to do things. Then, through trial and error, he developed ways to do everything he needs to do. He now uses the bathroom, takes showers, drives, eats, and even mows the lawn without assistance. He believes in using “what you have.”
For daily activities, he uses dressing sticks and other hooks and devices to help him. Some devices are permanently attached to the wall and some are portable. He rubs his head against a wall-mounted brush to brush his hair. To brush his teeth, he sticks a battery-operated toothbrush in his mouth, bites down on it, and turns it on. The toothbrush does the rest. His shower is adapted with a Hygienic Body Washer, which is a large rectangular pad that attaches to the wall with suction cups. Once he is soaped up, he can rub against the pad to wash his body. For traveling, he simply pulls it down, rolls it up, and packs it in his bags. For driving, he uses a custom-made, small-diameter steering wheel connected to a crossbar that is snapped onto the car's main steering wheel, which brings it closer to him. He is then able to drive with his nub.
“The most difficult thing I've had to do was learn to take care of my biological needs - bathing, dressing, and going to the bathroom,” Brown says. “These things took lots of years of trial and error. I was driving long before I learned to do these things.” Brown has used a bidet for his restroom needs in the past and recommends them to other amputees. However, he now uses another method for himself.
Today, for formal wear, Brown often uses African-style clothes. They're easier to put on and take off, and they also make it easier to use the restroom, he says.
Living full lives
Brown and Foppe have both learned a lot from their experiences - significant bits of knowledge that they'd like to pass on to others.
“I've learned never to give up and not to take negative advice,” Brown says. “If someone says I can't do something, that makes me want to do it even more.” Foppe agrees and strives to surround himself with positive people. “We become like the people we associate with,” he says.
Foppe attributes much of his current high level of independence and success to the tough love he received from his family when he was in the fifth grade. “At first, I hated it,” Foppe says. “I felt abandoned. I felt rejected. I didn't understand how they could be so mean.” But now, he says, “I'm eternally grateful.”
He has taken that same philosophy and applied it to other areas of his life as well. “Tough love isn't just when a parent tells a child no,” he explains. “I have to be tough on myself so that my life can become better. I think it has freed me to say I want to have my own business, to say that I need to go on and get more education, and to live to higher standards and levels of expectations. I own my own business, I've written a book, I've gone to graduate school. And I'm not trying to brag. I'm not saying that to boost my ego. I'm just saying that as an example to people: ‘Look, you can live a full life. It shouldn't be about your lack of limbs.'”
Starting over late in life
Around six years ago in 1995, Gerald Blackwell was thrust into the same world that Adonis Brown and John Foppe inhabit when both of his arms were amputated about six inches above the wrist following an electrical accident. Unlike Brown and Foppe, however, Blackwell had no experience whatsoever living without hands.
“They say I'm one in a million,” says the 44-year-old former crane operator of how he survived 96,000 volts and 900 amps of electricity when another crane operator ran the crane Blackwell was riding on into a power line.
In Blackwell's new world, he needed help eating, bathing, and doing most of the things he did before the accident. He also lost his job and his hobby - racing sprint (dirt track) cars. He went from a life of independence to a life of dependence - a hard prospect for a man used to doing things for himself.
Blackwell was ultimately fitted with two cable-operated hook prostheses, which helped him regain some of his independence. However, some of the activities he once enjoyed were still beyond his grasp.
Although he continued building and working on sprint cars as a hobby, for years he had to use other people as his hands, directing them on what to do as they actually did the physical labor. “It was more like, ‘Okay, here's what we need to do guys,' and they were my hands,” Blackwell explains.
Blackwell uses a positive-closure hook on his right arm and a No. 7 farmer's hook on his left. Although the hooks help him accomplish a lot of tasks, they have an important weakness when used by bilateral amputees. “When you're on a double harness with bilateral arms and you're trying to close one, the harness system opens the other,” he explains. “So if I was trying to hold a fork in one hand and cut a steak with the other, I'd either drop the fork or I'd drop the knife. You couldn't hold pressure on two of them at a time.”
Today, however, Blackwell is able to do more “hands-on” work on his sprint cars with the use of assistive devices that have opened up new possibilities for his life that he thought were forever closed. He's learned now what Brown and Foppe learned long ago: If he can't get things done one way, he needs to look around for another way.
He recently discovered a terminal device that can be attached to the end of his prosthesis and that allows numerous tools to be attached. He purchased two of the devices and the entire set of tools, which includes wrenches, knives, hammers, forks, and spoons.
The devices don't replace his hooks, but are rather an addition to them.
“I've got a car in the garage I've been taking apart for the last three days constantly now,” he explains. He's excited about the future now that he can again put his hands on the cars and work with them rather than merely giving directions to others.
“I've also cut my first steak and my first meat in six years,” he says, excitedly. “This has just turned my whole world around. I'm not quite sure if there's anything I'm not going to be able to do.”
Facing the world on the world's terms
Finding a way to compensate for something as important as arms takes a strong will, ingenuity, perseverance, and, in some cases, a good dose of technology. But regardless of how it's done, bilateral upper-extremity amputees have definitely shown that they can learn to live a normal life.
One of the things Foppe says he hears constantly from audiences after his speeches is that he takes away all their excuses. Renowned motivational speaker Zig Ziglar explains Foppe's dramatic impact on others. “When people see him, they instinctively think: ‘If this young man can do that much with that difficulty and handicap, then I'm definitely going to do more with what I have.'”
Indeed, the lengths that Foppe, Brown, and Blackwell have had to go to accomplish the simplest of tasks make it difficult for anyone to say, “I can't.”
Adonis Brown is available for motivational speaking, consulting, and independent-living training. His phone number is 336/322-1383, his e-mail addresses are EnVisionedIl@juno.com and Adonis_brown@envisionedil.net, and his Web site is www.envisionedil.net
John Foppe is also available for motivational speaking. His phone number is 618/526-2011, his e-mail address is seminars@johnfoppe.com, and his Web site is www.johnfoppe.com. His book, tentatively titled “All Things Are Within Reach,” is expected to be out in January.
Gerald Blackwell is available to talk to other amputees about life after amputation. He can be reached by mail c/o Rick Bowers, Amputee Coalition, 900 E. Hill Ave., Suite 205, Knoxville, TN 37915 or by e-mail at kaptjx2@aol.com
Wm. Stage and the Riverfront Times (St. Louis) contributed some of the information and quotes about John Foppe for this article. To see a more detailed article on John Foppe, go to www.riverfronttimes.com/issues/2001-04-04/feature.html/page1.html
