At first glance, 41-year-old Stuart Nesbit could double as Val Kilmer or Jim Morrison, with the same deep-set eyes, full lips, pronounced jaw line, and square chin.
He stands tall with a medium build, brown eyes, brown hair, and an obvious confidence. During a conversation, he quickly proves himself to be a deep thinker who is smart, unafraid, unassuming, and above all … genuine.
What makes him uniquely Stuart? Could it be his innate ability to see the good in everything – in situations, in man, and in life? Or, is it his ability to continue living life full speed ahead despite the fact he is missing his right leg?
“I don’t view myself as an amputee,” Stuart says. “I don’t view myself as handicapped. I’m just physically challenged. People have different physical challenges and mine just happens to be a leg.”
Around 1 p.m. on January 24, 2004, Stuart set out to ride his Honda CBR-929 motorcycle on a rural state highway in Calhoun, Georgia with his neighbor/friend. Finding themselves about 10 miles from home, the pair came upon a long right-hand turn. As Stuart decelerated to round the turn, his rear wheel and muffler were struck by his neighbor’s motorcycle.
“This pushed me into oncoming traffic where I struck a car head-on,” he says. “I came off the bike with such force that the left handgrip was sheared off. My face hit the windshield-framing member, my right arm went through the windshield, and my right leg was removed from its natural position, clinging only by skin to my body.”
His body, limp and uncontrolled, had flown 123 feet before landing in a field covered in briar and bramble. A 911 call revealed a frantic female eyewitness who could barely utter, “I don’t think he’s alive.”
Stuart was later told that paramedics on scene searched the area for his right leg for 10 to 15 minutes before discovering it buried underneath him.
Having flown by Life Force Air Medical to Erlanger Medical Center, Stuart was treated by doctors Brent Norris and Robert Maxwell, who along with their team of surgeons, decided to amputate Stuart’s right leg several inches above the knee as it was literally attached only by tendons. Michelle, Stuart’s wife of eight years, agreed on the amputation. Doctors would also rebuild his right arm.
The death-defying motorcycle accident sent the then 39-year-old Stuart – who was not only a devoted husband but also father to two-year-old daughter Chandler – into an 8-day drug-induced coma. He suffered several sustainable injuries including a right arm broken in five places, eight broken ribs, a crushed left heel, strained muscles as well as tendons and ligaments in his left leg, a concussion, and the loss of his right leg.
During his coma, Stuart heard a voice say, “Not everything that you are experiencing is real. A man is not determined by the legs that he walks on; he is determined by how he carries himself.”
Stuart reflects, “I’m now living a life in a prosthetic limb along with an arm they told me I would lose 75 to 80 percent of the use of, and 90 percent of the range of motion. But, I do things that people can’t understand that I do like climbing ladders, climbing trees, carrying my kids around, shooting a bow, shooting a rifle – going out and walking in the woods – going fishing, fly fishing, and putting on waders and getting in water up to my thighs in a swift current knowing that it could just sweep me away.”
He can also swim just like everyone else. “I can do anything that anybody else can do,” he says, emphatically. “Negative feelings, emotions, and stinking thinking (what he has labeled a victim’s mentality) deserve no place in my life.”
Stuart now walks on the highly innovative C-Leg, manufactured by Otto Bock, a German company specializing in products and services in Orthobionic® and Bionicmobility®. Stuart notes how amputees returning from Iraq are receiving C-Legs.
“If they are good enough for our troops, then they are good enough for the general public. I’m unbelievably confident in this leg,” he says. The C-Leg has a computerized chip which he says gives him the most normal gait pattern and stability he can have.
Since his accident, Stuart has worked closely with Locke Davis, a local certified prosthetist orthotist, CPO, who owns and manages Dynamic Prosthetic & Orthotic near downtown Chattanooga. Locke has become a dear friend to Stuart who praises Locke’s knowledge and abilities.
Locke is also a certified Otto Bock programmer and builder. “The leg is only as good as the person or artisan who puts it together,” Stuart says. “A mechanic can tighten bolts but an artisan puts things together and makes them work. Locke’s been invaluable.” He thanks Locke for helping him regain confidence of stability and helping him learn to walk with fluid movement.
“He’s a hands-on artisan,” Stuart continues. “He manufactures the most intimate part of the prosthetic – the socket – by hand. Locke’s ability as a CPO has allowed me to face the world head on, whether I am helping out with field trips or just taking Chandler fishing or climbing into her bunk bed for story time.”
Stuart worried how Chandler would react to her father’s new leg. The day he returned home after receiving his C-Leg, he told her, “Your Daddy has a robot leg and nobody at your school has one.” She thought it was “cool,” and would later boast to people in public, “My Daddy’s got a robot leg. You want to see it?”
Stuart, a Charlotte, North Carolina native, now lives in Calhoun, Georgia with his family. Born the youngest of four in 1965 to an electrician and his wife, Stuart has always viewed situations with a positive, unbreakable spirit. He is simply passionate about life, harbors high hopes for the future, and exudes a definite don’t-feel-sorry-for-me attitude.
“I believe I can overcome anything,” he says, in a matter-of-fact tone. “I’m a solution-driven person. I don’t focus on ‘what ifs,’ I focus on what’s going to be.” He adds, “I don’t look at the problem, I look at a solution.”
A dedicated athlete, Stuart played 13 years of baseball, nine years of men’s competitive league softball, and several years of competitive tournament golf. He also ran track.
“I have hunted, fished, camped, and hiked all my life,” he says. Even as a child, he was no stranger to bumps and bruises. “I’ve been stitched up a lot because of not being scared of living life. Life’s for living; it’s not for existing. I’m not going to allow this accident to rob me of life and I’m not going to allow it to rob me of things I’ve done in the past. I’m still going to enjoy those things.”
Stuart credits his iron-willed athlete’s mentality for much of his recovery. “You’ll never hear me say ‘I can’t’,” he says. He also credits Reliv, a food science company for which he and Michelle now work from home as independent distributors. He ate their products before the accident as well as during recovery. He still eats their products today.
And, being a God-fearing man, he credits God. “He just snatched me out of the hands of death and he said, ‘Listen here, that’s my boy and you aren’t going to have him. And on top of this, I’m going to give him a son.’ ”
Michelle discovered only eight days after the accident that she was pregnant with their son, Samuel McCrea. “We call him our miracle child,” Stuart says. While in a coma, Stuart had a vision of his deceased father-in-law, Samuel John Cary Hembree, who told him, ‘It’s already come to pass; it’s already been decided. You can go home.’ When he woke from the coma, he told Michelle that if they ever had another child, he wanted him to be named after her late father because her “Daddy sent me home.”
“My recovery has been remarkable,” Stuart admits. “I feel strong, energetic, and unstoppable. The accident has been harder on my family than it has been on me. My wife’s life of security and comfort were torn and thrown to the wind. “My parents hurt as only parents can when their child, so loved, so full of life, is in pain and they are unable to make it go away.”
As for the neighbor who struck him, Stuart says, “It was what it was – a terrible accident. The forgiveness is there.”
Stuart refuses to dwell on his accident and balks at the thought of entertaining a “why me” attitude. He knows he lives a life of infinite possibilities, no matter how many limbs he does or does not have. He is physically challenged but he is also physically able. He refuses to allow his days ahead to be dictated by the days behind him.
“I have no fear of the future as God gave me no fear – only power, sound mind, and love,” Stuart says. “My family and I give the thanks and glory to God for helping us to overcome these past three years.”