Unleashing the Hero Within! Mark’s Story

HELLO, I’M MARK FERRELL.
I am the Remote Sales Rep for PROTEOR. I live in West Valley, Arizona, with my amazing girlfriend, Erika, and the “goodest of good girls,” our all-star pup, Daisy.

In 1992, I was trying to rescue a girl stuck on a set of train
tracks. I was dragged the length of two football fields, burned, crushed, torn apart, and skinned alive. The fun part is that I was fully conscious and aware throughout the entire ordeal. I eventually died from my injuries and was gone for a long time before (through a wild story on its own) eventually I was brought back. My docs did everything they could to save my knee after the traumatic amputation of my lower right leg by the train and I will be forever grateful for that. My right elbow was crushed right off my arm, which fortunately was bent, allowing them to save my lower arm and hand (just no elbow).

It was months before I could sit up in bed unassisted, months more before I could selftransfer to my wheelchair, and months more of home care and therapy before I was finally able to stand up and walk with a walker. Over the years I struggled to be active again, to get back to the “me” that I had been and hoped to be again. Unfortunately, I was at the mercy of the technology of the day and broke every single foot I wore for just over two decades. Finally, I reached a point where I knew I had to be able to work to pay the bills and knew that would not be possible with continually having to have my prosthetic foot repaired or replaced. So, with a heavy heart, I went to my prosthetist and asked him to “build me a bulldozer.” I knew it wouldn’t be an active foot, but I needed something that wouldn’t break. I had resigned to living the life I could afford but not the life I wanted. I had to settle for being less than I wanted to be.

Along I trudged, finding reasons to be happy and thankful but also with a broken heart that I would never be the “me” I wanted to be again. That was until that glorious day that I was asked to participate in a gait study where I discovered RUSH Foot. To say this foot changed my life would be a huge understatement. I could run with wild abandon again! I could hike, climb, bike, and skateboard again! FINALLY, I could be ME again! For the first time since the train incident, succeed or fail, fly or fall flat on my face, it was all up to me. I was an athlete again. I was ME again!

Flash forward to today and here I am, working my dream job for the company that gave me my life back. Helping other amputees find what I found. Helping them reclaim what they thought was lost. Helping get their lives back. So, now you may understand why I say, “I don’t wear the foot because I work here, I work here because I wear the foot.”