Todd’s Story, Part Two: Learning to Live Beyond Loss

Voices of Limb Loss is a written interview series from The Bionic Perspective. One community, every voice, told in their own words: people living with limb loss and limb difference, and the prosthetists, clinicians, researchers, and advocates who dedicate their lives to this work. No manufactured narrative. Every participant reviews and approves their story before it is published.

---

Todd’s Story, Part Two

You mentioned that surviving treatment and rebuilding your life were two very different things. What did rebuilding actually look like?

If I am being honest, I do not think I rebuilt right away.

Surviving treatment was simply something that had to be done. There were certainly moments when I resisted. I can vividly remember sitting on the couch at four o’clock in the morning, knowing that I was supposed to leave for Gainesville to spend another four days in a hospital bed receiving chemotherapy. I was exhausted. I had hit a wall.

There were mornings when I simply did not want to go.

Fortunately, my mother, my doctors, my family, and my friends were incredibly encouraging. Somehow, every single time, I got up and went.

Part of that was because I understood what was at stake. If I did not complete treatment, there was a very real possibility that the cancer would not be eradicated. After everything that had already happened, I was not willing to accept that risk.

When chemotherapy finally ended, though, something unexpected happened. Everyone around me celebrated because treatment was over. But treatment ending was not the same thing as recovering. If anything, recovery had not even begun.

Again, these memories come to me in fragments because I have not talked about them very much over the years. Several major life events happened around the same time.

The boyfriend I mentioned in Part One traveled back and forth between Spain and the United States before eventually moving to South Florida. We had begun talking about what a future together might look like in the United States, but for many reasons, our relationship ultimately came to an end. The relationship is not the focus of this story, but it serves as an important marker in time. Its end came after the immediate trauma of cancer treatment had passed.

At the same time, I was deeply depressed.

One thing that struck me while gathering photographs for this interview was something I had never consciously noticed before. In almost every photograph from that period, I am holding my left arm with my right hand.

When I first noticed it, I wondered whether I had been protecting my residual limb.

I was not.

I was hiding it.

That realization stopped me in my tracks. I had always felt different growing up for a variety of reasons. Now I had a visible difference that I could not escape, and I carried an enormous amount of shame because of it. That shame quietly took root and stayed with me for years.

I eventually returned to the University of North Florida because it seemed like the next logical step. Life was moving forward, so I tried to move forward with it. Looking back, I was not really living. I was existing.

I made some poor decisions, including living with people who were not healthy influences. Thankfully, I also had wonderful friends who recognized what was happening and helped me get out of that environment.

I also began relying on alcohol to numb emotions that I had not yet learned how to face. I was not just grieving the loss of my hand. I was grieving the loss of the life I thought I was going to have. Alcohol became a way to avoid those feelings for a while.

After graduating and moving back home, I entered a recovery program in 2013. That became the foundation of my sobriety, although I was not finished learning those lessons. Like many people in recovery, I eventually went back out, trying once again to cope with depression and anxiety the only way I knew how.

In 2015, I returned to recovery, and I have been sober and clean ever since. That is one of the accomplishments I am proudest of.

It is also not something I intend to hide. Addiction and recovery are part of my story, just as limb loss is. For many people, alcohol or drugs become an attempt to cope with trauma that has never been processed. That was certainly true for me.

Looking back now, I realize that I did not rebuild my life after cancer. I became stagnant. I spent a lot of time in bed. I depended on other people for things I probably could have learned to do myself.

If something became difficult with one hand, I often stopped doing it altogether instead of trying to find another way. Without realizing it, I had accepted that my world had become smaller.

For many years, I allowed it to stay that way.

One of the first things people often ask after an amputation is, “When did you get your prosthetic?” What was that experience like?

One of the options discussed while I was still going through cancer treatment was receiving a prosthetic hand after my amputation.

At that point, I did not know what that would look like. It could have been a body-powered device, a hook, or a myoelectric hand like the one I use today. I just knew that eventually there would be an opportunity to replace, in some way, what I had lost.

Looking back now, I realize something that I could not have understood at the time.

I was not ready for a prosthetic.

I was still the person who hid his residual limb in photographs. I crossed my right arm over my left whenever I could. I did everything possible to keep people from noticing that I was different.

The prosthetic was not going to solve that. It could not.

None of that takes away from what my mother did for me. She worked tirelessly to make sure I had access to the best prosthetic technology available at the time. She advocated for me, navigated insurance, asked questions, and did everything she could to give me the opportunity to live the fullest life possible.

My first prosthesis was an i-LIMB. It was black with green lightning accents. Ironically, that probably should have been my first clue that I was not emotionally ready to wear one.

The relationship I had with that prosthesis was not one of excitement or empowerment. It was one of embarrassment.

I did not want people looking at it. I did not want people asking questions. Most of all, I did not want another visible reminder that I had lost my hand.

I wore it for a summer, perhaps two. Then I put it back in its case, placed it in a closet, and largely forgot about it for the next decade.

Instead of learning how to incorporate it into my life, I learned how to live without it.

I developed one-handed ways of doing countless everyday tasks. Many of those adaptations served me well, but there were also things I quietly gave up because they seemed too difficult.

One example that has always stayed with me is tying my shoes. I remember asking a coworker to tie one of my shoes for me because I could not do it myself. I laughed about it in the moment, but underneath the humor was something much heavier.

I felt like a child.

Looking back now, I realize that moment was not really about shoelaces. It was about dependence.

There were many things I simply accepted that I could not do anymore. I rarely stopped to ask whether I could learn a different method or whether a prosthesis might have made some of those tasks possible.

I had become so accustomed to making my life smaller that I did not even recognize I was doing it.

For nearly ten years, my prosthesis sat in a closet. It was not because the technology had failed me. It was because I was not yet ready to accept what it represented.

The prosthetic gave me a tool. The people around me gave me the confidence to use it.

— Todd Gerundo

Your relationship with prosthetics eventually changed dramatically. What happened?

As I mentioned, I lived for about ten years without using a prosthetic. I moved through life with a residual limb that could not do very much. The muscles had atrophied, and I sometimes joked that it was my “ornamental arm.”

I simply grew accustomed to living that way.

Over the years, people encouraged me to reconsider prosthetics. They told me about different companies, different devices, and the ways newer technology might help me. The truth, however, was that I still was not ready.

I had put the i-LIMB away, and I never really took it back out. I cannot remember the last time I removed it from its case. It is still sitting in my closet today. I doubt that it fits anymore, and I do not even know whether it still works.

During those years, I built a career that involved an enormous amount of typing. I began as a social media specialist, later managed social media accounts, and eventually moved into knowledge management. Every one of those roles required me to spend much of each day at a keyboard.

I developed my own one-handed method of typing, and I became quite fast. People who watched me work were often impressed by how quickly I could type with one hand.

For many years, that adaptation worked.

Then, within the last two or three years, my right hand began telling me that it could no longer keep up with everything I was asking it to do. I started experiencing numbness and tingling. I began striking the wrong keys and making mistakes that I had not made before.

I saw a specialist who performed nerve testing and confirmed that I had carpal tunnel syndrome in my right hand. That was not especially surprising. I had been relying on that hand almost exclusively for more than a decade.

I eventually scheduled carpal tunnel surgery. Recovery from hand surgery is difficult under ordinary circumstances. Recovering when your other hand is already missing creates an entirely different set of challenges.

That was when my thinking began to change.

For the first time, the question was no longer simply whether I wanted a prosthetic. I began to understand that I needed one to help protect the hand I still had.

My fear was straightforward: if I lost the effective use of my right hand and still had no functional left hand, what would I do?

That fear-based push turned out to be exactly what I needed.

In the middle of 2025, I decided to begin the prosthetic process again. I reached out to Hanger Clinic to see what options were available. There was an office in my area with an excellent prosthetist, along with another excellent prosthetist who traveled from elsewhere in the state to work with patients.

The entire experience felt different from the one I had more than a decade earlier.

We spent a great deal of time discussing how prosthetic technology had changed and what might work best for my needs. My prosthetist eventually recommended the PSYONIC Ability Hand. Insurance coverage was part of that decision, but the Ability Hand also offered some of the fastest-moving fingers and joints available. It looked incredibly cool, and it was created by someone who genuinely believes in helping people, someone I have since had the opportunity to know.

The process was not easy.

My insurance denied the prosthetic request more than once. I had to participate in additional evaluations and explain in detail which activities I could not perform with only one hand.

Just before the end of the year, and shortly before my insurance benefits reset, the request was finally approved.

I walked into the clinic and put on the prosthetic arm that I am looking at as I tell this story.

It simply felt right.

I had heard people describe finding the right prosthetic by saying that they barely noticed it or that it made them feel more complete. Honestly, I assumed those were just things people said.

Then it happened to me.

I also had the support of wonderful therapists and family members as I adjusted to wearing it. I remember speaking with one of my therapists about all the fears I still had.

What would I do when people stared? What would I say to children? What would I say to older adults? What would I say to anyone who asked about it while I was still trying to understand it myself?

Her advice was simple: own it.

Let it be mine. Stop apologizing for it. Use it to the best of my ability.

That is what I have tried to do every day since receiving it.

I am not perfect at it. There are still times when I enter a crowded place and become convinced that people are looking at me. Sometimes they probably are. Other times, it may simply be my fear telling me that they are.

Becoming comfortable with the prosthetic is not a battle I expect to win once and never think about again. It is something I continue to work on.

The difference is that I no longer hide it in a closet.

I wear it. I use it. And little by little, I am learning to own it.

How did your prosthetic eventually lead you toward advocacy and a new sense of purpose?

I had always wanted to work in some kind of helping role.

When I attended the University of North Florida, I chose to major in English because I enjoyed writing and reading. Looking back, though, there are moments when I wonder whether I might have pursued counseling, peer support, or another helping profession if I had better understood where my life was headed.

One of the things I have learned is that sometimes life gives us knowledge we never asked for.

I certainly never wanted to become knowledgeable about living with one hand or adapting to life with a prosthesis. But those experiences are now part of who I am, and I have an opportunity to use them to help someone else.

Even early in my first prosthetic journey, that idea began to take shape.

I remember a young man named Cameron who had lost, I believe, three limbs and worked with Hanger Clinic as a patient advocate and an example of what was possible after limb loss.

Even then, I remember thinking that it looked like something I could get behind. I was not ready at the time, but the idea entered my mind.

When I received my PSYONIC Ability Hand, I immediately reached out to the company to ask whether there were public forums or groups for users. They had a Discord community. It was not incredibly active, but it gave me an opportunity to introduce myself to other people using the Ability Hand.

Around the same time, I started The Bionic Perspective.

My original goal was not to discuss technical specifications, compare prosthetic companies, or argue that one device was better than another. My thought was much simpler: the first time I went through this process, I did not have this kind of support, and that was part of the reason I put the prosthetic away.

I wanted to create support, not only for myself, but hopefully for others over time.

The earliest entries read almost like diary entries. They were about learning to wear a prosthetic, figuring out how to use it, watching people watch me use it, and processing what it meant to have one again.

As the months passed, the writing began to evolve. I asked friends what questions they had about prosthetics. I looked at current peer-reviewed research and tried to connect it to my own experiences as a user.

I realized there was room for both research and personal storytelling.

Then, on June 30, 2026, I was laid off from my position because of corporate restructuring and budget cuts. There were no behavioral or productivity issues involved. My role was simply eliminated.

As difficult as that was, I began to see it as an opportunity to move in a different direction.

I was 38 years old and had years of experience in social media and knowledge management. I enjoyed helping coworkers, clients, and agents, and I remain proud of that work. But as time went on, especially during the final year, I felt increasingly disconnected from my job.

My understanding of a renewed purpose did not arrive all at once. It developed through a series of small interactions.

After receiving the Ability Hand, I began wearing it in stores and other public places. A lot of people did not stare, or at least I did not notice them doing it.

One day, I was in Barnes & Noble looking at LEGO sets, which is one of my favorite impulsive habits, when a gentleman walked over and said, “That’s a really cool hand.”

I thanked him and moved the fingers to show him how it worked. He then explained that he had received a defibrillator implant at a young age and understood what it was like to feel different because of something involving his body.

That was my first interaction with someone outside my immediate family or friend group about the prosthetic. I left feeling on top of the world.

As I continued wearing it, I had children tell me they thought it was cool. More recently, I was at a local coffee shop when someone told me that her sister had lost her arm near the shoulder but was not ready for a prosthetic. She wanted to hear about mine.

As she spoke, I recognized my own story.

Her sister had just experienced surgery. She was grieving the loss of a body part. She was not ready to be pushed into whatever was supposed to come next.

Those interactions, combined with the loss of my corporate position, showed me that I want to work in the prosthetics field.

I do not want to become a prosthetist, and I am not looking to manage a clinic office. I am interested in community engagement, peer advocacy, business development, sales, customer support, and other roles that would allow me to help people build confidence and discover their potential as prosthetic users.

I also do not consider myself an authority. I have only been using my current prosthetic for about six months. I am still learning how to use it and discovering new things.

That is part of what excites me.

The experience is still fresh. I remember what it felt like to put the hand on for the first time. I remember worrying about people staring. I still encounter situations I have never navigated before.

If I can enter the field while those experiences are still fresh, I believe I have something meaningful to offer.

Why did you create Voices of Limb Loss, and what do you hope people take away from it?

I created Voices of Limb Loss because my perspective on wearing a prosthetic, whether an upper-limb or lower-limb device, is only one perspective.

There are Reddit communities and online forums where people can gather and talk, but one of the biggest questions after limb loss is often very simple: What do I do next?

We have fantastic doctors, prosthetists, and companies that may explain that it is time to begin considering a prosthetic. My belief, however, is that a person needs to be both physically and mentally ready. They also need to understand what owning and wearing a prosthetic actually entails.

My own experience of not being ready led me to reach out to others and ask how they felt about their journeys.

It is not lost on me that some of the people I have spoken with do not have prosthetics because they cannot afford them or because their insurance will not cover them. Others do not want one, or they are not ready for one.

That is why I plan to continue maintaining The Bionic Perspective as a place for my specific thoughts, experiences, and moments with my prosthetic, while using Voices of Limb Loss to bring in perspectives beyond my own.

Through Voices of Limb Loss, I want to hear from prosthetic users, people who do not use prosthetics, prosthetists, researchers, company leaders, mental health professionals, advocates, family members, and anyone else whose life or work is connected to limb loss.

It can be incredibly difficult to find what you need immediately after a trauma, even when you have a strong advocate.

A hospital discharge coordinator may give you the phone number for the nearest prosthetic clinic and tell you to schedule an appointment. But will someone explain that you may also need therapy? Will someone tell you that you may need time with your family to reset, grieve, and accept what has happened?

A prosthetic is only one part of recovery.

That is the kind of understanding I hope to gather through these interviews.

I launched the project only recently, and I have already been fortunate to hear from many people who are interested in sharing their stories.

There is almost nothing more meaningful to me than hearing someone’s story. I want to sit down and listen to people, or in this case read their words, as they explain what they have faced, what they have fought through, and how they are surviving and thriving today.

And when someone is not surviving or thriving, I want to make room for that story too.

Those experiences are equally real.

One moment from my own life captures why I believe this kind of support matters.

A few months ago, I began playing pool with a member of a Meetup group. I was incredibly embarrassed to try because I was convinced I would not be able to do it.

This person has since become one of my closest friends. He spent about an hour with me adjusting the settings on my prosthetic so I could keep a pool cue steady.

That night, I realized something important. A friend had willingly spent an hour tinkering with my prosthetic because he cared about me and wanted us to play pool together.

It was a small moment, but moments like that reconnected me to the world.

The prosthetic gave me a tool. The people around me gave me the confidence to use it.

That is one of the things I hope readers take away from my story.

When you reach a point where you are able to take a leap and try something new, take it.

It may be playing pool. It may be wearing a prosthetic in public. It may be returning to recovery. It may be beginning a new career after a job loss you did not cause.

I was let go from my job because of budget cuts, not because of my performance or behavior. I cannot change that decision. What I can do is decide how I respond to it.

I can spend time thinking about what would genuinely fulfill me. I can pursue roles that bring me closer to the prosthetics and limb-loss community. I can keep applying, reaching out, learning, and moving forward until someone gives me an opportunity.

Once I am in the door, I hope to use everything I have experienced to help people who are facing some of the same struggles I did.

For years, I accepted that my life had become smaller.

Now I understand that it did not have to stay that way.