Sara Brown’s world turned upside down

“It literally just turned our lives upside down in a matter of minutes!”
Sara Brown of Aurora is talking about the February, 2008 car accident in western Nebraska that left her with a shattered right leg which eventually resulted in having her leg amputated below the knee 12 years later. Then, earlier this year her life was upended again (in a good way this time) when she was fitted for a state-of-the-art prosthetic running blade, transforming the formerly un-athletic single mother of three into a runner who completed her first-ever 5K race in July. 
Brown’s story of ups and downs is both tragic and inspirational, so we thought it would be perfect for ANR’s first-ever Topsy Turvey edition. The News-Register is grateful to her sister, Jessica Gellinger, for bringing her story to our attention and to Brown for allowing us to share it. 
Brown was 18 weeks pregnant with her second child and working as the breeding manager of a hog farm between Paxton and Arthur on that fateful day 15 years ago. 
She was driving her oldest daughter, Zoie, and two neighbor children as part of a carpool to a school drop-off point at a countryside rest area. Being pregnant and carrying low, she was not wearing a seat belt. Suddenly a driver pulled out in front of her causing a chain-reaction accident involving several vehicles. Brown’s car was hit on the driver’s side and the impact of the crash broke the steering wheel.
“There were a lot of people hurt that day,” Brown recalled, “and a lot of people taken to (the hospital in) North Platte.” 
The crash left Brown with a compound fracture of her right ankle in which about four inches of bone was shattered. She was taken by life flight to Scottsbluff where she underwent surgery to try to repair the damage. Before she gave birth to her daughter she would have two major surgeries on her mangled leg, the second one involving a bone graph. 
“It was like the rods and the pins and all that stuff sticking out,” Brown said. “I was non-weight bearing from 17 weeks on in my pregnancy, so that was not pleasant.”
By the time her daughter Reegan was born in July, Brown was still unable to do all the regular things the mother of a newborn does with her child.
“She was probably three months old before I could even be weight-bearing to be able to hold her and walk at the same time,” Brown said. “So, that was a roller coaster of events.

Years of pain and struggles
The next 12 years were a nightmare of surgeries, infections, bone spurs and trying to learn how to walk on a special shoe with a leg that was three inches shorter than the other one. 
“I had so many restrictions, so many things I couldn’t do, so many things that were things I should be able to do,” Brown said. “You know, just like going for walks with the kids, riding bikes, things like that just physically weren’t feasible for me because my foot was stuck -- stuck the way it was. So it was essentially fused already. It just wasn’t fused in the ideal position, I guess you could say.”
There were happy times during those years as well, including a move back to central Nebraska to be closer to family and the birth of her son Trigg who is now 5. 
Looking back, Brown now realizes her physical limitations often robbed her children of their mom’s attention. 
“It was it was one of those things that I had to watch my steps,” Brown said, “like if did more than, you know, sometimes 5,000 steps or 10,000 steps, I wasn’t walking the next day. I would have to crawl down the stairs to go to the bathroom. I couldn’t put weight on my leg when I first woke up. That was my reality. That’s what I dealt with. We could go out and have fun, but you can bet it was two days before I could do much of anything again, and that was the struggle.” 
So in 2020, when she was facing another round of surgeries to attempt to fuse her ankle in a better position, Brown began to consider just being rid of the injured foot altogether. 
“I was enduring some issues that I just couldn’t push through,” Brown said. “I went to a different doctor (in Lincoln) and I’m like, ‘Okay, enough is enough. I don’t know what to do.’ I had a bunch of bone spurs growing. He said we could go in there and clean it up and fuse it at that point. And then I honestly looked at him and I said ‘if I was your wife, your mom, your daughter, your grandma, what would you do? Because I’ve always thought of just being done with it.’”
The doctor’s response surprised her when, noting quality of life considerations and the technology behind the new prosthetics, he said he would support amputation of the limb at mid-calf. Wanting a second opinion, Brown went back to the doctor in Scottsbluff who had done the original surgeries and found nothing to change her mind. 
Knowing she had the full support of her children who had watched her suffer for years, Brown said, “I literally got that consult, went home, got on it, prayed about it for about two days and got my surgery set up for two weeks later.”

More topsy turvies
Despite what qualms she may have had about the amputation surgery beforehand, the months following the operation on Oct. 28, 2020 brought about even more world-upending changes for Brown. However, most of them have been for the good. For instance, the woman who had struggled to carry out the functions of everyday life for the past dozen years was up and walking on her new prosthetic leg in less than 60 days. 
“I had a goal to walk by Christmas and I did so,” Brown reports. “I was walking with no cane and no walker by Christmas.” 
Even more astounding is the fact that within a year she was regularly running, something she had never done before. That was thanks to Brown being fitted for her first running blade — a curved spring steel prosthesis replacing the normal walking leg that quite literally put a spring in her step allowing her to jog and run without pain for the first time in years. 
“It was amazing,” Brown exclaimed. “The first blade was very emotional because I hadn’t been able to do that for so long. I joke around that I was a gazelle because it just was different. I forgot what that felt like — it’s crazy! And the saying is so true — you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. It truly has a different meaning for me just because I wasn’t able to do those things. I could run in my everyday leg as well, but having the blade it just makes it so much easier. To have that spring, to have that rebound was crazy. I don’t know how to describe it but it was it was phenomenal.”
But even more phenomenal changes were yet to come. In April, Brown received an even better running blade made by the Danish company Levitate Technology, through the Blade 5K organization of Elkhorn. With the new blade, Brown was able to run in the organization’s annual 5K in Omaha in July. She admits she didn’t set any records but she did finish 49th out of 72 women runners in a time of 52 minutes, 42 seconds. 
“So it wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t pretty at all but I finished and my kids were at the finish line so it was pretty cool,” Brown said. “It actually was on my Reagan’s birthday so that was pretty special — kind of circle of events.”
The Blade 5K website notes that the inspiration for the organization came when triathlete Nate Wigdahl suffered a catastrophic injury from sports in 2018 which resulted in an amputation of his lower left leg.
“Desperately wanting to get back to his active lifestyle, we decided to raise the funds necessary for a prosthetic blade, that insurance wouldn’t cover,” the website says. “The Blade 5K’s mission is dedicated to helping those experiencing limb loss by obtaining a professionally-fitted prosthetic or other necessities in order to be active and regain the quality of life they deserve. The Blade 5K’s goal each year is to raise funds and award a new recipient(s) a professionally-fitted prosthetic or other necessities in order to return to or begin an active lifestyle. In addition to prosthetics, the aim is to raise community awareness and understanding of amputee needs, thus providing resources and inclusivity of amputees.”
Since becoming affiliated with the Blade 5K, Brown has been become an ambassador for the organization, helping spread the message of its mission. 
“An average leg costs eight to $10,000,” Brown said. “Since 2020, I am now in my sixth leg. It’s not something where you just get into a leg and that’s it for life. Your body changes and now that I’m more active — I go to the gym, I run now, I like doing all the things — your body changes, and so you can’t stay in the same leg.”
These days Brown is able to work (she is employed as a jailer for Hamilton County) and play with an energy she hasn’t known in years. She runs three times a week and sometimes is so energetic her three children tell her to slow down. For instance, Brown says she tends to underestimate the power of kicking a soccer ball with her running blade when playing with son, Trigg. 
“We joke around that we’re always working on his cardio because I kick it too hard and he has to go get the ball,” Brown laughed, “but he loves it. To be able to walk or jog down to the soccer field and then play soccer is crazy! All those things that I haven’t been able to do, like Nerf wars. I know it sounds silly, sounds simple, but I wasn’t able to run around the house... I wasn’t able to move like that. I couldn’t.”

Mess and message
The pain and struggle Brown has been through over the last 15 years, followed by the victories she has experienced since her surgery, have obviously given Brown a new outlook and a new lease on life.
She talks freely about the ups and downs of her life because she has adopted the motto: “My mess is my message.” 
“Sharing all those things and sharing the trials and tribulations that I went through is kind of the platform that I want to go on,” Brown said. “Lemons are my thing, too. When life hands you lemons, you make lemonade, so I have lemons all over my house. But that’s kind of how it’s been and how it’s become and kind of how it’s all panned out for me.”
Brown said she plans to keep running and may even participate in a regular 5K fun run one of these days, but for now she’s just happy being an ambassador bringing awareness to the needs and challenges of amputees like herself, inspiring others to push themselves beyond the barriers that limit them and keeping up with her active family until the very end.
“I aspire to inspire until I expire,” she said. “So, that’s kind of how it is.”