Friends

“BUDDY1 LEG” ELIAS

I wanted to do a post on my good friend Buddy Elias who has been a huge inspiration to me since I met him with Chief at the Adaptive USASA National in at Northstar a couple years back. Needless to say he has gone through a lot over the years but he is still out there snowboarding and skating like a mad man! That perseverance is my inspiration any day that I get down on the world I always think of Buddy and how strong he is and it fires me right back up to take life head on and never give up! I normally steer clear of this type of thing but please vote for him at Fast Company 2010′s Most Influential Person Online the link will take you to his page and make sure to peep his videos and read his story, he does what he does cause he loves board sports to the core!

Feature Story February 1, 2006 The Amputation That Freed the Inner Athlete
For years, Buddy Elias lived with painful wounds, shunning medical treatment for fear of becoming an amputee. What he never realized was that inside his injured bones lived an extreme athlete just waiting to come out.
By Tim McManus

Every night for 8 years, Buddy Elias stole into the bathroom in the middle of the night to complete a grisly ritual. With the door locked, his daughter and wife sleeping peacefully down the hall, Elias would gingerly unwrap his bandages and look at the feet he never let anyone else see. Elias would painstakingly clean and dress the open wounds and ulcers that were rotting the flesh from his feet, inch by inch. Occasionally, he would use suture scissors to trim the bone sticking out from the dead skin on his toes. Over 8 years, Elias amputated six toes using that gruesome method. His feet tightly wrapped, Elias would hobble on his heels — the only part of his feet he could bear to have touch the ground — back to the bedroom of his Fresno, Calif. home. The man who would later complete 360s on his snowboard and become an extreme sports athlete as a left transtibial amputee was dying a slow, painful death because he didn’t want to have his foot amputated. And because, he admits now, he was more than a little stubborn. A habit that’s tough to kick In 1992, when he was 21 years old, doctors diagnosed Elias with Buerger’s disease, a rare autoimmune response to tobacco use that causes acute inflammation and clotting in the arteries and veins leading to the hands and feet. Continue Reading »