An extreme sportsman has made a heart-warming photo diary charting his agonising decision to have his left foot amputated.
Joseph Pleban, 23, was told he had a rare bone and joint disease which caused recurring tumours in his ankle.
He decided to have his left foot removed by surgeons after realising it would allow him to continue to pursue extreme sports.
'It took me a
little while to get past the emotional hurdles. As a way to come to
terms with what was happening I decided to capture the journey in
pictures.'
The
photo series follows Mr Pleban from the moment he chose to have his
ankle amputated, through the surgery itself, up to the mirror therapy
which he is currently undertaking to adjust to life as an amputee.
Mr
Pleban broke his ankle while wakeboarding the day after he graduated
from college in 2008. Doctors operated on the ankle and found that the
area was full of small tumours.
It
was discovered that he had a rare condition called pigmented
villonodular synovitis, which produces malignant non-cancerous tumours
which attack cartilage, causing agonising degenerative arthritis.
Mr Pleban
said: 'It came down to either going through surgeries for a good portion
of my life or have one surgery to end them all and be as active as I
want on a prosthetic.
'My
dad was the last one to accept my choice. He was searching everywhere
for other options, but I just had to tell him that it was time to let it
go.
'Nothing was going to work except fusion or amputation, and I had decided on amputation.'
Mr Pleban and his girlfriend Johnna Hetrick, 30, decided to create a photo record, beginning three months before he had surgery.
He
said: 'We drew up a list of things which we wanted to do while I could.
It was heartbreaking to lose it, but that wasn't going to stop me doing
things before I lost it.'
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