By Sophie Nitkin

Josh Sundquist thought he was in the middle of a nightmare when he woke up in a hospital bed after undergoing surgery at age nine. Now a 19-year-old sophomore at William and Mary College, Sundquist vividly recalls the day when he awoke from a groggy sleep with his parents on either side of his bed and he was told that not only would he lose a leg, but he only had a 50 percent chance of surviving. “I was blown away,” said Sundquist who had Ewing’s Sarcoma, a rare form of cancer. “I just remember being awake at nights thinking ‘Man, I don’t want to die, I’m 9 years old. How can this be?’”

Nine months of chemotherapy, during which he lost his hair, felt weak and continually nauseas ironically led him to his recovery. A three-week hospital stay was shortened to five days after he proved he could run laps on his crutches in the children’s ward after just the third day. Sundquist remembers a reporter asking him what kept him going. His reply - he had a really supportive family and he believed in God. But when the reporter persisted, clarifying his question, “No, Josh, what gets you out of bed in the morning?” It clicked. “I just want to finish and be a normal kid again,” remembers Sundquist.

Even on one leg, Sundquist has accomplished more than most of us with two. Sheer will, and the determination to prove he could be a “normal” kid led him to the softball field three weeks after the amputation. “I wanted to play, but I couldn’t run the bases,” Sundquist said. “I had a runner. I would bat and someone else would run. My balance wasn’t very good then, so every time I swung the bat I would fall over. It wasn’t my best experience, but I wanted to do it. I wanted to prove I could do it.”

Living life to the fullest is a cliché for Sundquist. This once avid soccer player soon tried skiing and learned he loved it. “I hadn’t skied before I lost my leg. But almost because I lost my leg, I got this opportunity and learned something new that I can do on an equal level with everyone else,” said Sundquist who is now a member of the U.S. ski team for disabled athletes.

Experiences such as this are big confidence building blocks in Sundquist’s life. No longer out to prove anything to himself or anyone else for that matter, Sunquist said, “I have proved to myself through skiing and [competitive amputee] soccer and other experiences that I can pretty much do anything I want to.”

Sundquist can’t explain the beauty he has found in his near death experience. “You see how special it all is when you don’t die – when you are alive the next morning and you can face the day,” he said. Through his vulnerability he found strength in seeing what he has. “People really need to find their passion and do something with their life especially in college and high school,” he said. “I understand there is so much fun to be had during that time, but it is also a great time to find something you are good at and throw yourself into all the possibilities life holds.”

For him, life can be compared to the Dead Sea. The sea, he says is so salty and dead, there is no growth or life in it because nothing flows in or out of it. A healthy person needs both an inflow and an outflow. We need to build on the talents we have and give back to the world around us. Certainly Sundquist has had to overcome a lot of adversity in his life – more than most of us. But through his experiences, exposing himself to what on the surface seemed like the impossible, he has learned to live hard, love with passion and most importantly, “experience life with love at the center and everything else just branches out from that.”