inMotion Magazine

Living Healthy 35 communication, you keep a smile on your face. Don’t walk around like you don’t want to talk to anybody.” Nichols has been incredibly active. He’s been an avid golfer, a skier and ski instructor, and a boxing coach who has sparred. He recently took up pickleball, which includes elements of tennis, table tennis and badminton. He’s looking forward to participating in the Department of Veterans Affairs’ 2019 National Veterans Golden Age Games , June 5-10 in Anchorage, Alaska. At 69 years old, he’ll be competing in golf, pickleball, badminton and the javelin throw. He’s taken part in the Golden Age Games for nearly a decade and has won medals in golf and javelin. “I’ve really enjoyed it,” Nichols says. “I like to compete. But more than anything, I like the social interaction. I want to get out there and do my very best. Being an amputee motivates me a little bit. But if I don’t win, I’m not upset. At my age, I’m just lucky I’m out there doing it.” Nichols was very lucky in another respect, too. In 1970, the Army private first class was with the 173rd Airborne Brigade as it cleared out an enemy base camp in the Central Highlands region of Vietnam, when he came within a foot of an American-made Claymore landmine that had been set up in an ambush by the North Vietnamese. Enemy fighters detonated the mine. But his proximity to it likely saved his life. “The way a Claymore mine works is, you point it in a certain direction,” he says. “It explodes outward, not upward. If I were 10 feet away, it would Dave Nichols playing doubles with John Benedict at the 2018 VA Golden Age Games Osseoanchored Prosthesis for the Rehabilitation of Amputees, OPRA. A bone anchored percutaneous titanium fixture for the rehabilitation of patients with transfemoral amputation (OPRA) was granted FDA approval under a humanitarian device exemption on July 16, 2015 (H080004). The OPRA System has received Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval for study at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and subject recruitment is ongoing. Patients with above knee amputations due to trauma, infection or cancer, and who have problems with or cannot use a traditional socket-based leg prosthesis are potential candidates. Implantation of this device will require two separate surgeries with a monitored rehabilitation program to follow. Interested individuals can contact icoresinfo@ucsf.edu or call 415-885-3800 for further information regarding study inclusion criteria. How do you clip your nails? @ClipDifferent ClipDifferent.com (800) 674-8353 The World’s First Automatic One-Handed Fingernail Clipper Safe • Mess Free • Easy to Use • Rechargeable