Amy Purdy wears many hats. She is a licensed Massage Therapist, Esthetician and Makeup Artist. She also is a top professional Motivational Speaker, sharing her story at conferences and events across the globe. Amy is the Co - Founder of Adaptive Action Sports an organization she founded with her partner Daniel Gale that is an instrumental part of getting adaptive skateboarding, snowboarding and moto x into ESPN X Games and snowboarding into the 2014 Paralympic Games. She is a spokesperson for many companies and organizations including Element Skateboards, she is a model, actress and one of the top adaptive snowboarders in the world, currently training for the 2014 Paralympic Games. Amy is also a double leg amputee.
At the age of 19, after experiencing flu-like symptoms for about 24 hours, she was rushed to the hospital in a state of septic shock. En route to the hospital, Amy experienced respiratory and multiple organ failure. These factors, combined with a blood condition called disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC), in which the blood becomes extremely thin and creates microscopic blood clots, caused Amy to lose circulation to her feet, hands, nose, ears, and kidneys, and caused her lungs and adrenal glands to hemorrhage. Miraculously, her heart and brain were unaffected. After 26 pints of blood and removal of her ruptured spleen, doctors diagnosed Amy with Bacterial Meningitis. Following this, Amy was in a coma for close to three weeks, and doctors gave her less then a two-percent chance of survival. Due to the lack of circulation she had suffered at the beginning of her ordeal, doctors had to amputate her legs below the knee, miraculously her other extremities regained their circulation and escaped amputation.
Almost two years later Amy participated in Nevada's first Laparoscopic Kidney Transplant surgery receiving a kidney from her father. She was the first person in Las Vegas in more than 20 years to contract Neisseria meningitis and survive. After going through this life-altering trauma, Amy challenged herself to move on with her life and not only regain some sense of normalcy, but also attain goals that even people who have both legs struggle to achieve.In 2002 Amy received a grant from the Challenged Athletes Foundation (CAF), which allowed her to travel to various snowboarding competitions in the US. Just weeks after her kidney transplant, Amy entered the USASA national snowboarding competition, where she won medals in three events. http://www.amypurdy.com/amys-story