The spirit of indomitable Amy

If you have not read the interview with Amy Zahra in The Sunday Times yesterday, drop everything and go to it; cut it out and keep it. It tells the story of an indomitable spirit who lights the way for others.

Misfortune can hit any of us. Sometimes it does so at birth. At others it comes along through illness or accident, leaving us less than whole but perhaps bigger than ever.

Amy, now 21, is one such case. A normal, healthy good-looking girl, three years ago she was struck down by meningococcal septicaemia - meningitis. In the interviewer's words, "she defied the odds and emerged from her fight with the deadly bacteria with no legs and no fingertips".

To put such losses into perspective, consider someone born with such a disability. Strange to say, one born with a missing limb or some other physical deformity does not miss not being whole. You do not miss what you never had. Nature, and our mysterious God, automatically helps you to adapt.

Becoming disabled through illness or accident is something altogether different. Whole people will easily understand if I ask them how they get along with a broken toe or an injured forefinger in their writing hand. Their ability to move, to write, to drive is diminished. Some moan and groan until they are well again.

Amy does not moan or groan. Her amputation and the fact that people began asking for her advice fired her up. She did not abandon her studies. Rather, she adapted them to her new-found capability. She gave up reading for a mechanical engineering degree and took up psychology.

"After my amputation, people started inviting me to speak to them. I felt they were comfortable opening up to me, so I felt psychology was a better idea."

Nowadays, prosthesis is far removed from what it was in my childhood, when a kind orthopaedist prescribed a prosthetic arm for me. It was when I put it on that I became truly disabled.

Today, Amy wears prosthetic limbs, after going through a period in a wheelchair during which time she refused to succumb to self pity or inactivity.

Amy is now self-sufficient. In the morning it doesn't take her longer than half an hour to get ready. In the interview you read thus that "she puts on her (prosthetic) legs, puts them through her trousers, puts on a touch of make-up and is on her way". How Amy overcame the loss of her fingertips is perhaps more of a wonder. But she did and today can text messages on her mobile as well as the next person. And she drives an adapted car too, both in Malta and abroad.

End of story? Hardly, for lightning can strike twice. Some months ago, Amy developed kidney trouble. She was given a transplant; her father donated a kidney. It worked. She recovered from that too. By all accounts she is back to a happy life. She and her mentor, Pauline Cassar, who endured amputations three years earlier but now can walk, cook, wash her car and even do crochet, are setting up a support group called Amputees for Amputees.

"There are about 200 amputations in a year," the interviewer reports and Amy "is eager to ensure they receive a better service through the national health care system."

Amy dreams: of getting married, leading a successful career "and maybe one day writing a book that could help motivate and inspire others". Describing rough patches in life, Amy says that at the time you feel they are crushing you and your body may let you down. "But you fight with your spirit... Nobody can take that away from you."