inMotion Magazine

July | August 2018 20 Nate Munro was a man who’d lost much, including part of his right arm. In April 2017, he sat on a couch opposite Kylee Mills, his oncology social worker and listed his trauma: He’d lost his dominant sketching hand, which helped him create architectural and mechanical solutions for his computer-assisted design work. Much of his income went to child support for his son – and now they couldn’t play video games together. He used to play guitar for his church band. Would he play music again? Would his son be embarrassed of him? Would he die? Nate still had an aggressive regimen of chemotherapy ahead of him. Amputation could only do so much to rid his tumor; his sarcoma diagnosis meant he needed chemo’s blanket coverage to knock out any rogue cancer cells in his body. Kylee listened as Nate whirled through these losses, worries and challenges. She knew he had the potential to get stuck there, in post-traumatic stress. “The beautiful thing about Nate’s story is that he didn’t,” she says. “It took a lot of work to get through some of that trauma, so the first thing I had to do was get to know Nate.” Nate owns five guitars: three electric, one acoustic, and one made from a cigar box. He also has an electric keyboard and a sitar. Nate bonds with his son over Star Wars and struggles to get the kid off his phone. They used to build with LEGOs but now the teenager seems less interested. Nate can talk . When he gets going about his projects, he uses clever, vivid metaphors that reveal his energy. It’s infectious. Nate involves people around him, connecting them to his goal to make something out of his trials – 3D-printed prostheses, to be exact. by Anna Sutterer FINDING JOY IN HELPING OTHERS Nate’s instrument collection includes a sitar, an electric keyboard, and five guitars.

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