Kenyan paraplegic athlete Marko Cheseto is finally returning to running and amazingly this time with “man-made legs’. Cheseto was amputated after he got lost in ice for hours and was rescued by police and friends. Doctors found that he could no longer have his legs and had to have them ‘cut’. Cheseto spent three weeks in hospital after which a prosthetics specialist, Steve Foy, visited him and promised “new legs” soon. In the meantime, he was still on anti-depressants. “He took measurements of my limbs and said he would get me walking feet as soon as I recovered. Two days later, he came back with the prosthetic legs and I tried them on. It was not easy and I had to use a walker to assist me,” he says. After a few minutes of trying, he was able to walk steadily. “I felt tall, perhaps due to the fact that I had spent more than a month in bed,” he says.On December 19, 2011, a month after his amputation, Cheseto was discharged from hospital.Cheseto soldiered on with his education and practiced using his new legs, walking for 10 minutes a day, then 15, then 20, then 45. Soon enough, he was walking for an hour. Gradually , Cheseto was attempting to run again. After graduating in Nutrition, the OSSUR representative from California advised Cheseto to apply for a grant to get special “Cheetah” running feet from the company through The Challenged Athletes Foundation.“I was among the people who qualified for the grant and on May 21, 2013, I finally got my ‘Cheetah’ brand running feet,” he says. During that summer, he ran a 10-kilometre race in 39 minutes and thought to himself, “If my personal best time in the 10km as an able-bodied athlete was 29:08, then I’m not doing badly.” Since then, Cheseto has taken part in many other races in Alaska, including, most recently the four-mile race at the annual Mayor’s Marathon on June 24 which he completed in an impressive 26 minutes, 33 seconds. He is determined to compete for Kenya at the Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.Kenyan Amputee Athlete Marko Cheseto Who Lost Legs After Freezing In Ice In The US Is Back On Track.
Kenyan paraplegic athlete Marko Cheseto is finally returning to running and amazingly this time with “man-made legs’. Cheseto was amputated after he got lost in ice for hours and was rescued by police and friends. Doctors found that he could no longer have his legs and had to have them ‘cut’. Cheseto spent three weeks in hospital after which a prosthetics specialist, Steve Foy, visited him and promised “new legs” soon. In the meantime, he was still on anti-depressants. “He took measurements of my limbs and said he would get me walking feet as soon as I recovered. Two days later, he came back with the prosthetic legs and I tried them on. It was not easy and I had to use a walker to assist me,” he says. After a few minutes of trying, he was able to walk steadily. “I felt tall, perhaps due to the fact that I had spent more than a month in bed,” he says.On December 19, 2011, a month after his amputation, Cheseto was discharged from hospital.Cheseto soldiered on with his education and practiced using his new legs, walking for 10 minutes a day, then 15, then 20, then 45. Soon enough, he was walking for an hour. Gradually , Cheseto was attempting to run again. After graduating in Nutrition, the OSSUR representative from California advised Cheseto to apply for a grant to get special “Cheetah” running feet from the company through The Challenged Athletes Foundation.“I was among the people who qualified for the grant and on May 21, 2013, I finally got my ‘Cheetah’ brand running feet,” he says. During that summer, he ran a 10-kilometre race in 39 minutes and thought to himself, “If my personal best time in the 10km as an able-bodied athlete was 29:08, then I’m not doing badly.” Since then, Cheseto has taken part in many other races in Alaska, including, most recently the four-mile race at the annual Mayor’s Marathon on June 24 which he completed in an impressive 26 minutes, 33 seconds. He is determined to compete for Kenya at the Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
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