Hello, I'm Quentin Hamilton. On July 4, 2005, I joined the United States Marine Corps. Since then, I have been on 5 tours of duty in 6 years. Out of the 5 deployments, I've been to Iraq once, Afghanistan twice, one peace keeping deployment, and another to an undisclosed location. On January 30, 2012,while on my last deployment to Afghanistan, I stepped on a 10lb IED (improvised explosive device). I suffered a shattered left hip, shattered pelvis, compound fracture of the fibula, and completely shattered every bone in my left foot.

After that, I had a choice to make: cut my leg off then or try and save it through a process called limb salvage. I chose limb salvage because I wanted to try and keep my leg. It took me 13 surgeries to try to save my leg and foot. I went through 3 years of Physical Therapy, strengthening exercise programs,and various specialized braces to help me walk and run. After the brace was made, I still couldn't walk without pain and I still couldn't run at all. I wasn't able to do the things I loved to do, which was be outside and adventurous. Ultimately, I couldn't do my dream job after the corps, which was to become a cop.

After 3 years of dealing with the limb salvage and all the pain I still had to endure, I decided to cut my leg off. Now that I cut my leg off, I will be able to run, hike, ride bikes, and be more active in my everyday life. My quality of life will improve greatly, and I'll be able to ultimately achieve my main goal, which is to become a cop, so that I can continue to serve the people of the United States of America.

There will be times though that my stump leg will be sore, and I won't always use my prosthetic devices, so for that there’s a lot of adaptive equipment I will need. While the military does provide basic, heavy wheelchairs and under arm crutches, they don’t provide such things as light weight wheel chairs or light weight crutches. Light weight crutches are forearm crutches that can also have adaptive attachments for hiking up mountains or snow spikes. They also don't pay for home improvements such as widening doorways, non-slip flooring, ramps to get up stairs, automatic doors, or hand rails and other equipment for bathrooms.

Every little bit helps in getting the adaptive equipment and improvements I need in reaching my goal and is greatly appreciated

Thank you for your continued support!

Quentin Hamilton