TRUE-LIFE
Living with one giant leg, I thought I was alone
Amy Rivera, 43
I beamed from the stage, a giant bouquet of flowers in my arms and a sparkly crown on my head.
It was 1999 and at 18, I’d won the regional final for Miss Junior America. What would the bullies at school think now? I thought. ‘The girl with the elephant leg,’ they’d called me.
Stuff them. Now I was a pageant queen!
After years of feeling like a freak, I was having the last laugh.
I’d been born with my right leg twice the size of my left.
Swollen, full of liquid, the skin stretched.
Docs didn’t know the cause, and told my mum it’d eventually go down.
It didn’t, though, and my first memory was age 5 and struggling to put on my shoes for preschool.
Things got worse.
I was always picked last for PE.
‘Your weird leg slows you down,’ my teacher said when I was 8.
In my teens I’d hide my leg under loose trousers, long dresses and flowing skirts, my feet shoved in tennis shoes – one half a size bigger than the other. Bullies still mocked me. ‘Elephant girl,’ their taunts rang out.
My right leg was a dead weight Iwas lugging around
They made me feel like a freak and so alone.
‘You’re a pretty girl. Don’t forget that,’ Mum would say. She was right, I couldn’t let bullies control my life. It’s why I ended up entering
Miss Junior America.
I’d picked out a long white and gold beaded dress, with a big slit on the left, hiding my leg.
But there was no hiding it when I had to wear a pair of white shorts for a group dance performance.
Self conscious, I stood at the back when it was over, to the side so my right leg was less visible.
When it was time to make my pre-prepared speech, my mind went blank.
Instead, I improvised, telling the audience why I was there.
‘I don’t feel like I belong here, but I’m tired of being bullied,’ I said.
Winning that crown was a huge boost.
After, I qualified as a nurse and by 2006, age 25, I had my dream job and was mum to a gorgeous little girl, Jade, then 5. Only, now it wasn’t just how my leg looked that was causing me problems.
On my feet all day, I’d end each hospital shift in agony.
The swelling got so bad, doctors advised me to give up nursing.
Distraught, I fell into a rut, with only my daughter keeping me going.
Weight-lifting had helped my mental health during my teens, so in 2009 I got a job managing a boxing gym.
I felt at home, and for the next three years I weighttrained and boxed.
But by late 2012 my right leg was a dead weight I lugged around.
Docs still had no answers. Trawl
